221 research outputs found
Experimental determination of cosmic ray charged particle intensity profiles in the atmosphere
Absolute cosmic-ray free air ionization and charged particle fluxes and dose rates throughout the atmosphere were measured on a series of balloon flights that commenced in 1968. Argon-filled ionization chambers equipped with solid-state electrometers, with different gas pressures and steel wall thicknesses, and a pair of aluminum-wall Gm counters have provided the basic data. These data are supplemented by measurements with air-filled and tissue equivalent ionization chambers and a scintillation spectrometer. Laboratory experiments together with analyses of the theoretical aspects of the detector responses to cosmic radiation indicate that these profiles can be determined to an overall accuracy of + or - 5 percent
An experiment to measure the energy spectrum of cosmic ray antiprotons from 100 to 1000 MeV
Production models were developed and the confirmation of each one had significant astrophysical impact. These include radical modifications of propagation models, cosmic ray antiprotons injection from neighboring domains of antimatter, p production by evaporating primordial black holes, and cosmic ray p's as annihilation products of supersymmetry particles that might make up the dark dynamical mass of the Galaxy. It is that p's originating from supersymmetric parents might have distinct spectral features that would survive solar modulation; in one model, higgsino annihilation proceeds through the bb quark-antiquark channel, producing a spectral bump at approx. 0.3 GeV in the p spectrum
Watching My Mind Unfold versus Yours: An fMRI Study Using a Novel Camera Technology to Examine Neural Differences in Self-projection of Self versus Other Perspectives
Self-projection, the capacity to re-experience the personal past and to mentally infer another person's perspective, has been linked to medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In particular, ventral mPFC is associated with inferences about one's own self, whereas dorsal mPFC is associated with inferences about another individual. In the present fMRI study, we examined self-projection using a novel camera technology, which employs a sensor and timer to automatically take hundreds of photographs when worn, in order to create dynamic visuospatial cues taken from a first-person perspective. This allowed us to ask participants to self-project into the personal past or into the life of another person. We predicted that self-projection to the personal past would elicit greater activity in ventral mPFC, whereas self-projection of another perspective would rely on dorsal mPFC. There were three main findings supporting this prediction. First, we found that self-projection to the personal past recruited greater ventral mPFC, whereas observing another person's perspective recruited dorsal mPFC. Second, activity in ventral versus dorsal mPFC was sensitive to parametric modulation on each trial by the ability to relive the personal past or to understand another's perspective, respectively. Third, task-related functional connectivity analysis revealed that ventral mPFC contributed to the medial temporal lobe network linked to memory processes, whereas dorsal mPFC contributed to the fronto-parietal network linked to controlled processes. In sum, these results suggest that ventralâdorsal subregions of the anterior midline are functionally dissociable and may differentially contribute to self-projection of self versus other
Lexical Predictability during Natural Reading: Effects of Surprisal and Entropy Reduction
What are the effects of wordâbyâword predictability on sentence processing times during the natural reading of a text? Although information complexity metrics such as surprisal and entropy reduction have been useful in addressing this question, these metrics tend to be estimated using computational language models, which require some degree of commitment to a particular theory of language processing. Taking a different approach, this study implemented a largeâscale cumulative cloze task to collect wordâbyâword predictability data for 40 passages and compute surprisal and entropy reduction values in a theoryâneutral manner. A separate group of participants read the same texts while their eye movements were recorded. Results showed that increases in surprisal and entropy reduction were both associated with increases in reading times. Furthermore, these effects did not depend on the global difficulty of the text. The findings suggest that surprisal and entropy reduction independently contribute to variation in reading times, as these metrics seem to capture different aspects of lexical predictability
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Some general properties of stimulated Raman propagation with pump depletion, transiency and dispersion
This note considers some of the properties of the Stokes pulse that grows from a specified seed pulse in the presence of a strong pump pulse as it propagates through a dispersive atomic vapor. We first present an generic dimensionless form for the coupled equations that govern the propagation of pump and Stokes fields or collinear plane-wave pulses. By treating the two fields we permit pump depletion. We include transient atomic response (as embodied in the Raman coherence), but neglect changes in atomic populations. (Thus our equations pertain to the regime in which atoms are more numerous than photons). The equations employ a gain length, a dispersion time {tau}{sub dis}, and a Raman coherence time (or memory time) {tau}{sub R} as basic parameters: these two times, together with a single-photon stationary-atom detuning {Delta}, subsume the details of a particular atomic Raman transition and particular operating conditions. (The effects of Doppler shifts enters the equations through the coherence time). We discuss some general properties of these generic Raman propagation equations, and present illustrations of their solutions in the absence of dispersion. We comment on departures from exponential growth. We than show examples of behavior when dispersion is present and the pump pulse has a bandwidth that exceeds the transform limit. The illustrations presented here do not pertain to any specific atom (i.e. specific wavelengths and oscillator strengths) or to specific experimental conditions (i.e. number densities and pulse intensities). To permit the connection between the present generic results and particular experiments we conclude by providing expressions for the gain length and dispersion time in terms of atomic number density, polarizabilities, oscillator strengths, statistical weights, transition frequencies, and polarization directions. 11 figs
Strangelets: Who is Looking, and How?
