Cosmic magnetic fields and dark energy in extended electromagnetism

We discuss an extended version of electromagnetism in which the usual gauge fixing term is promoted into a physical contribution that introduces a new scalar state in the theory. This new state can be generated from vacuum quantum fluctuations during an inflationary era and, on super-Hubble scales, gives rise to an effective cosmological constant. The value of such a cosmological constant coincides with the one inferred from observations as long as inflation took place at the electroweak scale. On the other hand, the new state also generates an effective electric charge density on sub-Hubble scales that produces both vorticity and magnetic fields with coherent lengths as large as the present Hubble horizon.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of Spanish Relativity Meeting 2010, Granada, Spain, 6-10 September 201

Spectral absorption of biomass burning aerosol determined from retrieved single scattering albedo during ARCTAS

Actinic flux, as well as aerosol chemical and optical properties, were measured aboard the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the ARCTAS (Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites) mission in Spring and Summer 2008. These measurements were used in a radiative transfer code to retrieve spectral (350-550 nm) aerosol single scattering albedo (SSA) for biomass burning plumes encountered on 17 April and 29 June. Retrieved SSA values were subsequently used to calculate the absorption Angstrom exponent (AAE) over the 350-500 nm range. Both plumes exhibited enhanced spectral absorption with AAE values that exceeded 1 (6.78 ± 0.38 for 17 April and 3.34 ± 0.11 for 29 June). This enhanced absorption was primarily due to organic aerosol (OA) which contributed significantly to total absorption at all wavelengths for both 17 April (57.7%) and 29 June (56.2%). OA contributions to absorption were greater at UV wavelengths than at visible wavelengths for both cases. Differences in AAE values between the two cases were attributed to differences in plume age and thus to differences in the ratio of OA and black carbon (BC) concentrations. However, notable differences between AAE values calculated for the OA (AAEOA) for 17 April (11.15 ± 0.59) and 29 June (4.94 ± 0.19) suggested differences in the plume AAE values might also be due to differences in organic aerosol composition. The 17 April OA was much more oxidized than the 29 June OA as denoted by a higher oxidation state value for 17 April (+0.16 vs. -0.32). Differences in the AAEOA, as well as the overall AAE, were thus also possibly due to oxidation of biomass burning primary organic aerosol in the 17 April plume that resulted in the formation of OA with a greater spectral-dependence of absorption. © Author(s) 2012. CC Attribution 3.0 License

Clump stars in the Solar Neighbourhood

Hipparcos data has allowed the identification of a large number of clump stars in the Solar Neighbourhood. We discuss our present knowledge about their distributions of masses, ages, colours, magnitudes, and metallicities. We point out that the age distribution of clump stars is ``biased'' towards intermediate-ages. Therefore, the metallicity information they contain is different from that provided by the local G dwarfs. Since accurate abundance determinations are about to become available, these may provide useful constraints to chemical evolution models of the local disc.Comment: 6 pages, proc. of the Sept. 20-24, 1999 Vulcano Workshop "The chemical evolution of the Milky Way: stars vs. clusters", eds. F. Matteucci, F. Giovanell

The Dark Magnetism of the Universe

Despite the success of Maxwell's electromagnetism in the description of the electromagnetic interactions on small scales, we know very little about the behaviour of electromagnetic fields on cosmological distances. Thus, it has been suggested recently that the problems of dark energy and the origin of cosmic magnetic fields could be pointing to a modification of Maxwell's theory on large scales. Here, we review such a proposal in which the scalar state which is usually eliminated be means of the Lorenz condition is allowed to propagate. On super-Hubble scales, the new mode is essentially given by the temporal component of the electromagnetic potential and contributes as an effective cosmological constant to the energy-momentum tensor. The new state can be generated from quantum fluctuations during inflation and it is shown that the predicted value for the cosmological constant agrees with observations provided inflation took place at the electroweak scale. We also consider more general theories including non-minimal couplings to the space-time curvature in the presence of the temporal electromagnetic background. We show that both in the minimal and non-minimal cases, the modified Maxwell's equations include new effective current terms which can generate magnetic fields from sub-galactic scales up to the present Hubble horizon. The corresponding amplitudes could be enough to seed a galactic dynamo or even to account for observations just by collapse and differential rotation in the protogalactic cloud.Comment: Invited brief review to appear in Modern Physics Letters

