Identification of Shocks in the Spectra from Black Holes

We study the spectral properties of a low angular momentum flow as a function of the shock strength, compression ratio, accretion rate and flow geometry. In the absence of a satisfactory description of magnetic fields inside the advective disk, we consider the presence of only stochastic fields and use the ratio of the field energy to the gravitational energy density as a parameter. We not only include `conventional' synchrotron emission and Comptonization by Maxwell-Bolzmann electrons in the gas, but we also compute these effects due to power-law electrons. For strong shocks, a bump is produced due to the post-shock flow. A power-law spectral components due to the thermal and non-thermal electrons appear after this bump.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Astronomy and Space Science (in press), Proceedings of the Hong Kong Conference (2004) Edited by Cheng and Romer

Fragmentation cross sections of Fe^{26+}, Si^{14+} and C^{6+} ions of 0.3-10 A GeV on CR39, polyethylene and aluminum targets

New measurements of the total and partial fragmentation cross sections in the energy range 0.3-10 A GeV of Fe^{26+}, Si^{14+} and C^{6+} beams on polyethylene, CR39 and aluminum targets are presented. The exposures were made at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA, and Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC), Japan. The CR39 nuclear track detectors were used to identify the incident and survived beams and their fragments. The total fragmentation cross sections for all targets are almost energy independent while they depend on the target mass. The measured partial fragmentation cross sections are also discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figures. Talk given at the 24th International Conference on Nuclear Tracks in Solids, Bologna, Italy, 1-5 September 200

Response of wheat cultivars to foliar potassium fertilization under irrigated saline environment

A field experiment with split-split plot design (SSPD) was conducted to study the response of two winter wheat (Triticumaestivum L.) cultivars (viz. salt tolerant cultivar KRL-1-4 and salt non-tolerant cultivar HD-2894) under saline irrigation regimes with and without foliar potassium fertilization on growth and grain yield of wheat during rabi 2011-12 and 2012-13. Potassium in the ratio of K+: Na+ (1: 10) was applied as foliar application during the heading stage of the crop. Results showed that the grain yield of KRL-1-4 and HD-2894 cultivars with foliar potassium fertilization at the heading stage increased by 6.5 to 22% and 3 to 15% during rabi 2011-2012, respectively under different saline irrigation regimes as compared to the control. Moreover, the results of rabi 2012-13 showed an increase in grain yield ranging from 4.5 to 20% for KRL-1-4 as compared to the control. Statistical analysis of grain yield parameter showed that the foliar potassium application in both varieties resulted in significant yield difference at 0.05 probability level as compared to the non-foliar application. Overall, it was observed that the foliar potassium fertilization increased the grain yield of both wheat cultivars, while the salt tolerant cultivar performed better than the salt non-tolerant cultivar under irrigated saline regimes

Synthesis and liquid crystalline behaviour of substituted (E)-phenyl-4-(phenyldiazenyl) benzoate derivatives and their photo switching ability

Azobenzene derivatives containing phenyl/4-halogen-phenyl 4-{(E)-[4-(pent-4-en-1-yloxy)phenyl]diazenyl}benzoate group with different electronegative substituent (H, F, Cl, Br and I) at other end was synthesised. These azo-based benzoate derivatives have been characterised by FTIR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, elemental analyser, POM and UV-Vis spectroscopy. Photosaturation at 358 nm obtained after 82 s of UV irradiation and the longest thermal back relaxation time of 45 h recorded by UV-Vis. The azo derivative could be possible photolock under UV light, as observed by the improved thermal back relaxation time. The resulting photolockable chain of azobenzene might prove valuable in the development of optical device application. These azobenzene moieties also exhibit liquid crystalline behaviour with respect to the halogen substitution as an electron withdrawing group shows that strong structure property relationship exists among them

Bulk Etch Rate Measurements and Calibrations of Plastic Nuclear Track Detectors

New calibrations of CR39 and Makrofol nuclear track detectors have been obtained using 158 A GeV Pb (82+) and In (49+) ions; a new method for the bulk etch rate determination, using both cone height and base diameter measurements was developed. The CR39 charge resolution based on the etch-pit base area measurement is adequate to identify nuclear fragments in the interval 7 <= Z/beta <= 49. For CR39 the detection threshold is at REL~50 MeV cm^2/g, corresponding to a nuclear fragment with Z/beta~7. Base cone area distributions for Makrofol foils exposed to Pb (82+) ions have shown for the first time all peaks due to nuclear fragments with Z > 50; the distribution of the etched cone heights shows well separated individual peaks for Z/beta = 78 - 83 (charge pickup). The Makrofol detection threshold is at REL 2700 MeV cm^2/g, corresponding to a nuclear fragment with Z/beta~50.Comment: 11 pages, 5 EPS figures. Submitted to Nucl. Instr. Meth.

