Measurement of anisotropies in the large-scale diffuse gamma-ray emission

We have performed the first measurement of the angular power spectrum in the large-scale diffuse emission at energies from 1-50 GeV. We compared results from data and a simulated model in order to identify significant differences in anisotropy properties. We found angular power above the photon noise level in the data at multipoles greater than ~ 100 for energies 1< E <10 GeV. The excess power in the data suggests a contribution from a point source population not present in the model.Comment: Contribution to SciNeGHE 2010, Trieste, Italy, September 2010; 4 pages, 5 figure

Stratigraphy of the layered terrain in Valles Marineris, Mars

The layered terrain in Valles Marineris provides information about its origin and the geologic history of this canyon system. Whether the terrain is sedimentary material deposited in a dry or lacustrine environment, or volcanic material related to the tectonics of the canyon is still controversial. However, recent studies of Gangis Layered Terrain suggests a cyclic sequence of deposition and erosion under episodic lacustrine conditions. The stratigraphic studies are extended to four other occurrences of layered terrains in Valles Marineris in an attempt to correlate and distinguish between depositional environments. The Juvantae Chasma, Hebes Chasma, Ophir and Candor Chasmata, Melas Chasma, and Gangis Layered Terrain were examined. Although there are broad similarities among the layered terrains, no two deposits are exactly alike. This suggests that there was no synchronized regional depositional processes to form all the layered deposits. However, the similar erosional style of the lower massive weakly bedded unit in Hebes, Gangis, and Ophir-Candor suggests it may have been deposited under similar circumstances

Venusian sinuous rilles

After a preliminary assessment of venusian channels, it now seems to be clear that the channels have distinctive classes, which imply a wide range of formation parameters and formation mechanisms. They include outflow channels mainly formed by mechanical erosion from very high discharge flow, and canali-type channels requiring either constructional process or mechanical erosion by rather exotic low-viscosity lava such as carbonatite or sulfur. Here we focus on venusian sinuous rilles. Venusian sinuous rilles are generally simple, and originate from a collapsed source. They are shallow and narrow downstream. The venusian sinuous rilles are distinct from canali-type channels, which exhibit almost constant morphologies throughout their entire length, and from outflow channels, which are characterized by wide anastomosing reaches. The lunar sinuous rilles could have been formed initially as constructional channels. However, incision was caused by the long flow duration and high temperatures of eruption, along with relatively large discharge rates, possibly assisted by a low viscosity of the channel-forming lava. Channel narrowing and levee formation suggest relatively fast cooling. The venusian channels could have had a similar sequence of formation including rapid cooling. Assuming the substrate is typical tholeiitic lava, the flowing lavas' temperatures have to be higher than the melting temperature of the substrate. The flow should have a low viscosity to cause turbulence and keep a high Reynolds number to sustain efficient thermal erosion. Determining eruption conditions also provide insights to estimate lava composition. Assuming a channel is formed mostly by thermal erosion, the channel's length and longitudinal profile are functions of lava properties. The depth profiles of the channel are measured by radar foreshortening methods and stereo images. Eruption conditions of channel forming lava can be estimated by the methods developed by Hulme

Igneous and tectonic evolution of Venusian and terrestrial coronae

A great variety of tectonic and volcanic features have been documented on Venus. It is widely appreciated that there are close spatial associations among certain types of tectonic structures and some classes of volcanic flows and constructs. Coronae are endowed with a particularly rich variety of volcanism. It is thought that coupled tectonic and volcanic aspects of coronae are cogenetic manifestations of mantle plumes. An outstanding feature of most venusian coronae is their circular or elliptical shape defined by peripheral zones of fracturing and/or folding. Some coronae are composite, consisting of two or more small coronae within a larger enclosing corona, suggesting complex histories of structured diapirism analogous in some ways to salt dome tectonics. Coronae range widely in size, from smaller than 100 km to over 1000 km in diameter. Volcanic features associated with venusian coronae include lunar-like sinuous rilles, thin lava flows, cinder cone-like constructs, shield volcanos, and pancake domes. Several types of volcanic features are often situated within or near a single corona, in many instances including land-forms indicating effusions of both low- and high-viscosity lavas. In some cases stratigraphic evidence brackets emplacement of pancake domes during the period of tectonic development of the corona, thus supporting a close link between the igneous and tectonic histories of coronae. These associations suggest emplacement of huge diapirs and massive magmatic intrusions, thus producing the tectonic deformations defining these structures. Igneous differentiation of the intrusion could yield a range of lava compositions. Head and Wilson suggested a mechanism that would cause development of neutral buoyancy zones in the shallow subsurface of Venus, thereby tending to promote development of massive igneous intrusions

Entropy and Nonlinear Nonequilibrium Thermodynamic Relation for Heat Conducting Steady States

Among various possible routes to extend entropy and thermodynamics to nonequilibrium steady states (NESS), we take the one which is guided by operational thermodynamics and the Clausius relation. In our previous study, we derived the extended Clausius relation for NESS, where the heat in the original relation is replaced by its "renormalized" counterpart called the excess heat, and the Gibbs-Shannon expression for the entropy by a new symmetrized Gibbs-Shannon-like expression. Here we concentrate on Markov processes describing heat conducting systems, and develop a new method for deriving thermodynamic relations. We first present a new simpler derivation of the extended Clausius relation, and clarify its close relation with the linear response theory. We then derive a new improved extended Clausius relation with a "nonlinear nonequilibrium" contribution which is written as a correlation between work and heat. We argue that the "nonlinear nonequilibrium" contribution is unavoidable, and is determined uniquely once we accept the (very natural) definition of the excess heat. Moreover it turns out that to operationally determine the difference in the nonequilibrium entropy to the second order in the temperature difference, one may only use the previous Clausius relation without a nonlinear term or must use the new relation, depending on the operation (i.e., the path in the parameter space). This peculiar "twist" may be a clue to a better understanding of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of NESS.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figure

