182 research outputs found
Neutrino current in a gravitational plane wave collision background
The behaviour of a massless Dirac field on a general spacetime background
representing two colliding gravitational plane waves is discussed in the
Newman-Penrose formalism. The geometrical properties of the neutrino current
are analysed and explicit results are given for the special Ferrari-Ibanez
solution.Comment: 17 pages, 6 Postscript figures, accepted by International Journal of
Modern Physics
Particle creation in a colliding plane wave spacetime: wave packet quantization
We use wave packet mode quantization to compute the creation of massless
scalar quantum particles in a colliding plane wave spacetime. The background
spacetime represents the collision of two gravitational shock waves followed by
trailing gravitational radiation which focus into a Killing-Cauchy horizon. The
use of wave packet modes simplifies the problem of mode propagation through the
different spacetime regions which was previously studied with the use of
monocromatic modes. It is found that the number of particles created in a given
wave packet mode has a thermal spectrum with a temperature which is inversely
proportional to the focusing time of the plane waves and which depends on the
mode trajectory.Comment: 23, latex, figures available by fa
Stress-energy tensor in the Bel-Szekeres space-time
In a recent work an approximation procedure was introduced to calculate the
vacuum expectation value of the stress-energy tensor for a conformal massless
scalar field in the classical background determined by a particular colliding
plane wave space-time. This approximation procedure consists in appropriately
modifying the space-time geometry throughout the causal past of the collision
center. This modification in the geometry allows to simplify the boundary
conditions involved in the calculation of the Hadamard function for the quantum
state which represents the vacuum in the flat region before the arrival of the
waves. In the present work this approximation procedure is applied to the
non-singular Bel-Szekeres solution, which describes the head on collision of
two electromagnetic plane waves. It is shown that the stress-energy tensor is
unbounded as the killing-Cauchy horizon of the interaction is approached and
its behavior coincides with a previous calculation in another example of
non-singular colliding plane wave space-time.Comment: 17 pages, LaTex file, 2 PostScript figure
Configuration Complexities of Hydrogenic Atoms
The Fisher-Shannon and Cramer-Rao information measures, and the LMC-like or
shape complexity (i.e., the disequilibrium times the Shannon entropic power) of
hydrogenic stationary states are investigated in both position and momentum
spaces. First, it is shown that not only the Fisher information and the
variance (then, the Cramer-Rao measure) but also the disequilibrium associated
to the quantum-mechanical probability density can be explicitly expressed in
terms of the three quantum numbers (n, l, m) of the corresponding state.
Second, the three composite measures mentioned above are analytically,
numerically and physically discussed for both ground and excited states. It is
observed, in particular, that these configuration complexities do not depend on
the nuclear charge Z. Moreover, the Fisher-Shannon measure is shown to
quadratically depend on the principal quantum number n. Finally, sharp upper
bounds to the Fisher-Shannon measure and the shape complexity of a general
hydrogenic orbital are given in terms of the quantum numbers.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, accepted i
ULEARN: Personalised Learner’s Profile Based On Dynamic Learning Style Questionnaire
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.E-Learning recommender system effectiveness re- lies upon their ability to recommend appropriate learning con- tents according to the learner learning style and preferences. An effective approach to handle the learner preferences is to build an efficient learner profile in order to gain adaptation and individualisation of the learning environment. It is usually necessary to know learning style and preferences of the learner on a domain before adapting the learning process and course content. This study focuses on identifying the learning styles of students in order to adapt the learning process and course content. ULEARN is an adaptive recommender learning system designed to provide learners with personalised learning environment such as course learning objects that match their adaptive profile. This paper presents the algorithm used in ULEARN to reduce dynamically the number of questions in Felder-Silverman learning style ques- tionnaire used to initialise the adaptive learner profile. Firstly, the questionnaire is restructured into four groups, one for each learning style dimension; and a study is carried out to determine the order in which questions will be asked in each dimension. Then an algorithm is built upon this ranking of questions to calculate dynamically the initial learning style of the user as they go through the questionnaire
Infectiousness of patients with smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis, assessed by Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction, Xpert®MTB/RIF
Currently, pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) isolation recommendations are based on serial sputum smear microscopy. To assess infectiousness of smear-negative/GeneXpert-positive (Sm-/GXpert+) pulmonary TB, we evaluated 511 contacts of pulmonary TB patients attended at a teaching hospital in Spain (2010-2018). There were no statistically significant differences in rates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (46.2% contacts of smear-positive and 34.6% contacts of Sm-/GXpert+ pulmonary TB patients, p=0.112). Sm-/GXpert+ pulmonary TB poses a substantial risk of transmission of M. tuberculosis infection. Our results add evidence to support including Real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (Xpert®MTB/RIF) in the work-up diagnosis of suspected pulmonary TB cases to make decisions on air-borne isolation
On linearized gravity in the Randall-Sundrum scenario
In the literature about the Randall-Sundrum scenario one finds on one hand
that there exist (small) corrections to Newton's law of gravity on the brane,
and on another that the exact (and henceforth linearized) Einstein equations
can be recovered on the brane. The explanation for these seemingly
contradictory results is that the behaviour of the bulk far from the brane is
different in both models. We show that explicitely in this paper.Comment: 12 pages, plain TeX, no figure
Cosmological Perturbations in Brane-World Theories: Formalism
We develop a gauge-invariant formalism to describe metric perturbations in
five-dimensional brane-world theories. In particular, this formalism applies to
models originating from heterotic M-theory. We introduce a generalized
longitudinal gauge for scalar perturbations. As an application, we discuss some
aspects of the evolution of fluctuations on the brane. Moreover, we show how
the five-dimensional formalism can be matched to the known four-dimensional one
in the limit where an effective four-dimensional description is appropriate.Comment: 16 pages, no figure, matches version to appear in PR
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