13,598 research outputs found
Integer programming based solution approaches for the train dispatching problem
Railroads face the challenge of competing with the trucking industry in a fastpaced environment. In this respect, they are working toward running freight trains on schedule and reducing travel times. The planned train schedules consist of departure and arrival times at main stations on the rail network. A detailed timetable, on the other hand, consists of the departure and arrival times of each train in each track section of its route. The train dispatching problem aims to determine detailed timetables over a rail network in order to minimize deviations from the planned schedule. We provide a new integer programming formulation for this problem based on a spacetime network; we propose heuristic algorithms to solve it and present computational results of these algorithms. Our approach includes some realistic constraints that have not been previously considered as well as all the assumptions and practical issues considered by the earlier works
The Origin of Fluorine: Abundances in AGB Carbon Stars Revisited
Revised spectroscopic parameters for the HF molecule and a new CN line list
in the 2.3 mu region have been recently available, allowing a revision of the F
content in AGB stars. AGB carbon stars are the only observationally confirmed
sources of fluorine. Nowadays there is not a consensus on the relevance of AGB
stars in its Galactic chemical evolution. The aim of this article is to better
constrain the contribution of these stars with a more accurate estimate of
their fluorine abundances. Using new spectroscopic tools and LTE spectral
synthesis, we redetermine fluorine abundances from several HF lines in the
K-band in a sample of Galactic and extragalactic AGB carbon stars of spectral
types N, J and SC spanning a wide range of metallicities. On average, the new
derived fluorine abundances are systematically lower by 0.33 dex with respect
to previous determinations. This may derive from a combination of the lower
excitation energies of the HF lines and the larger macroturbulence parameters
used here as well as from the new adopted CN line list. Yet, theoretical
nucleosynthesis models in AGB stars agree with the new fluorine determinations
at solar metallicities. At low metallicities, an agreement between theory and
observations can be found by handling in a different way the
radiative/convective interface at the base of the convective envelope. New
fluorine spectroscopic measurements agree with theoretical models at low and at
solar metallicity. Despite this, complementary sources are needed to explain
its observed abundance in the solar neighbourhood.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted in A&
Testing excitation models of rapidly oscillating Ap stars with interferometry
Rapidly oscillating Ap stars are unique objects in the potential they offer
to study the interplay between a number of important physical phenomena, in
particular, pulsations, magnetic fields, diffusion, and convection.
Nevertheless, the simple understanding of how the observed pulsations are
excited in these stars is still in progress. In this work we perform a test to
what is possibly the most widely accepted excitation theory for this class of
stellar pulsators. The test is based on the study of a subset of members of
this class for which stringent data on the fundamental parameters are available
thanks to interferometry. For three out of the four stars considered in this
study, we find that linear, non-adiabatic models with envelope convection
suppressed around the magnetic poles can reproduce well the frequency region
where oscillations are observed. For the fourth star in our sample no agreement
is found, indicating that a new excitation mechanism must be considered. For
the three stars whose observed frequencies can be explained by the excitation
models under discussion, we derive the minimum angular extent of the region
where convection must be suppressed. Finally, we find that the frequency
regions where modes are expected to be excited in these models is very
sensitive to the stellar radius. This opens the interesting possibility of
determining this quantity and related ones, such as the effective temperature
or luminosity, from comparison between model predictions and observations, in
other targets for which these parameters are not well determined.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRA
Asymptotic Entanglement Dynamics and Geometry of Quantum States
A given dynamics for a composite quantum system can exhibit several distinct
properties for the asymptotic entanglement behavior, like entanglement sudden
death, asymptotic death of entanglement, sudden birth of entanglement, etc. A
classification of the possible situations was given in [M. O. Terra Cunha,
{\emph{New J. Phys}} {\bf{9}}, 237 (2007)] but for some classes there were no
known examples. In this work we give a better classification for the possibile
relaxing dynamics at the light of the geometry of their set of asymptotic
states and give explicit examples for all the classes. Although the
classification is completely general, in the search of examples it is
sufficient to use two qubits with dynamics given by differential equations in
Lindblad form (some of them non-autonomous). We also investigate, in each case,
the probabilities to find each possible behavior for random initial states.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures; revised version accepted for publication in J.
Phys. A: Math. Theo
Tomographic Characterization of Three-Qubit Pure States with Only Two-Qubit Detectors
A tomographic process for three-qubit pure states using only pairwise
detections is presented.Comment: 3 pages; revtex4; v2: the focus on tomography was emphasized and the
experimental procedure detailed; v3: the text was improved in clarity, some
mistakes were correcte
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