The emission of energetic electrons from the complex streamer corona adjacent to leader stepping

We here propose a model to capture the complexity of the streamer corona adjacent to leader stepping and relate it to the production of energetic electrons serving as a source of X-rays and $\gamma$-rays, manifesting in terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs). During its stepping, the leader tip is accompanied by a corona consisting of multitudinous streamers perturbing the air in its vicinity and leaving residual charge behind. We explore the relative importance of air perturbations and preionization on the production of energetic run-away electrons by 2.5D cylindrical Monte Carlo particle simulations of streamers in ambient fields of 16 kV cm$^{-1}$ and 50 kV cm$^{-1}$ at ground pressure. We explore preionization levels between $10^{10}$ m$^{-3}$ and $10^{13}$ m$^{-3}$, channel widths between 0.5 and 1.5 times the original streamer widths and air perturbation levels between 0\% and 50\% of ambient air. We observe that streamers in preionized and perturbed air accelerate more efficiently than in non-ionized and uniform air with air perturbation dominating the streamer acceleration. We find that in unperturbed air preionization levels of $10^{11}$ m$^{-3}$ are sufficient to explain run-away electron rates measured in conjunction with terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. In perturbed air, the production rate of runaway electrons varies from $10^{10}$ s$^{-1}$ to $10^{17}$ s$^{-1}$ with maximum electron energies from some hundreds of eV up to some hundreds of keV in fields above and below the breakdown strength. In the presented simulations the number of runaway electrons matches with the number of energetic electrons measured in alignment with the observations of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. Conclusively, the complexity of the streamer zone ahead of leader tips allows explaining the emission of energetic electrons and photons from streamer discharges.Comment: 29 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

Diquark correlations in baryons on the lattice with overlap quarks

We evaluate baryon wave functions in both the Coulomb and Landau gauge in lattice QCD. These are constructed from quark propagators calculated with the overlap Dirac operator on quenched gauge configurations at beta = 6. By comparing baryon states that differ in their diquark content, we find evidence for enhanced correlation in the scalar diquark channel, as favored by quark models. We also summarize earlier results for diquark masses in the Landau gauge, casting them in a form more easily compared with subsequent studies.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, v2 as appears in PR

Synthesis of Benzylidene and Azo Containing Polymers for Photophisical Application

In the present work, the polymers built with the use of the free radical polymerization of methacrylic monomers incorporating an azobenzene side-group and monomers with benzylidene fragments have been synthesized. The polymerization was carried out in DMF with AIBN as initiator. The products of polymerization were characterized by HNMR. The results of investigations of photochemical and optical activities of the corresponding polymers are presented

Diquark effects in light baryon correlators from lattice QCD

We study the role of diquarks in light baryons through point to point baryon correlators. We contrast results from quenched simulations with ones with two flavors of dynamical overlap fermions. The scalar, pseudoscalar and axial vector diquarks are combined with light quarks to form color singlets. The quenched simulation shows large zero mode effects in correlators containing the scalar and pseudoscalar diquark. The two scalar diquarks created by gamma_5 and gamma_0gamma_5 lead to different behavior in baryon correlators, showing that the interaction of diquarks with the third light quark matters: we do not see an isolated diquark. In our quark mass range, the scalar diquark created by gamma_5 seems to play a greater role than the others.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

The intrinsic strangeness and charm of the nucleon using improved staggered fermions

We calculate the intrinsic strangeness of the nucleon, - , using the MILC library of improved staggered gauge configurations using the Asqtad and HISQ actions. Additionally, we present a preliminary calculation of the intrinsic charm of the nucleon using the HISQ action with dynamical charm. The calculation is done with a method which incorporates features of both commonly-used methods, the direct evaluation of the three-point function and the application of the Feynman- Hellman theorem. We present an improvement on this method that further reduces the statistical error, and check the result from this hybrid method against the other two methods and find that they are consistent. The values for and found here, together with perturbative results for heavy quarks, show that dark matter scattering through Higgs-like exchange receives roughly equal contributions from all heavy quark flavors.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure

