14,032 research outputs found

    Origin of the Thermal Radiation in a Solid-State Analog of a Black-Hole

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    An effective black-hole-like horizon occurs, for electromagnetic waves in matter, at a surface of singular electric and magnetic permeabilities. In a physical dispersive medium this horizon disappears for wave numbers with k>kck>k_c. Nevertheless, it is shown that Hawking radiation is still emitted if free field modes with k>kck>k_c are in their ground state.Comment: 13 Pages, 3 figures, Revtex with epsf macro

    Effect of aluminum phosphate additions on composition of three-component plasma-sprayed solid lubricant

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    Image analysis (IA) and electron microprobe X-ray analysis (EMXA) were used to characterize a plasma-sprayed, self-lubricating coating, NASA LUBE PS106, specified by weight percent as 35NiCr-35Ag-30CaF2. To minimize segregation of the powder mixture during the plasma-spraying procedure, monoaluminum phosphate was added to form agglomerate particles. Three concentrations of AlPO4 were added to the mixtures: 1.25, 2.5, and 6.25 percent by weight. Analysis showed that 1.25 wt% AlPO4 yielded a CaF2 deficiency, 2.5 wt% kept the coating closest to specification, and 6.25 wt% yielded excess CaF2 as well as more impurities and voids and a deficiency in silver. Photomicrographs and X-ray maps are presented. The methods of IA and EMXA complement each other, and the reasonable agreement in the results increases the confidence in determining the coating composition

    Complete controllability of finite-level quantum systems

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    Complete controllability is a fundamental issue in the field of control of quantum systems, not least because of its implications for dynamical realizability of the kinematical bounds on the optimization of observables. In this paper we investigate the question of complete controllability for finite-level quantum systems subject to a single control field, for which the interaction is of dipole form. Sufficient criteria for complete controllability of a wide range of finite-level quantum systems are established and the question of limits of complete controllability is addressed. Finally, the results are applied to give a classification of complete controllability for four-level systems.Comment: 14 pages, IoP-LaTe

    Should we teach old dogs new tricks? the impact of community college retraining on older displaced workers

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    This paper estimates the returns to retraining for older displaced workers--those 35 or older--by estimating the impact that community college schooling has on their subsequent earnings. Our analysis relies on longitudinal administrative data covering workers who were displaced from jobs in Washington State during the first half of the 1990s and who subsequently remained attached to the state’s work force. Our database contains displaced workers' quarterly earnings records covering 14 years matched to the records of 25 of the state's community colleges. We find that older displaced workers participate in community college schooling at significantly lower rates than younger displaced workers. However, among those who participate in retraining, the per-period impact for older and younger displaced workers is similar. ; We estimate that one academic year of such schooling increases the long- term earnings by about 8 percent for older males and by about 10 percent for older females. These per-period impacts are in line with those reported in the schooling literature. These percentages do not necessarily imply that retraining older workers is a sound social investment. We find that the social internal rates of return from investments in older displaced workers' retraining are less than for younger displaced workers and likely less than those reported for schooling of children. However, our internal rate of return estimates are very sensitive to how we measure the opportunity cost of retraining. If we assume that these opportunity costs are zero, the internal rate of return from retraining older displaced workers is about 11 percent. By contrast, if we rely on our estimates of the opportunity cost of retraining, the internal rate of return may be less than 2 percent for older men and as low as 4 percent for older women.Displaced workers ; Education

    Signaling, Entanglement, and Quantum Evolution Beyond Cauchy Horizons

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    Consider a bipartite entangled system half of which falls through the event horizon of an evaporating black hole, while the other half remains coherently accessible to experiments in the exterior region. Beyond complete evaporation, the evolution of the quantum state past the Cauchy horizon cannot remain unitary, raising the questions: How can this evolution be described as a quantum map, and how is causality preserved? What are the possible effects of such nonstandard quantum evolution maps on the behavior of the entangled laboratory partner? More generally, the laws of quantum evolution under extreme conditions in remote regions (not just in evaporating black-hole interiors, but possibly near other naked singularities and regions of extreme spacetime structure) remain untested by observation, and might conceivably be non-unitary or even nonlinear, raising the same questions about the evolution of entangled states. The answers to these questions are subtle, and are linked in unexpected ways to the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics. We show that terrestrial experiments can be designed to probe and constrain exactly how the laws of quantum evolution might be altered, either by black-hole evaporation, or by other extreme processes in remote regions possibly governed by unknown physics.Comment: Combined, revised, and expanded version of quant-ph/0312160 and hep-th/0402060; 13 pages, RevTeX, 2 eps figure