It has been over 30 years since the first suggestion that the true ground
state of cold hadronic matter might be not nuclear matter but rather strange
quark matter (SQM). Ever since, searches for stable SQM have been proceeding in
various forms and have observed a handful of interesting events but have
neither been able to find compelling evidence for stable strangelets nor to
rule out their existence. I will survey the current status and near future of
such searches with particular emphasis on the idea of SQM from strange star
collisions as part of the cosmic ray flux.Comment: Talk given at International Conference on Strangeness in Quark
Matter, 2006. 8 pages. 1 figur
Indirect Detection of a Light Higgsino Motivated by Collider Data
Kane and Wells recently argued that collider data point to a Higgsino-like
lightest supersymmetric partner which would explain the dark matter in our
Galactic halo. They discuss direct detection of such dark-matter particles in
laboratory detectors. Here, we argue that such a particle, if it is indeed the
dark matter, might alternatively be accessible in experiments which search for
energetic neutrinos from dark-matter annihilation in the Sun. We provide
accurate analytic estimates for the rates which take into account all relevant
physical effects. Currently, the predicted signal falls roughly one to three
orders of magnitude below experimental bounds, depending on the mass and
coupling of the particle; however, detectors such as MACRO, super-Kamiokande,
and AMANDA will continue to take data and should be able to rule out or confirm
an interesting portion of the possible mass range for such a dark-matter
particle within the next five years.Comment: 10 pages, RevTe
Model-Independent Comparison of Direct vs. Indirect Detection of Supersymmetric Dark Matter
We compare the rate for elastic scattering of neutralinos from various nuclei
with the flux of upward muons induced by energetic neutrinos from neutralino
annihilation in the Sun and Earth. We consider both scalar and axial-vector
interactions of neutralinos with nuclei. We find that the event rate in a kg of
germanium is roughly equivalent to that in a - to -m muon
detector for a neutralino with primarily scalar coupling to nuclei. For an
axially coupled neutralino, the event rate in a 50-gram hydrogen detector is
roughly the same as that in a 10- to 500-m muon detector. Expected
experimental backgrounds favor forthcoming elastic-scattering detectors for
scalar couplings while the neutrino detectors have the advantage for
axial-vector couplings.Comment: 10 pages, self-unpacking uuencoded PostScript fil
Cosmic-ray strangelets in the Earth's atmosphere
If strange quark matter is stable in small lumps, we expect to find such
lumps, called ``strangelets'', on Earth due to a steady flux in cosmic rays.
Following recent astrophysical models, we predict the strangelet flux at the
top of the atmosphere, and trace the strangelets' behavior in atmospheric
chemistry and circulation. We show that several strangelet species may have
large abundances in the atmosphere; that they should respond favorably to
laboratory-scale preconcentration techniques; and that they present promising
targets for mass spectroscopy experiments.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures, revtex
The Energy Spectra and Relative Abundances of Electrons and Positrons in the Galactic Cosmic Radiation
Observations of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons have been made with a new
balloon-borne detector, HEAT (the "High-Energy Antimatter Telescope"), first
flown in 1994 May from Fort Sumner, NM. We describe the instrumental approach
and the data analysis procedures, and we present results from this flight. The
measurement has provided a new determination of the individual energy spectra
of electrons and positrons from 5 GeV to about 50 GeV, and of the combined
"all-electron" intensity (e+ + e-) up to about 100 GeV. The single power-law
spectral indices for electrons and positrons are alpha = 3.09 +/- 0.08 and 3.3
+/- 0.2, respectively. We find that a contribution from primary sources to the
positron intensity in this energy region, if it exists, must be quite small.Comment: latex2e file, 30 pages, 15 figures, aas2pp4.sty and epsf.tex needed.
To appear in May 10, 1998 issue of Ap.
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