Warp propagation in astrophysical discs

Astrophysical discs are often warped, that is, their orbital planes change with radius. This occurs whenever there is a non-axisymmetric force acting on the disc, for example the Lense-Thirring precession induced by a misaligned spinning black hole, or the gravitational pull of a misaligned companion. Such misalignments appear to be generic in astrophysics. The wide range of systems that can harbour warped discs - protostars, X-ray binaries, tidal disruption events, quasars and others - allows for a rich variety in the disc's response. Here we review the basic physics of warped discs and its implications.Comment: To be published in Astrophysical Black Holes by Haardt et al., Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer 2015. 19 pages, 2 figure

Strange hadron matter and SU(3) symmetry

We calculate saturation curves for strange hadron matter using recently constructed baryon-baryon potentials which are constrained by SU(3) symmetry. All possible interaction channels within the baryon octet (consisting of $N$, $\Lambda$, $\Sigma$, and $\Xi$) are considered. It is found that a small $\Lambda$ fraction in nuclear matter slightly increases binding, but that larger fractions ($>10$) rapidly cause a decrease. Charge-neutral ${N,\Lambda,\Xi}$ systems, with equal densities for nucleons and cascades, are only very weakly bound. The dependence of the binding energies on the strangeness per baryon, $f_s$, is predicted for various ${N,\Lambda,\Xi}$ and ${N,\Lambda,\Sigma,\Xi}$ systems. The implications of our results in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and the core of a dense star are discussed. We also discuss the differences between our results and previous hadron matter calculations.Comment: 14 pages RevTeX, 7 postscript figure

Magneto-transport and magnetic susceptibility of SmFeAsO1-xFx (x = 0.0 and 0.20)

Bulk polycrystalline samples, SmFeAsO and the iso-structural superconducting SmFeAsO0.80F0.20 are explored through resistivity with temperature under magnetic field {\rho}(T, H), AC and DC magnetization (M-T), and Specific heat (Cp) measurements. The Resistivity measurement shows superconductivity for x = 0.20 sample with Tc(onset) ~ 51.7K. The upper critical field, [Hc2(0)] is estimated ~3770kOe by Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory. Broadening of superconducting transition in magneto transport is studied through thermally activated flux flow in applied field up to 130 kOe. The flux flow activation energy (U/kB) is estimated ~1215K for 1kOe field. Magnetic measurements exhibited bulk superconductivity with lower critical field (Hc1) of ~1.2kOe at 2K. In normal state, the paramagnetic nature of compound confirms no trace of magnetic impurity which orders ferromagnetically. AC susceptibility measurements have been carried out for SmFeAsO0.80F0.20 sample at various amplitude and frequencies of applied AC drive field. The inter-granular critical current density (Jc) is estimated. Specific heat [Cp(T)] measurement showed an anomaly at around 140K due to the SDW ordering of Fe, followed by another peak at 5K corresponding to the antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering of Sm+3 ions in SmFeAsO compound. Interestingly the change in entropy (marked by the Cp transition height) at 5K for Sm+3 AFM ordering is heavily reduced in case of superconducting SmFeAsO0.80F0.20 sample.Comment: 18 pages text + Figs: comments/suggestions welcome ([email protected]

Edge Currents in Non-commutative Chern-Simons Theory from a New Matrix Model

This paper discusses the formulation of the non-commutative Chern-Simons (CS) theory where the spatial slice, an infinite strip, is a manifold with boundaries. As standard star products are not correct for such manifolds, the standard non-commutative CS theory is not also appropriate here. Instead we formulate a new finite-dimensional matrix CS model as an approximation to the CS theory on the strip. A work which has points of contact with ours is due to Lizzi, Vitale and Zampini where the authors obtain a description for the fuzzy disc. The gauge fields in our approach are operators supported on a subspace of finite dimension N+\eta of the Hilbert space of eigenstates of a simple harmonic oscillator with N, \eta \in Z^+ and N \neq 0. This oscillator is associated with the underlying Moyal plane. The resultant matrix CS theory has a fuzzy edge. It becomes the required sharp edge when N and \eta goes to infinity in a suitable sense. The non-commutative CS theory on the strip is defined by this limiting procedure. After performing the canonical constraint analysis of the matrix theory, we find that there are edge observables in the theory generating a Lie algebra with properties similar to that of a non-abelian Kac-Moody algebra. Our study shows that there are (\eta+1)^2 abelian charges (observables) given by the matrix elements (\cal A_i)_{N-1 N-1} and (\cal A_i)_{nm} (where n or m \geq N) of the gauge fields, that obey certain standard canonical commutation relations. In addition, the theory contains three unique non-abelian charges, localized near the N^th level. We show that all non-abelian edge observables except these three can be constructed from the abelian charges above. Using the results of this analysis we discuss the large N and \eta limit.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages and 2 figures. Comments added in sections 4 and 5. A minor error corrected in section 4. Figures replaced for clarity. Typos correcte