Dusty Starbursts and the Growth of Cosmic Structure

Dusty starbursts were more numerous around z~1 than today and appear to be responsible for the majority of cosmic star formation over the Hubble time. We suggest that they represent a common phase within galaxies in general which is triggered by the growth of cosmic structure. We discuss the origin of the luminosity of luminous infrared galaxies at z~1. Are these galaxies dominated by star formation or nuclear activity ? What is triggering their strong activity ? Is it triggered by external interactions or did it happen naturally within isolated galaxies ? We present HST-ACS high resolution optical images of luminous infrared galaxies at z~0.7 showing the evolution of the morphology of these galaxies as a function of infrared luminosity, or star formation rate, and discuss the effect of the environment on their activity.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proceeding of the "Multi-Wavelength Cosmology" Conference held in Mykonos, Greece, June 2003, ed.M. Plionis (Kluwer

Phase space formalisms of quantum mechanics with singular kernel

The equivalence of the Rivier-Margenau-Hill and Born-Jordan-Shankara phase space formalisms to the conventional operator approach of quantum mechanics is demonstrated. It is shown that in spite of the presence of singular kernels the mappings relating phase space functions and operators back and forth are possible.Comment: 15 pages, no figures, LATE

Particle Pair Production in Cosmological General Relativity

The Cosmological General Relativity (CGR) of Carmeli, a 5-dimensional (5-D) theory of time, space and velocity, predicts the existence of an acceleration a_0 = c / tau due to the expansion of the universe, where c is the speed of light in vacuum, tau = 1 / h is the Hubble-Carmeli time constant, where h is the Hubble constant at zero distance and no gravity. The Carmeli force on a particle of mass m is F_c = m a_0, a fifth force in nature. In CGR, the effective mass density rho_eff = rho - rho_c, where rho is the matter density and rho_c is the critical mass density which we identify with the vacuum mass density rho_vac = -rho_c. The fields resulting from the weak field solution of the Einstein field equations in 5-D CGR and the Carmeli force are used to hypothesize the production of a pair of particles. The mass of each particle is found to be m = tau c^3 / 4 G, where G is Newton's constant. The vacuum mass density derived from the physics is rho_vac = -rho_c = -3 / (8 pi G tau^2). The cosmic microwave background (CMB) black body radiation at the temperature T_o = 2.72548 K which fills that volume is found to have a relationship to the ionization energy of the Hydrogen atom. Define the radiation energy epsilon_gamma = (1 - g) m c^2 / N_gamma, where (1-g) is the fraction of the initial energy m c^2 which converts to photons, g is a function of the baryon density parameter Omega_b and N_gamma is the total number of photons in the CMB radiation field. We make the connection with the ionization energy of the first quantum level of the Hydrogen atom by the hypothesis epsilon_gamma = [(1 - g) m c^2] / N_gamma = alpha^2 mu c^2 / 2, where alpha is the fine-structure constant and mu = m_p f / (1 + f), where f= m_e / m_p with m_e the electron mass and m_p the proton mass.Comment: 14 pages, 0 figures. The final publication is available at springerlink.co

Time-of-arrival distributions from position-momentum and energy-time joint measurements

The position-momentum quasi-distribution obtained from an Arthurs and Kelly joint measurement model is used to obtain indirectly an ``operational'' time-of-arrival (TOA) distribution following a quantization procedure proposed by Kocha\'nski and W\'odkiewicz [Phys. Rev. A 60, 2689 (1999)]. This TOA distribution is not time covariant. The procedure is generalized by using other phase-space quasi-distributions, and sufficient conditions are provided for time covariance that limit the possible phase-space quasi-distributions essentially to the Wigner function, which, however, provides a non-positive TOA quasi-distribution. These problems are remedied with a different quantization procedure which, on the other hand, does not guarantee normalization. Finally an Arthurs and Kelly measurement model for TOA and energy (valid also for arbitrary conjugate variables when one of the variables is bounded from below) is worked out. The marginal TOA distribution so obtained, a distorted version of Kijowski's distribution, is time covariant, positive, and normalized

Motivation in physical education across the primary-secondary school transition

The purpose of this study was to examine the temporal patterns of approach-avoidance achievement goals, implicit theories of ability and perceived competence in physical education across the transition from primary to secondary school. We also evaluated the predictive utility of implicit theories and perceived competence with regard to achievement goal adoption, and determined the moderating influence of gender on temporal patterns and antecedent–goal relationships. One hundred and forty pupils (mean age at start of study = 11.37 years, SD =.28) completed measures of entity and incremental beliefs, perceived competence and goals on four occasions during a 12-month period. Mastery-approach, performance-approach and perform-ance-avoidance goals, as well as entity and incremental beliefs, exhibited a linear decline over time. Mastery-avoidance goals showed no significant change. Girls exhibited a linear decline in perceived competence, whereas for boys the trajectory was curvilinear. Competence perceptions predicted initial scores, but not rate of change, on mastery-approach and both types of performance goals. Incrementa

1/f1/f noise in variable range hopping conduction

A mechanism of $1/f$ noise due to traps formed by impurities which have no neighbors with close energies in their vicinity is studied. Such traps slowly exchange electrons with the rest of conducting media. The concentration of traps and proportional to it $1/f$ noise exponentially grow with decreasing temperature in the variable range hopping regime. This theory provides smooth transition to the nearest neighbor hopping case where it predicts a very weak temperature dependence

Young star clusters in M31

In our study of M31's globular cluster system with MMT/Hectospec, we have obtained high-quality spectra of 85 clusters with ages less than 1 Gyr. With the exception of Hubble V, the young cluster in NGC 205, we find that these young clusters have kinematics and spatial distribution consistent with membership in M31's young disk. Preliminary estimates of the cluster masses and structural parameters, using spectroscopically derived ages and HST imaging, confirms earlier suggestions that M31 has clusters similar to the LMC's young populous clusters.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, contributed talk at "Galaxies in the Local Volume" conference in Sydney, July 200

Atom capture by nanotube and scaling anomaly

The existence of bound state of the polarizable neutral atom in the inverse square potential created by the electric field of single walled charged carbon nanotube (SWNT) is shown to be theoretically possible. The consideration of inequivalent boundary conditions due to self-adjoint extensions lead to this nontrivial bound state solution. It is also shown that the scaling anomaly is responsible for the existence of bound state. Binding of the polarizable atoms in the coupling constant interval \eta^2\in[0,1) may be responsible for the smearing of the edge of steps in quantized conductance, which has not been considered so far in literature.Comment: Accepted in Int.J.Theor.Phy

Absence of lattice strain anomalies at the electronic topological transition in zinc at high pressure

High pressure structural distortions of the hexagonal close packed (hcp) element zinc have been a subject of controversy. Earlier experimental results and theory showed a large anomaly in lattice strain with compression in zinc at about 10 GPa which was explained theoretically by a change in Fermi surface topology. Later hydrostatic experiments showed no such anomaly, resulting in a discrepancy between theory and experiment. We have computed the compression and lattice strain of hcp zinc over a wide range of compressions using the linearized augmented plane wave (LAPW) method paying special attention to k-point convergence. We find that the behavior of the lattice strain is strongly dependent on k-point sampling, and with large k-point sets the previously computed anomaly in lattice parameters under compression disappears, in agreement with recent experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Phys. Rev. B (in press