110,456 research outputs found
Probing annihilations and decays of low-mass galactic dark matter in IceCube DeepCore array: Track events
The deployment of DeepCore array significantly lowers IceCube's energy
threshold to about 10 GeV and enhances the sensitivity of detecting neutrinos
from annihilations and decays of light dark matter. To match this experimental
development, we calculate the track event rate in DeepCore array due to
neutrino flux produced by annihilations and decays of galactic dark matter. We
also calculate the background event rate due to atmospheric neutrino flux for
evaluating the sensitivity of DeepCore array to galactic dark matter
signatures. Unlike previous approaches, which set the energy threshold for
track events at around 50 GeV (this choice avoids the necessity of including
oscillation effect in the estimation of atmospheric background event rate), we
have set the energy threshold at 10 GeV to take the full advantage of DeepCore
array. We compare our calculated sensitivity with those obtained by setting the
threshold energy at 50 GeV. We conclude that our proposed threshold energy
significantly improves the sensitivity of DeepCore array to the dark matter
signature for GeV in the annihilation scenario and
GeV in the decay scenario.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; match the published versio
Statistical Modelling of Information Sharing: Community, Membership and Content
File-sharing systems, like many online and traditional information sharing
communities (e.g. newsgroups, BBS, forums, interest clubs), are dynamical
systems in nature. As peers get in and out of the system, the information
content made available by the prevailing membership varies continually in
amount as well as composition, which in turn affects all peers' join/leave
decisions. As a result, the dynamics of membership and information content are
strongly coupled, suggesting interesting issues about growth, sustenance and
stability.
In this paper, we propose to study such communities with a simple statistical
model of an information sharing club. Carrying their private payloads of
information goods as potential supply to the club, peers join or leave on the
basis of whether the information they demand is currently available.
Information goods are chunked and typed, as in a file sharing system where
peers contribute different files, or a forum where messages are grouped by
topics or threads. Peers' demand and supply are then characterized by
statistical distributions over the type domain.
This model reveals interesting critical behaviour with multiple equilibria. A
sharp growth threshold is derived: the club may grow towards a sustainable
equilibrium only if the value of an order parameter is above the threshold, or
shrink to emptiness otherwise. The order parameter is composite and comprises
the peer population size, the level of their contributed supply, the club's
efficiency in information search, the spread of supply and demand over the type
domain, as well as the goodness of match between them.Comment: accepted in International Symposium on Computer Performance,
Modeling, Measurements and Evaluation, Juan-les-Pins, France, October-200
Entrainment and chaos in a pulse-driven Hodgkin-Huxley oscillator
The Hodgkin-Huxley model describes action potential generation in certain
types of neurons and is a standard model for conductance-based, excitable
cells. Following the early work of Winfree and Best, this paper explores the
response of a spontaneously spiking Hodgkin-Huxley neuron model to a periodic
pulsatile drive. The response as a function of drive period and amplitude is
systematically characterized. A wide range of qualitatively distinct responses
are found, including entrainment to the input pulse train and persistent chaos.
These observations are consistent with a theory of kicked oscillators developed
by Qiudong Wang and Lai-Sang Young. In addition to general features predicted
by Wang-Young theory, it is found that most combinations of drive period and
amplitude lead to entrainment instead of chaos. This preference for entrainment
over chaos is explained by the structure of the Hodgkin-Huxley phase resetting
curve.Comment: Minor revisions; modified Fig. 3; added reference
Final Report: Wall Effects in Cavity Flows
The wall effects in cavity flows past an arbitrary two-dimensional body is investigated for both pure-drag and lifting cases based on an inviscid nonlinear flow theory. The over-all features of various theoretical flow models for inviscid cavity flows under the wall effects are discussed from the general momentum consideration in comparison with typical viscous, incompressible wake flows in a channel. In the case of pure drag cavity flows, three theoretical models in common use, namely, the open-wake, Riabouchinsky and re-entrant jet models, are applied to evaluate the solution. Methods of numerical computation are discussed for bodies of arbitrary shape, and are carried out in detail for wedges of all angles. The final numerical results are compared between the different flow models, and the differences pointed out. Further analysis of the results has led to development of several useful formulas for correcting the wall effect. In the lifting flow case, the wall effect on the pressure and hydrodynamic forces acting on arbitrary body is formulated for the choked cavity flow in a closed water tunnel of arbitrary shape, and computed for the flat plate with a finite cavity in a straight tunnel
Spectrophotovoltaic orbital power generation
A system with 1000 : 1 concentration ratio is defined, using a cassegrain telescope as the first stage concentration (270 x) and compound parabolic concentrators (CPC) for the second stage concentration of 4.7 x for each spectral band. Using reported state of the art (S.O.A.) solar cells device parameters and considering structural losses due to optics and beamsplitters, the efficiencies of one to four cell systems were calculated with efficiencies varying from approximately 22% to 30%. Taking into account cost of the optics, beamsplitter, radiator, and the cost of developing new cells the most cost effective system is the GaAs/Si system
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