Air quality in North America's most populous city ? overview of MCMA-2003 Campaign

International audienceExploratory field measurements in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) in February 2002 set the stage for a major air quality field measurement campaign in the spring of 2003 (MCMA-2003). Involving over 100 scientists from more than 30 institutions in Mexico, the United States and Europe, MCMA-2003 revealed important new insights into the meteorology, primary pollutant emissions, ambient secondary pollutant precursor concentrations, photochemical oxidant production and secondary aerosol particle formation in North America's most populated and polluted megacity. A description of meteorological and atmospheric chemistry and aerosol microphysics measurements performed during MCMA-2003 is presented. More than three dozen published or submitted MCMA-2003 research papers are reviewed and key discoveries pertinent to understanding and improving air quality in Mexico City and similar megacities in the developing world are summarized

Enhancing the cosmic shear power spectrum

Applying a transformation to a non-Gaussian field can enhance the information content of the resulting power spectrum, by reducing the correlations between Fourier modes. In the context of weak gravitational lensing, it has been shown that this gain in information content is significantly compromised by the presence of shape noise. We apply clipping to mock convergence fields, a technique which is known to be robust in the presence of noise and has been successfully applied to galaxy number density fields. When analysed in isolation the resulting convergence power spectrum returns degraded constraints on cosmological parameters. However, substantial gains can be achieved by performing a combined analysis of the power spectra derived from both the original and transformed fields. Even in the presence of realistic levels of shape noise, we demonstrate that this approach is capable of reducing the area of likelihood contours within the Ωm − σ8 plane by more than a factor of 3

Evaluación de un modelo de optimización no lineal para el despacho económico de microrredes aisladas

The present research work shows the optimal energy management of an isolated microgrid based on non-conventional renewable energy sources. For which an economic dispatch problem is proposed that seeks to supply the electrical demand at the lowest possible operating cost, based on a mixed integer nonlinear optimization problem. The nonlinearity of the algorithm is presented by including the characteristic equation of the real operation of the generating set in the optimization model. The input data to the economic office such as solar radiation and wind speed were obtained from the NASA platform located on Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos province, Ecuador. In addition, the electricity demand data was obtained from real measurements of the sector. The economic dispatch problem has been determined for 12, 24 and 168 hours respectively, obtaining a proportional energy distribution for each case of 50.40% supplied by the photovoltaic generator, 23.92% by the diesel generator, 17.14% by the battery bank and 5.53% by the wind generator, so the demand was supplied in its entirety, meeting the objective that the generating set does not present intermittencies and obtaining the lowest operating cost of the system.El presente trabajo de investigación muestra la gestión óptima de la energía de una microrred aislada basada en fuentes de energía renovable no convencional. Para lo cual se plantea un problema de despacho económico que busca abastecer la demanda eléctrica al menor costo de operación posible, a partir de un problema de optimización no lineal entero mixto. La no linealidad del algoritmo se presenta al incluir la ecuación característica del funcionamiento real del grupo electrógeno en el modelo de optimización. Los datos de entrada al despacho económico como radiación solar y velocidad del viento fueron obtenidos de la plataforma de la NASA situada sobre la isla Santa Cruz, provincia de Galápagos, Ecuador. Además, los datos de la demanda eléctrica fueron obtenidos de mediciones reales del sector. El problema de despacho económico se ha resultado para 12, 24 y 168 horas respectivamente, obteniendo una distribución energética proporcional para cada caso del 50.40 % suministrada por el generador fotovoltaico, 23.92 % por el generador diésel, 17.14 % por el banco de baterías y 5.53 % por el generador eólico, por lo que la demanda fue abastecida en su totalidad cumpliendo con el objetivo de que el grupo electrógeno no presente intermitencias y obteniendo el menor costo de operación del sistema