122 research outputs found
Clouds, shadows, or twilight? Mayfly nymphs recognise the difference
1. We examined the relative changes in light intensity that initiate night-time locomotor activity changes in nymphs of the mayfly, Stenonema modestum (Heptageniidae). Tests were carried out in a laboratory stream to examine the hypothesis that nymphs increase their locomotion in response to the large and sustained reductions in relative light intensity that take place during twilight but not to short-term daytime light fluctuations or a minimum light intensity threshold. Ambient light intensity was reduced over a range of values representative of evening twilight. Light was reduced over the same range of intensities either continuously or in discrete intervals while at the same time nymph activity on unglazed tile substrata was video recorded.
2. Nymphs increased their locomotor activity during darkness in response to large, sustained relative light decreases, but not in response to short-term, interrupted periods of light decrease. Nymphs did not recognise darkness unless an adequate light stimulus, such as large and sustained relative decrease in light intensity, had taken place.
3. We show that nymphs perceive light change over time and respond only after a lengthy period of accumulation of light stimulus. The response is much lengthier than reported for other aquatic organisms and is highly adaptive to heterogeneous stream environments
Field dynamics and kink-antikink production in rapidly expanding systems
Field dynamics in a rapidly expanding system is investigated by transforming
from space-time to the rapidity - proper-time frame. The proper-time dependence
of different contributions to the total energy is established. For systems
characterized by a finite momentum cut-off, a freeze-out time can be defined
after which the field propagation in rapidity space ends and the system decays
into decoupled solitons, antisolitons and local vacuum fluctuations. Numerical
simulations of field evolutions on a lattice for the (1+1)-dimensional
model illustrate the general results and show that the freeze-out time and
average multiplicities of kinks (plus antikinks) produced in this 'phase
transition' can be obtained from simple averages over the initial ensemble of
field configurations. An extension to explicitly include additional dissipation
is discussed. The validity of an adiabatic approximation for the case of an
overdamped system is investigated. The (3+1)-dimensional generalization may
serve as model for baryon-antibaryon production after heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. Two references added. New subsection III.E
added. Final version accepted for publication in PR
Complex patterns of spontaneous initiations and terminations of reentrant circulation in a loop of cardiac tissue
A two-component model is developed that consists of a discrete loop of
cardiac cells that circulates action potentials together with a cardiac pacing
mechanism. Physiological properties of cells such as restitutions of
refractoriness and of conduction velocity are given via experimentally measured
functions. The dynamics of circulating pulses and their interactions with the
pacer are regulated by two threshold relations. Patterns of spontaneous
initiations and terminations of reentry (SITR) generated by this system are
studied through numerical simulations and analytical observations. These
patterns can be regular or irregular; causes of irregularities are identified
as the threshold bistability of reentrant circulation (T-bistability) and in
some cases, also phase-resetting interactions with the pacer.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, 61 references; A version of this paper (same
results) is to appear in the Journal of Theoretical Biology; arXiv V2 adds
helpful commments to facilitate reading and corrects minor errors in
presentatio
Langevin Evolution of Disoriented Chiral Condensate
As the matter produced in a relativistic heavy ion collision cools through
the QCD phase transition, the dynamical evolution of the chiral condensate will
be driven out of thermal equilibrium. As a prelude to analyzing this evolution,
and in particular as a prelude to learning how rapid the cooling must be in
order for significant deviations from equilibrium to develop, we present a
detailed analysis of the time-evolution of an idealized region of disoriented
chiral condensate. We set up a Langevin field equation which can describe the
evolution of these (or more realistic) linear sigma model configurations in
contact with a heat bath representing the presence of other shorter wavelength
degrees of freedom. We first analyze the model in equilibrium, paying
particular attention to subtracting ultraviolet divergent classical terms and
replacing them by their finite quantum counterparts. We use known results from
lattice gauge theory and chiral perturbation theory to fix nonuniversal
constants. The result is a theory which is ultraviolet cutoff independent and
that reproduces quantitatively the expected equilibrium behavior of the quantum
field theory of pions and sigma fields over a wide range of temperatures.
Finally, we estimate the viscosity , which controls the dynamical
timescale in the Langevin equation, by requiring that the timescale for DCC
decay agrees with previous calculations. The resulting is larger than
that found perturbatively. We also determine the temperature below which the
classical field Langevin equation ceases to be a good model for the quantum
field dynamics.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, uses RevTex; v2 very small change to the caption
of Fig.7. Version to appear in Nucl. phys.
The Chiral Phase Transition in Dissipative Dynamics
Numerical simulations of the chiral phase transition in the (3+1)dimensional
O(4)-model are presented. The evolutions of the chiral field follow purely
dissipative dynamics, starting from random chirally symmetric initial
configurations down to the true vacuum with spontaneously broken symmetry. The
model stabilizes topological textures which are formed together with domains of
disoriented chiral condensate (DCC) during the roll-down phase. The classically
evolving field acts as source for the emission of pions and mesons.
