1,181 research outputs found
A supersymmetric model of gamma ray bursts
We propose a model for gamma ray bursts in which a star subject to a high
level of fermion degeneracy undergoes a phase transition to a supersymmetric
state. The burst is initiated by the transition of fermion pairs to sfermion
pairs which, uninhibited by the Pauli exclusion principle, can drop to the
ground state of minimum momentum through photon emission. The jet structure is
attributed to the Bose statistics of sfermions whereby subsequent sfermion
pairs are preferentially emitted into the same state (sfermion amplification by
stimulated emission). Bremsstrahlung gamma rays tend to preserve the
directional information of the sfermion momenta and are themselves enhanced by
stimulated emission.Comment: published versio
Searching for cavities of various densities in the Earth's crust with a low-energy electron-antineutrino beta-beam
We propose searching for deep underground cavities of different densities in
the Earth's crust using a long-baseline electron-antineutrino disappearance
experiment, realized through a low-energy beta-beam with highly-enhanced
luminosity. We focus on four cases: cavities with densities close to that of
water, iron-banded formations, heavier mineral deposits, and regions of
abnormal charge accumulation that have been posited to appear prior to the
occurrence of an intense earthquake. The sensitivity to identify cavities
attains confidence levels higher than and for exposures
times of 3 months and 1.5 years, respectively, and cavity densities below 1 g
cm or above 5 g cm, with widths greater than 200 km. We
reconstruct the cavity density, width, and position, assuming one of them known
while keeping the other two free. We obtain large allowed regions that improve
as the cavity density differs more from the Earth's mean density. Furthermore,
we demonstrate that knowledge of the cavity density is important to obtain
O(10%) error on the width. Finally, we introduce an observable to quantify the
presence of a cavity by changing the orientation of the electron-antineutrino
beam, with which we are able to identify the presence of a cavity at the
to C.L.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; matches published versio
Compound nuclear decay and the liquid to vapor phase transition: a physical picture
Analyses of multifragmentation in terms of the Fisher droplet model (FDM) and
the associated construction of a nuclear phase diagram bring forth the problem
of the actual existence of the nuclear vapor phase and the meaning of its
associated pressure. We present here a physical picture of fragment production
from excited nuclei that solves this problem and establishes the relationship
between the FDM and the standard compound nucleus decay rate for rare particles
emitted in first-chance decay. The compound thermal emission picture is
formally equivalent to a FDM-like equilibrium description and avoids the
problem of the vapor while also explaining the observation of Boltzmann-like
distribution of emission times. In this picture a simple Fermi gas thermometric
relation is naturally justified and verified in the fragment yields and time
scales. Low energy compound nucleus fragment yields scale according to the FDM
and lead to an estimate of the infinite symmetric nuclear matter critical
temperature between 18 and 27 MeV depending on the choice of the surface energy
coefficient of nuclear matter.Comment: Five page two column pages, four figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Local Projections of Low-Momentum Potentials
Nuclear interactions evolved via renormalization group methods to lower
resolution become increasingly non-local (off-diagonal in coordinate space) as
they are softened. This inhibits both the development of intuition about the
interactions and their use with some methods for solving the quantum many-body
problem. By applying "local projections", a softened interaction can be reduced
to a local effective interaction plus a non-local residual interaction. At the
two-body level, a local projection after similarity renormalization group (SRG)
evolution manifests the elimination of short-range repulsive cores and the flow
toward universal low-momentum interactions. The SRG residual interaction is
found to be relatively weak at low energy, which motivates a perturbative
treatment
Confirmation of Parity Violation in the Gamma Decay of
This paper reports measurements using the technique of On Line Nuclear
Orientation (OLNO) which reexamine the gamma decay of isomeric Hf and specifically the 501 keV 8 -- 6
transition. The irregular admixture of E2 to M2/E3 multipolarity in this
transition, deduced from the forward-backward asymmetry of its angular
distribution, has for decades stood as the prime evidence for parity mixing in
nuclear states. The experiment, based on ion implantation of the newly
developed mass-separated Hf beam at ISOLDE, CERN into an
iron foil maintained at millikelvin temperatures, produces higher degrees of
polarization than were achieved in previous studies of this system. The value
found for the E2/M2 mixing ratio, = -0.0324(16)(17), is in close
agreement with the previous published average value = - 0.030(2), in
full confirmation of the presence of the irregular E2 admixture in the 501 keV
transition. The temperature dependence of the forward-backward asymmetry has
been measured over a more extended range of nuclear polarization than
previously possible, giving further evidence for parity mixing of the 8 and 8 levels and the deduced E2/M2 mixing ratio.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
DETERMINATION OF THE E2/M1 MULTIPOLE MIXING RATIOS OF THE GAMMA TRANSITIONS IN Cd.
This report addresses the determination of the E2/M1 multiple mixing ratios of the gamma transitions in Cd/sup/110
Superconducting and Normal State Properties of Neutron Irradiated MgB2
We have performed a systematic study of the evolution of the superconducting
and normal state properties of neutron irradiated MgB wire segments as a
function of fluence and post exposure annealing temperature and time. All
fluences used suppressed the transition temperature, Tc, below 5 K and expanded
the unit cell. For each annealing temperature Tc recovers with annealing time
and the upper critical field, Hc2(T=0), approximately scales with Tc. By
judicious choice of fluence, annealing temperature and time, the Tc of damaged
MgB2 can be tuned to virtually any value between 5 and 39 K. For higher
annealing temperatures and longer annealing times the recovery of Tc tends to
coincide with a decrease in the normal state resistivity and a systematic
recovery of the lattice parameters.Comment: Updated version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Non-characteristic Half-lives in Radioactive Decay
Half-lives of radionuclides span more than 50 orders of magnitude. We
characterize the probability distribution of this broad-range data set at the
same time that explore a method for fitting power-laws and testing
goodness-of-fit. It is found that the procedure proposed recently by Clauset et
al. [SIAM Rev. 51, 661 (2009)] does not perform well as it rejects the
power-law hypothesis even for power-law synthetic data. In contrast, we
establish the existence of a power-law exponent with a value around 1.1 for the
half-life density, which can be explained by the sharp relationship between
decay rate and released energy, for different disintegration types. For the
case of alpha emission, this relationship constitutes an original mechanism of
power-law generation
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