16,802 research outputs found
An updated catalog of OH-maser-emitting planetary nebulae
Aims. We studied the characteristics of planetary nebulae (PNe) that show
both OH maser and radio continuum emission (hereafter OHPNe). These have been
proposed to be very young PNe, and therefore, they could be key objects for
understanding the formation and evolution of PNe. Methods. We consulted the
literature searching for interferometric observations of radio continuum and OH
masers toward evolved stars, including the information from several surveys. We
also processed radio continuum and OH maser observations toward PNe in the Very
Large Array data archive. The high positional accuracy provided by
interferometric observations allow us to confirm or reject the association
between OH maser and radio continuum emission. Results. We found a total of six
PNe that present both OH maser and radio continuum emissions, as confirmed with
radio interferometric observations. These are bona fide OHPNe. The confirmed
OHPNe present a bipolar morphology in resolved images of their ionized emission
at different wavelengths, suggesting that the OH maser emission in PNe is
related to nonspherical mass-loss phenomena. The OH maser spectra in PNe
present a clear asymmetry, tending to show blueshifted emission with respect to
the systemic velocity. Their infrared colors suggest that most of these objects
are very young PNe. OHPNe do not form a homogeneous group, and seem to
represent a variety of different evolutionary stages. We suggest that OH masers
pumped in the AGB phase may disappear during the post-AGB phase, but reappear
once the source becomes a PN and its radio continuum emission is amplified by
the OH molecules. Therefore, OH maser emission could last significantly longer
than the previously assumed 1000 yr after the end of the AGB phase. This maser
lifetime may be longer in PNe with more massive central stars, which ionize a
larger amount of gas in the envelope.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication by Astronomy
& Astrophysic
Quantum Hysteresis in Coupled Light-Matter Systems
We investigate the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of a canonical
light-matter system, namely the Dicke model, when the light-matter interaction
is ramped up and down through a cycle across the quantum phase transition. Our
calculations reveal a rich set of dynamical behaviors determined by the cycle
times, ranging from the slow, near adiabatic regime through to the fast, sudden
quench regime. As the cycle time decreases, we uncover a crossover from an
oscillatory exchange of quantum information between light and matter that
approaches a reversible adiabatic process, to a dispersive regime that
generates large values of light-matter entanglement. The phenomena uncovered in
this work have implications in quantum control, quantum interferometry, as well
as in quantum information theory.Comment: 9 pages and 4 figure
Dynamics of Entanglement and the Schmidt Gap in a Driven Light-Matter System
The ability to modify light-matter coupling in time (e.g. using external
pulses) opens up the exciting possibility of generating and probing new aspects
of quantum correlations in many-body light-matter systems. Here we study the
impact of such a pulsed coupling on the light-matter entanglement in the Dicke
model as well as the respective subsystem quantum dynamics. Our dynamical
many-body analysis exploits the natural partition between the radiation and
matter degrees of freedom, allowing us to explore time-dependent
intra-subsystem quantum correlations by means of squeezing parameters, and the
inter-subsystem Schmidt gap for different pulse duration (i.e. ramping
velocity) regimes -- from the near adiabatic to the sudden quench limits. Our
results reveal that both types of quantities indicate the emergence of the
superradiant phase when crossing the quantum critical point. In addition, at
the end of the pulse light and matter remain entangled even though they become
uncoupled, which could be exploited to generate entangled states in
non-interacting systems.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in Journal of Physics
B, special issue Correlations in light-matter interaction
Accurate and automatic NOAA-AVHRR image navigation using a global contour matching approach
The problem of precise and automatic AVHRR image navigation is tractable in theory, but has proved to be somewhat difficult in practice. The authors' work has been motivated by the need for a fully automatic and operational navigation system capable of geo-referencing NOAA-AVHRR images with high accuracy and without operator supervision. The proposed method is based on the simultaneous use of an orbital model and a contour matching approach. This last process, relying on an affine transformation model, is used to correct the errors caused by inaccuracies in orbit modeling, nonzero value for the spacecraft's roll, pitch and yaw, errors due to inaccuracies in the satellite positioning and failures in the satellite internal clock. The automatic global contour matching process is summarized as follows: i) Estimation of the gradient energy map (edges) in the sensed image and detection of the cloudless (reliable) areas in this map. ii) Initialization of the affine model parameters by minimizing the Euclidean distance between the reference and sensed images objects. iii) Simultaneous optimization of all reference image contours on the sensed image by energy minimization in the domain of the global transformation parameters. The process is iterated in a hierarchical way, reducing the parameter searching space at each iteration. The proposed image navigation algorithm has proved to be capable of geo-referencing a satellite image within 1 pixel.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Quantum Phase Transitions detected by a local probe using Time Correlations and Violations of Leggett-Garg Inequalities
In the present paper we introduce a way of identifying quantum phase
transitions of many-body systems by means of local time correlations and
Leggett-Garg inequalities. This procedure allows to experimentally determine
the quantum critical points not only of finite-order transitions but also those
of infinite order, as the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition that is not always
easy to detect with current methods. By means of simple analytical arguments
for a general spin- Hamiltonian, and matrix product simulations of
one-dimensional and anisotropic models, we argue that
finite-order quantum phase transitions can be determined by singularities of
the time correlations or their derivatives at criticality. The same features
are exhibited by corresponding Leggett-Garg functions, which noticeably
indicate violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities for early times and all the
Hamiltonian parameters considered. In addition, we find that the infinite-order
transition of the model at the isotropic point can be revealed by the
maximal violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities. We thus show that quantum
phase transitions can be identified by purely local measurements, and that
many-body systems constitute important candidates to observe experimentally the
violation of Leggett-Garg inequalities.Comment: Minor changes, 11 pages, 11 figures. Final version published in Phys.
Rev.
Combined Effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation on Sea Surface Temperature in the Alborán Sea
We explored the possible effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) on interannual sea
surface temperature (SST) variations in the Albora´n Sea, both separately and combined. The probability of observing mean
annual SST values higher than average was related to NAO and AO values of the previous year. The effect of NAO on SST
was negative, while that of AO was positive. The pure effects of NAO and AO on SST are obscuring each other, due to the
positive correlation between them. When decomposing SST, NAO and AO in seasonal values, we found that variation in
mean annual SST and mean winter SST was significantly related to the mean autumn NAO of the previous year, while mean
summer SST was related to mean autumn AO of the previous year. The one year delay in the effect of the NAO and AO on
the SST could be partially related to the amount of accumulated snow, as we found a significant correlation between the
total snow in the North Albora´n watershed for a year with the annual average SST of the subsequent year. A positive AO
implies a colder atmosphere in the Polar Regions, which could favour occasional cold waves over the Iberian Peninsula
which, when coupled with precipitations favoured by a negative NAO, may result in snow precipitation. This snow may be
accumulated in the high peaks and melt down in spring-summer of the following year, which consequently increases the
runoff of freshwater to the sea, which in turn causes a diminution of sea surface salinity and density, and blocks the local
upwelling of colder water, resulting in a higher SST.CGL2009-11316 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain, and FEDER
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