Non-Gaussian signatures of Tachyacoustic Cosmology

I investigate non-Gaussian signatures in the context of tachyacoustic cosmology, that is, a noninflationary model with superluminal speed of sound. I calculate the full non-Gaussian amplitude $\mathcal{A}$, its size $f_{\rm NL}$, and corresponding shapes for a red-tilted spectrum of primordial scalar perturbations. Specifically, for cuscuton-like models I show that $f_{\rm NL}\sim {\cal O}(1)$, and the shape of its non-Gaussian amplitude peaks for both equilateral and local configurations, the latter being dominant. These results, albeit similar, are quantitatively distinct from the corresponding ones obtained by Magueijo {\it{et. al}} in the context of superluminal bimetric models.Comment: Some comments and references added. Matches the version published in JCA

Solving Lattice QCD systems of equations using mixed precision solvers on GPUs

Modern graphics hardware is designed for highly parallel numerical tasks and promises significant cost and performance benefits for many scientific applications. One such application is lattice quantum chromodyamics (lattice QCD), where the main computational challenge is to efficiently solve the discretized Dirac equation in the presence of an SU(3) gauge field. Using NVIDIA's CUDA platform we have implemented a Wilson-Dirac sparse matrix-vector product that performs at up to 40 Gflops, 135 Gflops and 212 Gflops for double, single and half precision respectively on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 GPU. We have developed a new mixed precision approach for Krylov solvers using reliable updates which allows for full double precision accuracy while using only single or half precision arithmetic for the bulk of the computation. The resulting BiCGstab and CG solvers run in excess of 100 Gflops and, in terms of iterations until convergence, perform better than the usual defect-correction approach for mixed precision.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figure

Limits on non-Gaussianities from WMAP data

We develop a method to constrain the level of non-Gaussianity of density perturbations when the 3-point function is of the "equilateral" type. Departures from Gaussianity of this form are produced by single field models such as ghost or DBI inflation and in general by the presence of higher order derivative operators in the effective Lagrangian of the inflaton. We show that the induced shape of the 3-point function can be very well approximated by a factorizable form, making the analysis practical. We also show that, unless one has a full sky map with uniform noise, in order to saturate the Cramer-Rao bound for the error on the amplitude of the 3-point function, the estimator must contain a piece that is linear in the data. We apply our technique to the WMAP data obtaining a constraint on the amplitude f_NL^equil of "equilateral" non-Gaussianity: -366 < f_NL^equil < 238 at 95% C.L. We also apply our technique to constrain the so-called "local" shape, which is predicted for example by the curvaton and variable decay width models. We show that the inclusion of the linear piece in the estimator improves the constraint over those obtained by the WMAP team, to -27 < f_NL^local < 121 at 95% C.L.Comment: 20 pages, 12 eps figure

Effects of Nonlinear Dispersion Relations on Non-Gaussianities

We investigate the effect of non-linear dispersion relations on the bispectrum. In particular, we study the case were the modified relations do not violate the WKB condition at early times, focusing on a particular example which is exactly solvable: the Jacobson-Corley dispersion relation with quartic correction with positive coefficient to the squared linear relation. We find that the corrections to the standard result for the bispectrum are suppressed by a factor $\frac{H^2}{p_c^2}$ where $p_c$ is the scale where the modification to the dispersion relation becomes relevant. The modification is {\it mildly} configuration-dependent and equilateral configurations are more suppressed with respect to the local ones, by a factor of one percent. There is no configuration leading to enhancements. We then analyze the results in the framework of particle creation using the approximate gluing method of Brandenberger and Martin, which relates more directly to the modeling of the trans-Planckian physics via modifications of the vacuum at a certain cutoff scale. We show that the gluing method overestimates the leading order correction to the spectrum and bispectrum by one and two orders, respectively, in $\frac{H}{p_c}$. We discuss the various approximation and conclude that for dispersion relations not violating WKB at early times the particle creation is small and does not lead to enhanced contributions to the bispectrum. We also show that in many cases enhancements do not occur when modeling the trans-Planckian physics via modifications of the vacuum at a certain cutoff scale. Most notably they are only of order O(1) when the Bogolyubov coefficients accounting for particle creation are determined by the Wronskian condition and the minimization of the uncertainty between the field and its conjugate momentum.Comment: v1: 11 pages, 2 figures; v2: references update