56,414 research outputs found
Local pressure-induced metallization of a semiconducting carbon nanotube in a crossed junction
The electronic and vibrational density of states of a semiconducting carbon
nanotube in a crossed junction was investigated by elastic and inelastic
scanning tunneling spectroscopy. The strong radial compression of the nanotube
at the junction induces local metallization spatially confined to a few nm. The
local electronic modifications are correlated with the observed changes in the
radial breathing and G-band phonon modes, which react very sensitively to local
mechanical deformation. In addition, the experiments reveal the crucial
contribution of the image charges to the contact potential at nanotube-metal
interfaces
A consistent interpretation of the low temperature magneto-transport in graphite using the Slonczewski--Weiss--McClure 3D band structure calculations
Magnetotransport of natural graphite and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite
(HOPG) has been measured at mK temperatures. Quantum oscillations for both
electron and hole carriers are observed with orbital angular momentum quantum
number up to . A remarkable agreement is obtained when comparing
the data and the predictions of the Slonczewski--Weiss--McClure tight binding
model for massive fermions. No evidence for Dirac fermions is observed in the
transport data which is dominated by the crossing of the Landau bands at the
Fermi level, corresponding to , which occurs away from the point
where Dirac fermions are expected.Comment: 3 figure
A Note on Asymptotic Freedom at High Temperatures
This short note considers, within the external field approach outlined in
hep-ph/0202026, the role of the lowest lying gluon Landau mode in QCD in the
high temperature limit. Its influence on a temperature- and field-dependent
running coupling constant is examined. The thermal imaginary part of the mode
is temperature-independent in our approach and exactly cancels the well-known
zero temperature imaginary part, thus rendering the Savvidy vacuum stable.
Combining the real part of the mode with the contributions from the higher
lying Landau modes and the vacuum contribution, a field-independent coupling
alpha_s(T) is obtained. It can be interpreted as the ordinary zero temperature
running coupling constant with average thermal momenta \approx 2pi T for
gluons and \approx pi T for quarks.Comment: 4 pages; minor changes, version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Massive Infrared-Quiet Dense Cores: Unveiling the Initial Conditions of High-Mass Star Formation
As Pr. Th. Henning said at the conference, cold precursors of high-mass stars
are now "hot topics". We here propose some observational criteria to identify
massive infrared-quiet dense cores which can host the high-mass analogs of
Class 0 protostars and pre-stellar condensations. We also show how far-infrared
to millimeter imaging surveys of entire complexes forming OB stars are starting
to unveil the initial conditions of high-mass star formation
Limits on Pop III star formation with the most iron-poor stars
We study the impact of star-forming mini-haloes, and the Initial Mass
Function (IMF) of Population III (Pop III) stars, on the Galactic halo
Metallicity Distribution Function (MDF) and on the properties of C-enhanced and
C-normal stars at [Fe/H]<-3. For our investigation we use a data-constrained
merger tree model for the Milky Way formation, which has been improved to
self-consistently describe the physical processes regulating star-formation in
mini-haloes, including the poor sampling of the Pop III IMF. We find that only
when star-forming mini-haloes are included the low-Fe tail of the MDF is
correctly reproduced, showing a plateau that is built up by C-enhanced
metal-poor (CEMP) stars imprinted by primordial faint supernovae. The
incomplete sampling of the Pop III IMF in inefficiently star-forming
mini-haloes (< /yr) strongly limits the formation of Pair
Instability Supernovae (PISNe), with progenitor masses =[140-260] , even when a flat Pop III IMF is assumed.
Second-generation stars formed in environments polluted at >50% level by PISNe
are thus extremely rare, corresponding to 0.25% of the total stellar
population at [Fe/H]<-2, which is consistent with recent observations. The
low-Fe tail of the MDF strongly depends on the Pop III IMF shape and mass
range. Given the current statistics, we find that a flat Pop III IMF model with
=[10-300] is disfavoured by observations. We present
testable predictions for Pop III stars extending down to lower masses, with
=[0.1-300] .Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. The only
change is the correction of a mistake in the list of author
The weakly perturbed Schwarzschild lens in the strong deflection limit
We investigate the strong deflection limit of gravitational lensing by a
Schwarzschild black hole embedded in an external gravitational field. The study
of this model, analogous to the Chang & Refsdal lens in the weak deflection
limit, is important to evaluate the gravitational perturbations on the
relativistic images that appear in proximity of supermassive black holes hosted
in galactic centers. By a simple dimensional argument, we prove that the tidal
effect on the light ray propagation mainly occurs in the weak field region far
away from the black hole and that the external perturbation can be treated as a
weak field quadrupole term. We provide a description of relativistic critical
curves and caustics and discuss the inversion of the lens mapping. Relativistic
caustics are shifted and acquire a finite diamond shape. Sources inside the
caustics produce four sequences of relativistic images. On the other hand,
retro-lensing caustics are only shifted while remaining point-like to the
lowest order.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure
Angular Radii of Stars via Microlensing
We outline a method by which the angular radii of giant and main sequence
stars in the Galactic bulge can be measured to a few percent accuracy. The
method combines ground-based photometry of caustic-crossing bulge microlensing
events, with a handful of precise astrometric measurements of the lensed star
during the event, to measure the angular radius of the source, theta_*. Dense
photometric coverage of one caustic crossing yields the crossing timescale dt.
Less frequent coverage of the entire event yields the Einstein timescale t_E
and the angle phi of source trajectory with respect to the caustic. The
photometric light curve solution predicts the motion of the source centroid up
to an orientation on the sky and overall scale. A few precise astrometric
measurements therefore yield theta_E, the angular Einstein ring radius. Then
the angular radius of the source is obtained by theta_*=theta_E(dt/t_E)
sin(phi). We argue that theta_* should be measurable to a few percent accuracy
for Galactic bulge giant stars using ground-based photometry from a network of
small (1m-class) telescopes, combined with astrometric observations with a
precision of ~10 microarcsec to measure theta_E. We find that a factor of ~50
times fewer photons are required to measure theta_E to a given precision for
binary-lens events than single-lens events. Adopting parameters appropriate to
the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), ~7 min of SIM time is required to
measure theta_E to ~5% accuracy for giant sources in the bulge. For
main-sequence sources, theta_E can be measured to ~15% accuracy in ~1.4 hours.
With 10 hrs of SIM time, it should be possible to measure theta_* to ~5% for
\~80 giant stars, or to 15% for ~7 main sequence stars. A byproduct of such a
campaign is a significant sample of precise binary-lens mass measurements.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. Revised version, minor changes, required SIM
integration times revised upward by ~60%. Accepted to ApJ, to appear in the
March 20, 2003 issue (v586
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