2,644 research outputs found
Effect of temperature and pressure on the sparking voltage
This report presents the results of an investigation which was to determine how the voltage necessary to produce the proper spark discharge varies with the pressure and temperature of the gas in which the discharge takes place
Moving boundary approximation for curved streamer ionization fronts: Solvability analysis
The minimal density model for negative streamer ionization fronts is
investigated. An earlier moving boundary approximation for this model consisted
of a "kinetic undercooling" type boundary condition in a Laplacian growth
problem of Hele-Shaw type. Here we derive a curvature correction to the moving
boundary approximation that resembles surface tension. The calculation is based
on solvability analysis with unconventional features, namely, there are three
relevant zero modes of the adjoint operator, one of them diverging;
furthermore, the inner/outer matching ahead of the front has to be performed on
a line rather than on an extended region; and the whole calculation can be
performed analytically. The analysis reveals a relation between the fields
ahead and behind a slowly evolving curved front, the curvature and the
generated conductivity. This relation forces us to give up the ideal
conductivity approximation, and we suggest to replace it by a constant
conductivity approximation. This implies that the electric potential in the
streamer interior is no longer constant but solves a Laplace equation; this
leads to a Muskat-type problem.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure
On the Detectability of the Hydrogen 3-cm Fine Structure Line from the EoR
A soft ultraviolet radiation field, 10.2 eV < E <13.6 eV, that permeates
neutral intergalactic gas during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) excites the 2p
(directly) and 2s (indirectly) states of atomic hydrogen. Because the 2s state
is metastable, the lifetime of atoms in this level is relatively long, which
may cause the 2s state to be overpopulated relative to the 2p state. It has
recently been proposed that for this reason, neutral intergalactic atomic
hydrogen gas may be detected in absorption in its 3-cm fine-structure line
(2s_1/2 -> 2p_3/2) against the Cosmic Microwave Background out to very high
redshifts. In particular, the optical depth in the fine-structure line through
neutral intergalactic gas surrounding bright quasars during the EoR may reach
tau~1e-5. The resulting surface brightness temperature of tens of micro K (in
absorption) may be detectable with existing radio telescopes. Motivated by this
exciting proposal, we perform a detailed analysis of the transfer of Lyman
beta,gamma,delta,... radiation, and re-analyze the detectability of the
fine-structure line in neutral intergalactic gas surrounding high-redshift
quasars. We find that proper radiative transfer modeling causes the
fine-structure absorption signature to be reduced tremendously to tau< 1e-10.
We therefore conclude that neutral intergalactic gas during the EoR cannot
reveal its presence in the 3-cm fine-structure line to existing radio
telescopes.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, MNRAS in press; v2. some typos fixe
Is a Classical Language Adequate in Assessing the Detectability of the Redshifted 21cm Signal from the Early Universe?
The classical radiometer equation is commonly used to calculate the
detectability of the 21cm emission by diffuse cosmic hydrogen at high
redshifts. However, the classical description is only valid in the regime where
the occupation number of the photons in phase space is much larger than unity
and they collectively behave as a classical electromagnetic field. At redshifts
z<20, the spin temperature of the intergalactic gas is dictated by the
radiation from galaxies and the brightness temperature of the emitting gas is
in the range of mK, independently from the existence of the cosmic microwave
background. In regions where the observed brightness temperature of the 21cm
signal is smaller than the observed photon energy, of 68/(1+z) mK, the
occupation number of the signal photons is smaller than unity. Neverethless,
the radiometer equation can still be used in this regime because the weak
signal is accompanied by a flood of foreground photons with a high occupation
number (involving the synchrotron Galactic emission and the cosmic microwave
background). As the signal photons are not individually distinguishable, the
combined signal+foreground population of photons has a high occupation number,
thus justifying the use of the radiometer equation.Comment: 4 pages, Accepted for publication in JCA
Field theory for a reaction-diffusion model of quasispecies dynamics
RNA viruses are known to replicate with extremely high mutation rates. These
rates are actually close to the so-called error threshold. This threshold is in
fact a critical point beyond which genetic information is lost through a
second-order phase transition, which has been dubbed the ``error catastrophe.''
