21,828 research outputs found
Atmospheric Calorimetry above 10 eV: Shooting Lasers at the Pierre Auger Cosmic-Ray Observatory
The Pierre Auger Cosmic-Ray Observatory uses the earth's atmosphere as a
calorimeter to measure extensive air-showers created by particles of
astrophysical origin. Some of these particles carry joules of energy. At these
extreme energies, test beams are not available in the conventional sense. Yet
understanding the energy response of the observatory is important. For example,
the propagation distance of the highest energy cosmic-rays through the cosmic
microwave background radiation (CMBR) is predicted to be strong function of
energy. This paper will discuss recently reported results from the observatory
and the use of calibrated pulsed UV laser "test-beams" that simulate the
optical signatures of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. The status of the much
larger 200,000 km companion detector planned for the northern hemisphere
will also be outlined.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures XIII International Conference on Calorimetry in
High Energy Physic
Global General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Accretion Tori
This paper presents an initial survey of the properties of accretion flows in
the Kerr metric from three-dimensional, general relativistic
magnetohydrodynamic simulations of accretion tori. We consider three fiducial
models of tori around rotating, both prograde and retrograde, and nonrotating
black holes; these three fiducial models are also contrasted with axisymmetric
simulations and a pseudo-Newtonian simulation with equivalent initial
conditions to delineate the limitations of these approximations.Comment: Submitted to ApJ. 30 pages, 21 figures. Animations and
high-resolution version of figures available at
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~jd5
Dephasing by extremely dilute magnetic impurities revealed by Aharonov-Bohm oscillations
We have probed the magnetic field dependence of the electron phase coherence
time by measuring the Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations of
mesoscopic Cu rings. Whereas determined from the low-field
magnetoresistance saturates below 1 K, the amplitude of Aharonov-Bohm
oscillations increases strongly on a magnetic field scale proportional to the
temperature. This provides strong evidence that a likely explanation for the
frequently observed saturation of at low temperature in weakly
disordered metallic thin films is the presence of extremely dilute magnetic
impurities.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter
Eigenelements of a General Aggregation-Fragmentation Model
We consider a linear integro-differential equation which arises to describe
both aggregation-fragmentation processes and cell division. We prove the
existence of a solution (\lb,\U,\phi) to the related eigenproblem. Such
eigenelements are useful to study the long time asymptotic behaviour of
solutions as well as the steady states when the equation is coupled with an
ODE. Our study concerns a non-constant transport term that can vanish at
since it seems to be relevant to describe some biological processes like
proteins aggregation. Non lower-bounded transport terms bring difficulties to
find estimates. All the work of this paper is to solve this problem
using weighted-norms
A Three-Point Cosmic Ray Anisotropy Method
The two-point angular correlation function is a traditional method used to
search for deviations from expectations of isotropy. In this paper we develop
and explore a statistically descriptive three-point method with the intended
application being the search for deviations from isotropy in the highest energy
cosmic rays. We compare the sensitivity of a two-point method and a
"shape-strength" method for a variety of Monte-Carlo simulated anisotropic
signals. Studies are done with anisotropic source signals diluted by an
isotropic background. Type I and II errors for rejecting the hypothesis of
isotropic cosmic ray arrival directions are evaluated for four different event
sample sizes: 27, 40, 60 and 80 events, consistent with near term data
expectations from the Pierre Auger Observatory. In all cases the ability to
reject the isotropic hypothesis improves with event size and with the fraction
of anisotropic signal. While ~40 event data sets should be sufficient for
reliable identification of anisotropy in cases of rather extreme (highly
anisotropic) data, much larger data sets are suggested for reliable
identification of more subtle anisotropies. The shape-strength method
consistently performs better than the two point method and can be easily
adapted to an arbitrary experimental exposure on the celestial sphere.Comment: Fixed PDF erro
Experimental Determination of Nucleation Scaling Law for Small Charged Particles
We investigated the nucleation process at the molecular level. Controlled
sticking of individual atoms onto mass selected clusters over a wide mass range
has been carried out for the first time. We measured the absolute unimolecular
nucleation cross sections of cationic sodium clusters Na_{n}^{+} in the range
n=25-200 at several collision energies. The widely used hard sphere
approximation clearly fails for small sizes: not only should vapor-to-liquid
nucleation theories be modified, but also, through the microreversibility
principle, cluster decay rate statistical models
Minimal Basis for Gauge Theory Amplitudes
Identities based on monodromy for integrations in string theory are used to
derive relations between different color ordered tree-level amplitudes in both
bosonic and supersymmetric string theory. These relations imply that the color
ordered tree-level n-point gauge theory amplitudes can be expanded in a minimal
basis of (n-3)! amplitudes. This result holds for any choice of polarizations
of the external states and in any number of dimensions.Comment: v2: typos corrected, some rephrasing of the general discussion.
Captions to figures added. Version to appear in PRL. 4 pages, 5 figure
Magnetic relaxation of a system of superparamagnetic particles weakly coupled by dipole-dipole interactions
The effect of long range dipole-dipole interactions on the thermal
fluctuations of the magnetization of an assembly of single-domain ferromagnetic
particles is considered. If orientational correlations between the particles
are neglected, the evolution of the magnetization orientations may be described
by a nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) reducing to the usual linear one in
the limit of infinite dilution [W.F. Brown Jr, Phys. Rev. 130, 1677 (1963)].
The thermally activated relaxation time scale of the assembly is estimated,
leading to a simple modification of the axially symmetric asymptotes for the
superparamagnetic relaxation time.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, regular articl
Closed-form expressions for correlated density matrices: application to dispersive interactions and example of (He)2
Empirically correlated density matrices of N-electron systems are
investigated. Exact closed-form expressions are derived for the one- and
two-electron reduced density matrices from a general pairwise correlated wave
function. Approximate expressions are proposed which reflect dispersive
interactions between closed-shell centro-symmetric subsystems. Said expressions
clearly illustrate the consequences of second-order correlation effects on the
reduced density matrices. Application is made to a simple example: the (He)2
system. Reduced density matrices are explicitly calculated, correct to second
order in correlation, and compared with approximations of independent electrons
and independent electron pairs. The models proposed allow for variational
calculations of interaction energies and equilibrium distance as well as a
clear interpretation of dispersive effects on electron distributions. Both
exchange and second order correlation effects are shown to play a critical role
on the quality of the results.Comment: 22 page
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