260,492 research outputs found
Evaluation of ASTER GDEM ver2 using GPS measurements and SRTM ver4.1 in China
The freely available ASTER GDEM ver2 was released by NASA and METI on October 17, 2011. As one of the most complete high resolution digital topographic data sets of the world to date, the ASTER GDEM covers land surfaces between 83°N and 83°S at a spatial resolution of 1 arc-second and will be a useful product for many applications, such as relief analysis, hydrological studies and radar interferometry. The stated improvements in the second version of ASTER GDEM benefit from finer horizontal resolution, offset adjustment and water body detection in addition to new observed ASTER scenes. This study investigates the absolute vertical accuracy of the ASTER GDEM ver2 at five study sites in China using ground control points (GCPs) from high accuracy GPS benchmarks, and also using a DEM-to-DEM comparison with the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research Consortium for Spatial Information (CGIAR-CSI) SRTM DEM (Version 4.1). And then, the results are separated into GlobCover land cover classes to derive the spatial pattern of error. It is demonstrated that the RMSE (19m) and mean (-13m) values of ASTER GDEM ver2 against GPS-GCPs in the five study areas is lower than its first version ASTER GDEM ver1 (26m and -21m) as a result of the adjustment of the elevation offsets in the new version. It should be noted that the five study areas in this study are representative in terms of terrain types and land covers in China, and even for most of mid-latitude zones. It is believed that the ASTER GDEM offers a major alternative in accessibility to high quality elevation data
Coronal Electron Confinement by Double Layers
In observations of flare-heated electrons in the solar corona, a longstanding
problem is the unexplained prolonged lifetime of the electrons compared to
their transit time across the source. This suggests confinement. Recent
particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, which explored the transport of
pre-accelerated hot electrons through ambient cold plasma, showed that the
formation of a highly localized electrostatic potential drop, in the form of a
double layer (DL), significantly inhibited the transport of hot electrons (T.C.
Li, J.F. Drake, and M. Swisdak, 2012, ApJ, 757, 20). The effectiveness of
confinement by a DL is linked to the strength of the DL as defined by its
potential drop. In this work, we investigate the scaling of the DL strength
with the hot electron temperature by PIC simulations, and find a linear
scaling. We demonstrate that the strength is limited by the formation of
parallel shocks. Based on this, we analytically determine the maximum DL
strength, and find also a linear scaling with the hot electron temperature. The
DL strength obtained from the analytic calculation is comparable to that from
the simulations. At the maximum strength, the DL is capable of confining a
significant fraction of hot electrons in the source
Active-Region Tilt Angles: Magnetic Versus White-Light Determinations of Joy's Law
The axes of solar active regions are inclined relative to the east--west
direction, with the tilt angle tending to increase with latitude ("Joy's law").
Observational determinations of Joy's law have been based either on white-light
images of sunspot groups or on magnetograms, where the latter have the
advantage of measuring directly the physically relevant quantity (the
photospheric field), but the disadvantage of having been recorded routinely
only since the mid-1960s. White-light studies employing the historical Mount
Wilson (MW) database have yielded tilt angles that are smaller and that
increase less steeply with latitude than those obtained from magnetic data. We
confirm this effect by comparing sunspot-group tilt angles from the Debrecen
Photoheliographic Database with measurements made by Li and Ulrich using MW
magnetograms taken during cycles 21--23. Whether white-light or magnetic data
are employed, the median tilt angles significantly exceed the mean values, and
provide a better characterization of the observed distributions. The
discrepancy between the white-light and magnetic results is found to have two
main sources. First, a substantial fraction of the white-light "tilt angles"
refer to sunspots of the same polarity. Of greater physical significance is
that the magnetograph measurements include the contribution of plage areas,
which are invisible in white-light images but tend to have greater axial
inclinations than the adjacent sunspots. Given the large uncertainties inherent
in both the white-light and the magnetic measurements, it remains unclear
whether any systematic relationship exists between tilt angle and cycle
amplitude during cycles 16--23.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figures, Accepted in Ap