Here we explore this phenomenon using a field theory approximation to the
spatially extended Swetina-Schuster quasispecies model [J. Swetina and P.
Schuster, Biophys. Chem. {\bf 16}, 329 (1982)], a single-sharp-peak landscape.
In analogy with standard absorbing-state phase transitions, we develop a
reaction-diffusion model whose discrete rules mimic the Swetina-Schuster model.
The field theory representation of the reaction-diffusion system is
constructed. The proposed field theory belongs to the same universality class
than a conserved reaction-diffusion model previously proposed [F. van Wijland
{\em et al.}, Physica A {\bf 251}, 179 (1998)]. From the field theory, we
obtain the full set of exponents that characterize the critical behavior at the
error threshold. Our results present the error catastrophe from a new point of
view and suggest that spatial degrees of freedom can modify several mean field
predictions previously considered, leading to the definition of characteristic
exponents that could be experimentally measurable.Comment: 13 page
Coherent Neutrino Interactions in a Dense Medium
Motivated by the effect of matter on neutrino oscillations (the MSW effect)
we study in more detail the propagation of neutrinos in a dense medium. The
dispersion relation for massive neutrinos in a medium is known to have a
minimum at nonzero momentum p \sim (G_F\rho)/\sqrt{2}. We study in detail the
origin and consequences of this dispersion relation for both Dirac and Majorana
neutrinos both in a toy model with only neutral currents and a single neutrino
flavour and in a realistic "Standard Model" with two neutrino flavours. We find
that for a range of neutrino momenta near the minimum of the dispersion
relation, Dirac neutrinos are trapped by their coherent interactions with the
medium. This effect does not lead to the trapping of Majorana neutrinos.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, Latex; minor changes, one reference added;
version to appear in Phys. Rev.
A Size of ~10 Mpc for the Ionized Bubbles at the End of Cosmic Reionization
The first galaxies to appear in the universe at redshifts z>20 created
ionized bubbles in the intergalactic medium of neutral hydrogen left over from
the Big-Bang. It is thought that the ionized bubbles grew with time, surrounded
clusters of dwarf galaxies and eventually overlapped quickly throughout the
universe over a narrow redshift interval near z~6. This event signaled the end
of the reionization epoch when the universe was a billion years old. Measuring
the hitherto unknown size distribution of the bubbles at their final overlap
phase is a focus of forthcoming observational programs aimed at highly
redshifted 21cm emission from atomic hydrogen. Here we show that the combined
constraints of cosmic variance and causality imply an observed bubble size at
the end of the overlap epoch of ~10 physical Mpc, and a scatter in the observed
redshift of overlap along different lines-of-sight of ~0.15. This scatter is
consistent with observational constraints from recent spectroscopic data on the
farthest known quasars. Our novel result implies that future radio experiments
should be tuned to a characteristic angular scale of ~0.5 degrees and have a
minimum frequency band-width of ~8 MHz for an optimal detection of 21cm flux
fluctuations near the end of reionization.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nature. Press embargo until publishe
Dynamical Mass Estimates of Large-Scale Filaments in Redshift Surveys
We propose a new method to measure the mass of large-scale filaments in
galaxy redshift surveys. The method is based on the fact that the mass per unit
length of isothermal filaments depends only on their transverse velocity
dispersion. Filaments that lie perpendicular to the line of sight may therefore
have their mass per unit length measured from their thickness in redshift
space. We present preliminary tests of the method and find that it predicts the
mass per unit length of filaments in an N-body simulation to an accuracy of
~35%. Applying the method to a select region of the Perseus-Pisces supercluster
yields a mass-to-light ratio M/L_B around 460h in solar units to within a
factor of two. The method measures the mass-to-light ratio on length scales of
up to 50h^(-1) Mpc and could thereby yield new information on the behavior of
the dark matter on mass scales well beyond that of clusters of galaxies.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX with 6 figures included. Submitted to Ap
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