    The Prevalence of Carbon-13 in Respiratory Carbon Dioxide As an Indicator of the Type of Endogenous Substrate. The change from lipid to carbohydrate during the respiratory rise in potato slices

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    Isotope discrimination is a common feature of biosynthesis in nature, with the result that different classes of carbon compounds frequently display different 13C/12C ratios. The 13C/12C ratio of lipid in potato tuber tissue is considerably lower than that for starch or protein. We have collected respiratory CO2 from potato discs in successive periods through 24 hr from the time of cutting—an interval in which the respiration rate rises 3–5-fold. The 13C/12C ratio of the evolved CO2 was determined for each period, and compared with the 13C/12C ratios of the major tissue metabolites. In the first hours the carbon isotope ratio of the CO2 matches that of lipid. With time, the ratio approaches that typical of starch or protein. An estimation has been made of the contribution of lipid and carbohydrate to the total respiration at each juncture. In connection with additional observations, it was deduced that the basal, or initial, respiration represents lipid metabolism —- possibly the alpha-oxidation of long chain fatty acids -— while the developed repiration represents conventional tricarboxylic acid cycle oxidation of the products of carbohydrate glycolysis. The true isotopic composition of the respiratory CO2 may be obscured by fractionation attending the refixation of CO2 during respiration, and by CO2 arising from dissolved CO2 and bicarbonate preexisting in the tuber. Means are described for coping with both pitfalls

    Hawking radiation without black hole entropy

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    In this Letter I point out that Hawking radiation is a purely kinematic effect that is generic to Lorentzian geometries. Hawking radiation arises for any test field on any Lorentzian geometry containing an event horizon regardless of whether or not the Lorentzian geometry satisfies the dynamical Einstein equations of general relativity. On the other hand, the classical laws of black hole mechanics are intrinsically linked to the Einstein equations of general relativity (or their perturbative extension into either semiclassical quantum gravity or string-inspired scenarios). In particular, the laws of black hole thermodynamics, and the identification of the entropy of a black hole with its area, are inextricably linked with the dynamical equations satisfied by the Lorentzian geometry: entropy is proportional to area (plus corrections) if and only if the dynamical equations are the Einstein equations (plus corrections). It is quite possible to have Hawking radiation occur in physical situations in which the laws of black hole mechanics do not apply, and in situations in which the notion of black hole entropy does not even make any sense. This observation has important implications for any derivation of black hole entropy that seeks to deduce black hole entropy from the Hawking radiation.Comment: Uses ReV_TeX 3.0; Five pages in two-column forma

    Modelling Planck-scale Lorentz violation via analogue models

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    Astrophysical tests of Planck-suppressed Lorentz violations had been extensively studied in recent years and very stringent constraints have been obtained within the framework of effective field theory. There are however still some unresolved theoretical issues, in particular regarding the so called "naturalness problem" - which arises when postulating that Planck-suppressed Lorentz violations arise only from operators with mass dimension greater than four in the Lagrangian. In the work presented here we shall try to address this problem by looking at a condensed-matter analogue of the Lorentz violations considered in quantum gravity phenomenology. Specifically, we investigate the class of two-component BECs subject to laser-induced transitions between the two components, and we show that this model is an example for Lorentz invariance violation due to ultraviolet physics. We shall show that such a model can be considered to be an explicit example high-energy Lorentz violations where the ``naturalness problem'' does not arise.Comment: Talk given at the Fourth Meeting on Constrained Dynamics and Quantum Gravity (QG05), Cala Gonone (Sardinia, Italy) September 12-16, 200
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