The exponents of power laws for the growth of angular correlations and for
emission rates are extracted. Fluctuations in the abundance ratios for neutral
and charged pions are compared with those for uncorrelated sources as potential
signature for the chiral phase transition after heavy-ion collisions. It is
found that the presence of stabilizing textures (baryons and antibaryons)
prevents sufficiently rapid growth of DCC-domain size, so observability of
anomalous tails in the abundance ratios is unlikely. However, the transient
formation of growing DCC domains causes sizable broadening of the distributions
as compared to the statistical widths of generic sources.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure
DCC Dynamics in (2+1)D-O(3) model
The dynamics of symmetry-breaking after a quench is numerically simulated on
a lattice for the (2+1)-dimensional O(3) model. In addition to the standard
sigma-model with temperature-dependent Phi^4-potential the energy functional
includes a four-derivative current-current coupling to stabilize the size of
the emerging extended topological textures. The total winding number can be
conserved by constraint. As a model for the chiral phase transition during the
cooling phase after a hadronic collision this allows to investigate the
interference of 'baryon-antibaryon' production with the developing disoriented
aligned domains. The growth of angular correlations, condensate, average
orientation is studied in dependence of texture size, quench rate, symmetry
breaking. The classical dissipative dynamics determines the rate of energy
emitted from the relaxing source for each component of the 3-vector field which
provides a possible signature for domains of Disoriented Chiral Condensate. We
find that the 'pions' are emitted in two distinct pulses; for sufficiently
small lattice size the second one carries the DCC signal, but it is strongly
suppressed as compared to simultaneous 'sigma'-meson emission. We compare the
resulting anomalies in the distributions of DCC pions with probabilities
derived within the commonly used coherent state formalism.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures; several minor insertions in the text; two
references adde
Formation of extended topological defects during symmetry breaking phase transitions in O(2) and O(3) models
The density of extended topological defects created during symmetry-breaking
phase transitions depends on the ratio between the correlation length in the
symmetric phase near and the winding length of the defects as determined
by the momentaneous effective action after a typical relaxation time.
Conservation of winding number in numerical simulations requires a suitable
embedding of the field variables and the appropriate geometrical implementation
of the winding density on the discrete lattice. We define a modified Kibble
limit for the square lattice and obtain defect densities as functions of
winding lengths in O(2) and O(3) models. The latter allows to observe formation
of disoriented aligned domains within the easy plane. Their extent is severely
limited by the momentaneous defect density during the course of the quench.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure
Negatively Charged Excitons and Photoluminescence in Asymmetric Quantum Well
We study photoluminescence (PL) of charged excitons () in narrow
asymmetric quantum wells in high magnetic fields B. The binding of all
states strongly depends on the separation of electron and hole layers.
The most sensitive is the ``bright'' singlet, whose binding energy decreases
quickly with increasing even at relatively small B. As a result, the
value of B at which the singlet--triplet crossing occurs in the spectrum
also depends on and decreases from 35 T in a symmetric 10 nm GaAs well
to 16 T for nm. Since the critical values of at which
different states unbind are surprisingly small compared to the well
width, the observation of strongly bound states in an experimental PL
spectrum implies virtually no layer displacement in the sample. This casts
doubt on the interpretation of PL spectra of heterojunctions in terms of
recombination
From QFT to DCC
A quantum field theoretical model for the dynamics of the disoriented chiral
condensate is presented. A unified approach to relate the quantum field theory
directly to the formation, decay and signals of the DCC and its evolution is
taken. We use a background field analysis of the O(4) sigma model keeping
one-loop quantum corrections (quadratic order in the fluctuations). An
evolution of the quantum fluctuations in an external, expanding metric which
simulates the expansion of the plasma, is carried out. We examine, in detail,
the amplification of the low momentum pion modes with two competing effects,
the expansion rate of the plasma and the transition rate of the vacuum
configuration from a metastable state into a stable state.We show the effect of
DCC formation on the multiplicity distributions and the Bose-Einstein
correlations.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figure
DCC dynamics with the SU(3) linear sigma model
The SU(3) extension of the linear sigma model is employed to elucidate the
effect of including strangeness on the formation of disoriented chiral
condensates. By means of a Hartree factorization, approximate dispersion
relations for the 18 scalar and pseudoscalar meson species are derived and
their self-consistent solution makes it possible to trace out the thermal path
of the two order parameters as well as delineate the region of instability
within which spontaneous pair creation becomes possible. The results depend
significantly on the employed sigma mass, with the highest values yielding the
largest regions of instability. An approximate solution of the equations of
motion for the order parameter in scenarios emulating uniform scaling
expansions show that even with a rapid quench only the pionic modes grow
unstable. Nevertheless, the rapid and oscillatory relaxation of the order
parameters leads to enhanced production of both pions and (to a lesser degree)
kaons.Comment: 29 pages, RevTeX, 11 postscript figures, discussion about anomaly
term adde
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