Liquid crystals and their defects

These lecture notes discuss classical models of liquid crystals, and the different ways in which defects are described according to the different models.Comment: CIME lecture course, Cetraro, 201

Improved search for solar chameleons with a GridPix detector at CAST

We report on a new search for solar chameleons with the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST). A GridPix detector was used to search for soft X-ray photons in the energy range from 200 eV to 10 keV from converted solar chameleons. No significant excess over the expected background has been observed in the data taken in 2014 and 2015. We set an improved limit on the chameleon photon coupling, beta(gamma) less than or similar to 5.7 x 10(10) for 1 < beta(m) < 10(6) at 95% C.L. improving our previous results by a factor two and for the first time reaching sensitivity below the solar luminosity bound for tachocline magnetic fields up to 12.5 T

Experience Rating and the Inflow into Disability Insurance

experience rating, disability insurance, panel data, H22, I12, C23,

Stability of the melting hedgehog in the Landau-de Gennes theory of nematic liquid crystals

We investigate stability properties of the radially symmetric solution corresponding to the vortex defect (the so called ``melting hedgehog'') in the framework of the Landau-de Gennes model of nematic liquid crystals. We prove local stability of the melting hedgehog under arbitrary Q-tensor valued perturbations in the temperature regime near the critical supercooling temperature. As a consequence of our method, we also rediscover the loss of stability of the vortex defect in the deep nematic regime

New CAST limit on the axion-photon interaction

Hypothetical low-mass particles, such as axions, provide a compelling explanation for the dark matter in the universe. Such particles are expected to emerge abundantly from the hot interior of stars. To test this prediction, the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) uses a 9 T refurbished Large Hadron Collider test magnet directed towards the Sun. In the strong magnetic field, solar axions can be converted to X-ray photons which can be recorded by X-ray detectors. In the 2013–2015 run, thanks to low-background detectors and a new X-ray telescope, the signal-to-noise ratio was increased by about a factor of three. Here, we report the best limit on the axion–photon coupling strength (0.66 × 10−10 GeV−1 at 95% confidence level) set by CAST, which now reaches similar levels to the most restrictive astrophysical bounds.374