136,764 research outputs found
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 ), 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
-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 -duality trades places with the minimum/maximum length
-duality. Since these magnetic monopoles are extreme black holes, a
prediction of -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
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