South Asian summer monsoon projections constrained by the Intedacadal Pacific Oscillation
A reliable projection of future South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) benefits a large population in Asia. Using a 100-member ensemble of simulations by the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM) and a 50-member ensemble of simulations by the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2), we find that internal variability can overshadow the forced SASM rainfall trend, leading to large projection uncertainties for the next 15 to 30 years. We further identify that the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) is, in part, responsible for the uncertainties. Removing the IPO-related rainfall variations reduces the uncertainties in the near-term projection of the SASM rainfall by 13 to 15% and 26 to 30% in the MPI-ESM and CanESM2 ensembles, respectively. Our results demonstrate that the uncertainties in near-term projections of the SASM rainfall can be reduced by improving prediction of near-future IPO and other internal modes of climate variabilit
A Two-Tiered Correlation of Dark Matter with Missing Transverse Energy: Reconstructing the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle Mass at the LHC
We suggest that non-trivial correlations between the dark matter particle
mass and collider based probes of missing transverse energy H_T^miss may
facilitate a two tiered approach to the initial discovery of supersymmetry and
the subsequent reconstruction of the LSP mass at the LHC. These correlations
are demonstrated via extensive Monte Carlo simulation of seventeen benchmark
models, each sampled at five distinct LHC center-of-mass beam energies,
spanning the parameter space of No-Scale F-SU(5).This construction is defined
in turn by the union of the Flipped SU(5) Grand Unified Theory, two pairs of
hypothetical TeV scale vector-like supersymmetric multiplets with origins in
F-theory, and the dynamically established boundary conditions of No-Scale
Supergravity. In addition, we consider a control sample comprised of a standard
minimal Supergravity benchmark point. Led by a striking similarity between the
H_T^miss distribution and the familiar power spectrum of a black body radiator
at various temperatures, we implement a broad empirical fit of our simulation
against a Poisson distribution ansatz. We advance the resulting fit as a
theoretical blueprint for deducing the mass of the LSP, utilizing only the
missing transverse energy in a statistical sampling of >= 9 jet events.
Cumulative uncertainties central to the method subsist at a satisfactory 12-15%
level. The fact that supersymmetric particle spectrum of No-Scale F-SU(5) has
thrived the withering onslaught of early LHC data that is steadily decimating
the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and minimal Supergravity
parameter spaces is a prime motivation for augmenting more conventional LSP
search methodologies with the presently proposed alternative.Comment: JHEP version, 17 pages, 9 Figures, 2 Table
QCD corrections to the t-->H+b decay within the minimal supersymmetric standard model
I present the contribution of gluinos and scalar quarks to the decay rate of
the top quark into a charged Higgs boson and a bottom quark within the minimal
supersymmetric standard model, including the mixing of the scalar partners of
the left- and right-handed top quark. I show that for certain values of the
supersymmetric parameters the standard QCD loop corrections to this decay mode
are diminished or enhanced by several 10 per cent. I show that not only a small
value of 3 GeV for the gluino mass (small mass window) but also much larger
values of several hundreds of GeV's have a non-neglible effect on this decay
rate, against general belief. Last but not least, if the ratio of the vacuum
expectation values of the Higgs bosons are taken in the limit of I
obtain a drastic enhancement due to a \ dependence in the couplings.Comment: UQAM-PHE-94/01, 6 pages, plain tex, 4 figures not included, available
under request via mail or fa
Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering study of charge excitations in La2CuO4
We report a resonant inelastic x-ray scattering study of the dispersion
relations of charge transfer excitations in insulating LaCuO. These
data reveal two peaks, both of which show two-dimensional characteristics. The
lowest energy excitation has a gap energy of eV at the zone center,
and a dispersion of eV. The spectral weight of this mode becomes
dramatically smaller around (, ). The second peak shows a smaller
dispersion ( eV) with a zone-center energy of eV. We argue
that these are both highly dispersive exciton modes damped by the presence of
the electron-hole continuum.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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