Relativistic stars in differential rotation: bounds on the dragging rate and on the rotational energy

For general relativistic equilibrium stellar models (stationary axisymmetric asymptotically flat and convection-free) with differential rotation, it is shown that for a wide class of rotation laws the distribution of angular velocity of the fluid has a sign, say "positive", and then both the dragging rate and the angular momentum density are positive. In addition, the "mean value" (with respect to an intrinsic density) of the dragging rate is shown to be less than the mean value of the fluid angular velocity (in full general, without having to restrict the rotation law, nor the uniformity in sign of the fluid angular velocity); this inequality yields the positivity and an upper bound of the total rotational energy.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, LaTeX. Submitted to J. Math. Phy

Kink Solution in a Fluid Model of Traffic Flows

Traffic jam in a fluid model of traffic flows proposed by Kerner and Konh\"auser (B. S. Kerner and P. Konh\"auser, Phys. Rev. E 52 (1995), 5574.) is analyzed. An analytic scaling solution is presented near the critical point of the hetero-clinic bifurcation. The validity of the solution has been confirmed from the comparison with the simulation of the model.Comment: RevTeX v3.1, 6 pages, and 2 figure

Galaxy-CMB and galaxy-galaxy lensing on large scales: sensitivity to primordial non-Gaussianity

A convincing detection of primordial non-Gaussianity in the local form of the bispectrum, whose amplitude is given by the fNL parameter, offers a powerful test of inflation. In this paper we calculate the modification of two-point cross-correlation statistics of weak lensing - galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy-Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) cross-correlation - due to fNL. We derive and calculate the covariance matrix of galaxy-galaxy lensing including cosmic variance terms. We focus on large scales (l<100) for which the shape noise of the shear measurement becomes irrelevant and cosmic variance dominates the error budget. For a modest degree of non-Gaussianity, fNL=+/-50, modifications of the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal at the 10% level are seen on scales R~300 Mpc, and grow rapidly toward larger scales as \propto R^2. We also see a clear signature of the baryonic acoustic oscillation feature in the matter power spectrum at ~150 Mpc, which can be measured by next-generation lensing experiments. In addition we can probe the local-form primordial non-Gaussianity in the galaxy-CMB lensing signal by correlating the lensing potential reconstructed from CMB with high-z galaxies. For example, for fNL=+/-50, we find that the galaxy-CMB lensing cross power spectrum is modified by ~10% at l~40, and by a factor of two at l~10, for a population of galaxies at z=2 with a bias of 2. The effect is greater for more highly biased populations at larger z; thus, high-z galaxy surveys cross-correlated with CMB offer a yet another probe of primordial non-Gaussianity.Comment: 21 pages, 30 figure

Posterior probability and fluctuation theorem in stochastic processes

A generalization of fluctuation theorems in stochastic processes is proposed. The new theorem is written in terms of posterior probabilities, which are introduced via the Bayes theorem. In usual fluctuation theorems, a forward path and its time reversal play an important role, so that a microscopically reversible condition is essential. In contrast, the microscopically reversible condition is not necessary in the new theorem. It is shown that the new theorem adequately recovers various theorems and relations previously known, such as the Gallavotti-Cohen-type fluctuation theorem, the Jarzynski equality, and the Hatano-Sasa relation, when adequate assumptions are employed.Comment: 4 page

Position-dependent correlation function from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Data Release 10 CMASS Sample

We report on the first measurement of the three-point function with the position-dependent correlation function from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 10 CMASS sample. This new observable measures the correlation between two-point functions of galaxy pairs within different subvolumes, $\hat{\xi}({\rm r},{\rm r}_L)$, where ${\rm r}_L$ is the location of a subvolume, and the corresponding mean overdensities, $\bar{\delta}({\rm r}_L)$. This correlation, which we call the "integrated three-point function", $i\zeta(r)=\langle\hat{\xi}({\rm r},{\rm r}_L)\bar{\delta}({\rm r}_L)\rangle$, measures a three-point function of two short- and one long-wavelength modes, and is generated by nonlinear gravitational evolution and possibly also by the physics of inflation. The $i\zeta(r)$ measured from the BOSS data lies within the scatter of those from the mock galaxy catalogs in redshift space, yielding a ten-percent-level determination of the amplitude of $i\zeta(r)$. The tree-level perturbation theory in redshift space predicts how this amplitude depends on the linear and quadratic nonlinear galaxy bias parameters ($b_1$ and $b_2$), as well as on the amplitude and linear growth rate of matter fluctuations ($\sigma_8$ and $f$). Combining $i\zeta(r)$ with the constraints on $b_1\sigma_8$ and $f\sigma_8$ from the global two-point correlation function and that on $\sigma_8$ from the weak lensing signal of BOSS galaxies, we measure $b_2=0.41\pm0.41$ (68% C.L.) assuming standard perturbation theory at the tree level and the local bias model.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures. revised version submitted to JCA