17,143 research outputs found
Monolithic microwave integrated circuit water vapor radiometer
A proof of concept Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) Water Vapor Radiometer (WVR) is under development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). WVR's are used to remotely sense water vapor and cloud liquid water in the atmosphere and are valuable for meteorological applications as well as for determination of signal path delays due to water vapor in the atmosphere. The high cost and large size of existing WVR instruments motivate the development of miniature MMIC WVR's, which have great potential for low cost mass production. The miniaturization of WVR components allows large scale deployment of WVR's for Earth environment and meteorological applications. Small WVR's can also result in improved thermal stability, resulting in improved calibration stability. Described here is the design and fabrication of a 31.4 GHz MMIC radiometer as one channel of a thermally stable WVR as a means of assessing MMIC technology feasibility
Finite-size scaling of directed percolation above the upper critical dimension
We consider analytically as well as numerically the finite-size scaling
behavior in the stationary state near the non-equilibrium phase transition of
directed percolation within the mean field regime, i.e., above the upper
critical dimension. Analogous to equilibrium, usual finite-size scaling is
valid below the upper critical dimension, whereas it fails above. Performing a
momentum analysis of associated path integrals we derive modified finite-size
scaling forms of the order parameter and its higher moments. The results are
confirmed by numerical simulations of corresponding high-dimensional lattice
models.Comment: 4 pages, one figur
Charge Transport Properties of a Metal-free Phthalocyanine Discotic Liquid Crystal
Discotic liquid crystals can self-align to form one-dimensional
semiconducting wires, many tens of microns long. In this letter, we describe
the preparation of semiconducting films where the stacking direction of the
disc-like molecules is perpendicular to the substrate surface. We present
measurements of the charge carrier mobility, applying temperature-dependent
time-of-flight transient photoconductivity, space-charge limited current
measurements, and field-effect mobility measurements. We provide experimental
verification of the highly anisotropic nature of semiconducting films of
discotic liquid crystals, with charge carrier mobilities of up to
2.8x10cm/Vs. These properties make discotics an interesting choice
for applications such as organic photovoltaics.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
The sensitivity of harassment to orbit: Mass loss from early-type dwarfs in galaxy clusters
We conduct a comprehensive numerical study of the orbital dependence of harassment on early-type dwarfs consisting of 168 different orbits within a realistic, Virgo-like cluster, varying in eccentricity and pericentre distance. We find harassment is only effective at stripping stars or truncating their stellar discs for orbits that enter deep into the cluster core. Comparing to the orbital distribution in cosmological simulations, we find that the majority of the orbits (more than three quarters) result in no stellar mass loss. We also study the effects on the radial profiles of the globular cluster systems of early-type dwarfs. We find these are significantly altered only if harassment is very strong. This suggests that perhaps most early-type dwarfs in clusters such as Virgo have not suffered any tidal stripping of stars or globular clusters due to harassment, as these components are safely embedded deep within their dark matter halo. We demonstrate that this result is actually consistent with an earlier study of harassment of dwarf galaxies, despite the apparent contradiction. Those few dwarf models that do suffer stellar stripping are found out to the virial radius of the cluster at redshift = 0, which mixes them in with less strongly harassed galaxies. However when placed on phase-space diagrams, strongly harassed galaxies are found offset to lower velocities compared to weakly harassed galaxies. This remains true in a cosmological simulation, even when haloes have a wide range of masses and concentrations. Thus phase-space diagrams may be a useful tool for determining the relative likelihood that galaxies have been strongly or weakly harassed
Toxin profile of a <i>Dinophysis</i> sp. strain from the North Sea (Belgium) by ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry
Finite-size scaling of directed percolation in the steady state
Recently, considerable progress has been made in understanding finite-size
scaling in equilibrium systems. Here, we study finite-size scaling in
non-equilibrium systems at the instance of directed percolation (DP), which has
become the paradigm of non-equilibrium phase transitions into absorbing states,
above, at and below the upper critical dimension. We investigate the
finite-size scaling behavior of DP analytically and numerically by considering
its steady state generated by a homogeneous constant external source on a
d-dimensional hypercube of finite edge length L with periodic boundary
conditions near the bulk critical point. In particular, we study the order
parameter and its higher moments using renormalized field theory. We derive
finite-size scaling forms of the moments in a one-loop calculation. Moreover,
we introduce and calculate a ratio of the order parameter moments that plays a
similar role in the analysis of finite size scaling in absorbing nonequilibrium
processes as the famous Binder cumulant in equilibrium systems and that, in
particular, provides a new signature of the DP universality class. To
complement our analytical work, we perform Monte Carlo simulations which
confirm our analytical results.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
Collision broadening of rho meson in a dropping mass scenario
Vector mesons containing light quarks are thought to have their masses
reduced in dense nuclear matter, sacrificing some of their energy to the scalar
field which becomes appreciable at finite baryon density. Model calculations
find masses which fall by a couple tens of percents in normal nuclear matter,
and by several hundred MeV in dense matter. We estimate the collision rate for
rho mesons in such a scenario and at finite temperature. Compared to its
free-mass value, the collision rate changes by nearly a factor of two both
above and below, depending on the density. This collision broadening effect
could be important for estimates of low-mass dilepton production in heavy-ion
collisions.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX, 2 PostScript figure
Magnetic field tuning of antiferromagnetic YbPt
We present measurements of the specific heat, magnetization, magnetocaloric
effect and magnetic neutron diffraction carried out on single crystals of
antiferromagnetic YbPt, where highly localized Yb moments order at
K in zero field. The antiferromagnetic order was suppressed to
by applying a field of 1.85 T in the plane.
Magnetocaloric effect measurements show that the antiferromagnetic phase
transition is always continuous for , although a pronounced step
in the magnetization is observed at the critical field in both neutron
diffraction and magnetization measurements. These steps sharpen with decreasing
temperature, but the related divergences in the magnetic susceptibility are cut
off at the lowest temperatures, where the phase line itself becomes vertical in
the field-temperature plane. As , the antiferromagnetic
transition is increasingly influenced by a quantum critical endpoint, where
ultimately vanishes in a first order phase transition.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
Spreading with immunization in high dimensions
We investigate a model of epidemic spreading with partial immunization which
is controlled by two probabilities, namely, for first infections, , and
reinfections, . When the two probabilities are equal, the model reduces to
directed percolation, while for perfect immunization one obtains the general
epidemic process belonging to the universality class of dynamical percolation.
We focus on the critical behavior in the vicinity of the directed percolation
point, especially in high dimensions . It is argued that the clusters of
immune sites are compact for . This observation implies that a
recently introduced scaling argument, suggesting a stretched exponential decay
of the survival probability for , in one spatial dimension,
where denotes the critical threshold for directed percolation, should
apply in any dimension and maybe for as well. Moreover, we
show that the phase transition line, connecting the critical points of directed
percolation and of dynamical percolation, terminates in the critical point of
directed percolation with vanishing slope for and with finite slope for
. Furthermore, an exponent is identified for the temporal correlation
length for the case of and , , which
is different from the exponent of directed percolation. We also
improve numerical estimates of several critical parameters and exponents,
especially for dynamical percolation in .Comment: LaTeX, IOP-style, 18 pages, 9 eps figures, minor changes, additional
reference
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