Global impacts of land degradation

Study commissioned by the Scientific, Technical and Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to support the development of the new GEF focal area of Land Degradatio

Ionized Gas in Damped Lyman Alpha Protogalaxies: II. Comparison Between Models and the Kinematic Data

We test semi-analytic models for galaxy formation with accurate kinematic data of damped Lyman alpha protogalaxies (DLAs) presented in the companion paper I. The models envisage centrifugally supported exponential disks at the centers of dark matter halos which are filled with ionized gas undergoing radial infall to the disks. The halo masses are drawn from cross-section weighted mass distributions predicted by CDM cosmogonies, or by the null hypothesis (TF model) that the dark matter mass distribution has not evolved since z ~ 3. In our models, C IV absorption lines detected in DLAs arise in infalling ionized clouds while the low-ion absorption lines arise from neutral gas in the disks. Using Monte Carlo methods we find: (a) The CDM models are incompatible with the low-ion statistics at more than 99% confidence whereas some TF models cannot be excluded at more than 88% confidence. (b) Both CDM and TF models agree with the observed distribution of C IV velocity widths. (c) The CDM models generate differences between the mean velocities of C IV and low ion profiles in agreement with the data, while the TF model produces differences in the means that are too large. (d) Both CDM and TF models produce ratios of C IV to low-ion velocity widths that are too large. (e) Both CDM and TF models generate C IV versus low-ion cross-correlation functions incompatible with the data. While it is possible to select model parameters resulting in consistency with the data, the disk-halo configuration assumed in both cosmogonies still does not produce significant overlap in velocity space between C IV low-ion velocity profiles. We conjecture that including angular momentum of the infalling clouds will increase the overlap between C IV and low-ion profiles.Comment: 18 pages, 12 Figures, Accepted for publication in the Dec. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journa

String Solitons

We review the status of solitons in superstring theory, with a view to understanding the strong coupling regime. These {\it solitonic} solutions are non-singular field configurations which solve the empty-space low-energy field equations (generalized, whenever possible, to all orders in $\alpha'$), carry a non-vanishing topological "magnetic" charge and are stabilized by a topological conservation law. They are compared and contrasted with the {\it elementary} solutions which are singular solutions of the field equations with a $\sigma$-model source term and carry a non-vanishing Noether "electric" charge. In both cases, the solutions of most interest are those which preserve half the spacetime supersymmetries and saturate a Bogomol'nyi bound. They typically arise as the extreme mass=charge limit of more general two-parameter solutions with event horizons. We also describe the theory {\it dual} to the fundamental string for which the roles of elementary and soliton solutions are interchanged. In ten spacetime dimensions, this dual theory is a superfivebrane and this gives rise to a string/fivebrane duality conjecture according to which the fivebrane may be regarded as fundamental in its own right, with the strongly coupled string corresponding to the weakly coupled fivebrane and vice-versa. After compactification to four spacetime dimensions, the fivebrane appears as a magnetic monopole or a dual string according as it wraps around five or four of the compactified dimensions. This gives rise to a four-dimensional string/string duality conjecture which subsumes a Montonen-Olive type duality in that the magnetic monopoles of the fundamental string correspond to the electric winding states of the dual string. This leads to a {\it duality of dualities} whereby under string/string duality the the strong/weak coupling $S$-duality trades places with the minimum/maximum length $T$-duality. Since these magnetic monopoles are extreme black holes, a prediction of $S$-duality is that the corresponding electric massive states of the fundamental string are also extreme black holes.Comment: 150 pages, TeX, submitted to Physics Reports, 3 figures available on reques

CTMC calculations of electron capture and ionization in collisions of multiply charged ions with elliptical Rydberg atoms

We have performed classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC) studies of electron capture and ionization in multiply charged (Q=8) ion-Rydberg atom collisions at intermediate impact velocities. Impact parallel to the minor and to the major axis, respectively, of the initial Kepler electron ellipse has been investigated. The important role of the initial electron momentum distribution found for singly charged ion impact is strongly disminished for higher projectile charge, while the initial spatial distribution remains important for all values of Q studied.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figure

Absorption by Extremal D3-branes

The absorption in the extremal D3-brane background is studied for a class of massless fields whose linear perturbations leave the ten-dimensional background metric unperturbed, as well as the minimally-coupled massive scalar. We find that various fields have the same absorption probability as that of the dilaton-axion system, which is given exactly via the Mathieu equation. We analyze the features of the absorption cross-sections in terms of effective Schr\"odinger potentials, conjecture a general form of the dual effective potentials, and provide explicit numerical results for the whole energy range. As expected, all partial-wave absorption probabilities tend to zero (one) at low (large) energies, and exhibit an oscillatory pattern as a function of energy. The equivalence of absorption probabilities for various modes has implications for the correlation functions on the field, including subleading contributions on the field-theory side. In particular, certain half-integer and integer spin fields have identical absorption probabilities, thus providing evidence that the corresponding operator pairs on the field theory side belong to the same supermultiplets.Comment: Latex, 9 figures and 17 page