Design and Control of a Flight-Style AUV with Hovering Capability

The small flight-style Delphin AUV is designed to evaluate the performance of a long range survey AUV with the additional capability to hover and manoeuvre at slow speed. Delphin’s hull form is based on a scaled version of Autosub6000, and in addition to the main thruster and control surfaces at the rear of the vehicle, Delphin is equipped with four rim driven tunnel thrusters. In order to reduce the development cycle time, Delphin was designed to use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors and thrusters interfaced to a standard PC motherboard running the control software within the MS Windows environment. To further simplify the development, the autonomy system uses the State-Flow Toolbox within the Matlab/Simulink environment. While the autonomy software is running, image processing routines are used for obstacle avoidance and target tracking, within the commercial Scorpion Vision software. This runs as a parallel thread and passes results to Matlab via the TCP/IP communication protocol. The COTS based development approach has proved effective. However, a powerful PC is required to effectively run Matlab and Simulink, and, due to the nature of the Windows environment, it is impossible to run the control in hard real-time. The autonomy system will be recoded to run under the Matlab Windows Real-Time Windows Target in the near future. Experimental results are used to demonstrating the performance and current capabilities of the vehicle are presented

[Report of] Specialist Committee V.4: ocean, wind and wave energy utilization

The committee's mandate was :Concern for structural design of ocean energy utilization devices, such as offshore wind turbines, support structures and fixed or floating wave and tidal energy converters. Attention shall be given to the interaction between the load and the structural response and shall include due consideration of the stochastic nature of the waves, current and wind

Quantum phase transition of condensed bosons in optical lattices

In this paper we study the superfluid-Mott-insulator phase transition of ultracold dilute gas of bosonic atoms in an optical lattice by means of Green function method and Bogliubov transformation as well. The superfluid- Mott-insulator phase transition condition is determined by the energy-band structure with an obvious interpretation of the transition mechanism. Moreover the superfluid phase is explained explicitly from the energy spectrum derived in terms of Bogliubov approach.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure

Supersymmteric Null-like Holographic Cosmologies

We construct a new class of 1/4-BPS time dependent domain-wall solutions with null-like metric and dilaton in type II supergravities, which admit a null-like big bang singularity. Based on the domain-wall/QFT correspondence, these solutions are dual to 1/4-supersymmetric quantum field theories living on a boundary cosmological background with time dependent coupling constant and UV cutoff. In particular we evaluate the holographic $c$ function for the 2-dimensional dual field theory living on the corresponding null-like cosmology. We find that this $c$ function runs in accordance with the $c$-theorem as the boundary universe evolves, this means that the number of degrees of freedom is divergent at big bang and suggests the possible resolution of big bang singularity.Comment: 26 pages;v2 references adde

Impurity corrections to the thermodynamics in spin chains using a transfer-matrix DMRG method

We use the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) for transfer matrices to numerically calculate impurity corrections to thermodynamic properties. The method is applied to two impurity models in the spin-1/2 chain, namely a weak link in the chain and an external impurity spin. The numerical analysis confirms the field theory calculations and gives new results for the crossover behavior.Comment: 9 pages in revtex format including 5 embedded figures (using epsf). To appear in PRB. The latest version in PDF format can be found at http://fy.chalmers.se/~eggert/papers/DMRGimp.pd

Large-N Collective Fields and Holography

We propose that the euclidean bilocal collective field theory of critical large-N vector models provides a complete definition of the proposed dual theory of higher spin fields in anti de-Sitter spaces. We show how this bilocal field can be decomposed into an infinite number of even spin fields in one more dimension. The collective field has a nontrivial classical solution which leads to a O(N) thermodynamic entropy characteristic of the lower dimensional theory, as required by general considerations of holography. A subtle cancellation of the entropy coming from the bulk fields in one higher dimension with O(1) contributions from the classical solution ensures that the subleading terms in thermodynamic quantities are of the expected form. While the spin components of the collective field transform properly under dilatational, translational and rotational isometries of $AdS$, special conformal transformations mix fields of different spins indicating a need for a nonlocal map between the two sets of fields. We discuss the nature of the propagating degrees of freedom through a hamiltonian form of collective field theory and argue that nonsinglet states which are present in an euclidean version are related to nontrivial backgrounds.Comment: 27 pages, harvmac. v2: references adde

Finite Size Scaling for Low Energy Excitations in Integer Heisenberg Spin Chains

In this paper we study the finite size scaling for low energy excitations of $S=1$ and $S=2$ Heisenberg chains, using the density matrix renormalization group technique. A crossover from $1/L$ behavior (with $L$ as the chain length) for medium chain length to $1/L^2$ scaling for long chain length is found for excitations in the continuum band as the length of the open chain increases. Topological spin $S=1/2$ excitations are shown to give rise to the two lowest energy states for both open and periodic $S=1$ chains. In periodic chains these two excitations are ``confined'' next to each other, while for open chains they are two free edge 1/2 spins. The finite size scaling of the two lowest energy excitations of open $S=2$ chains is determined by coupling the two free edge $S=1$ spins. The gap and correlation length for $S=2$ open Heisenberg chains are shown to be 0.082 (in units of the exchange $J$) and 47, respectively.Comment: 4 pages (two column), PS file, to be appear as a PRB Brief Repor

Quasi-Periodic Releases of Streamer Blobs and Velocity Variability of the Slow Solar Wind near the Sun

We search for persistent and quasi-periodic release events of streamer blobs during 2007 with the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph on the \textit{Solar and Heliospheric Observatory} and assess the velocity of the slow solar wind along the plasma sheet above the corresponding streamer by measuring the dynamic parameters of blobs. We find 10 quasi-periodic release events of streamer blobs lasting for three to four days. In each day of these events, we observe three-five blobs. The results are in line with previous studies using data observed near the last solar minimum. Using the measured blob velocity as a proxy for that of the mean flow, we suggest that the velocity of the background slow solar wind near the Sun can vary significantly within a few hours. This provides an observational manifestation of the large velocity variability of the slow solar wind near the Sun.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Soalr Physic

Granular Solid Hydrodynamics

Granular elasticity, an elasticity theory useful for calculating static stress distribution in granular media, is generalized to the dynamic case by including the plastic contribution of the strain. A complete hydrodynamic theory is derived based on the hypothesis that granular medium turns transiently elastic when deformed. This theory includes both the true and the granular temperatures, and employs a free energy expression that encapsulates a full jamming phase diagram, in the space spanned by pressure, shear stress, density and granular temperature. For the special case of stationary granular temperatures, the derived hydrodynamic theory reduces to {\em hypoplasticity}, a state-of-the-art engineering model.Comment: 42 pages 3 fi