A VIEW FROM THE GROUND: A REFORM GROUP’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE ONGOING EFFORT TO ACHIEVE MERIT SELECTION OF JUDGES

This article describes the history of judicial selection in the state of Pennsylvania. It describes the judicial selection reform movement and the growth of the organization Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts ( PMC ) which devises solutions to meet the various challenges to judicial integrity in Pennsylvania. It focuses on the merit system that PMC has been trying to achieve for Pennsylvania\u27s appellate courts

Low thrust rocket test facility

A low thrust chemical rocket test facility has recently become operational at the NASA-Lewis. The new facility is used to conduct both long duration and performance tests at altitude over a thruster's operating envelope using hydrogen and oxygen gas for propellants. The facility provides experimental support for a broad range of objectives, including fundamental modeling of fluids and combustion phenomena, the evaluation of thruster components, and life testing of full rocket designs. The major mechanical and electrical systems are described along with aspects of the various optical diagnostics available in the test cell. The electrical and mechanical systems are designed for low down time between tests and low staffing requirements for test operations. Initial results are also presented which illustrate the various capabilities of the cell

Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of Light Nuclei Using Chiral Potentials

We present the first Green's function Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei with nuclear interactions derived from chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-leading order. Up to this order, the interactions can be constructed in a local form and are therefore amenable to quantum Monte Carlo calculations. We demonstrate a systematic improvement with each order for the binding energies of $A=3$ and $A=4$ systems. We also carry out the first few-body tests to study perturbative expansions of chiral potentials at different orders, finding that higher-order corrections are more perturbative for softer interactions. Our results confirm the necessity of a three-body force for correct reproduction of experimental binding energies and radii, and pave the way for studying few- and many-nucleon systems using quantum Monte Carlo methods with chiral interactions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables. Updated references. Cosmetic changes to figures, tables, and equations; added a sentence clarifying the correspondence between our real-space cutoffs and momentum-space cutoffs. Other sentences were reworded for clarit

Analyzing the Fierz Rearrangement Freedom for Local Chiral Two-Nucleon Potentials

Chiral effective field theory is a framework to derive systematic nuclear interactions. It is based on the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics and includes long-range pion physics explicitly, while shorter-range physics is expanded in a general operator basis. The number of low-energy couplings at a particular order in the expansion can be reduced by exploiting the fact that nucleons are fermions and therefore obey the Pauli exclusion principle. The antisymmetry permits the selection of a subset of the allowed contact operators at a given order. When local regulators are used for these short-range interactions, however, this "Fierz rearrangement freedom" is violated. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this violation at leading order (LO) in the chiral expansion. We construct LO and next-to-leading order (NLO) potentials for all possible LO-operator pairs and study their reproduction of phase shifts, the ${}^4$He ground-state energy, and the neutron-matter energy at different densities. We demonstrate that the Fierz rearrangement freedom is partially restored at NLO where subleading contact interactions enter. We also discuss implications for local chiral three-nucleon interactions.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Antiferromagnetic Order of the Ru and Gd in Superconducting RuSr2GdCu2O8

Neutron diffraction has been used to study the magnetic order in RuSr{2}GdCu2O8. The Ru moments order antiferromagnetically at T{N}=136(2)K, coincident with the previously reported onset of ferromagnetism. Neighboring spins are antiparallel in all three directions, with a low T moment of 1.18(6) mu {B} along the c-axis. Our measurements put an upper limit of ~0.1 mu{B} to any net zero-field moment, with fields exceeding ~0.4T needed to induce a measurable magnetization. The Gd ions order independently at T{N}=2.50(2)K with the same spin configuration. PACS numbers: 74.72.Jt, 75.25.+z, 74.25.Ha, 75.30.KzComment: Four pages, Latex, 5 eps figure

Spin Dynamics of the Magnetoresistive Pyrochlore Tl_2Mn_2O_7

Neutron scattering has been used to study the magnetic order and spin dynamics of the colossal magnetoresistive pyrochlore Tl_2Mn_2O_7. On cooling from the paramagnetic state, magnetic correlations develop and appear to diverge at T_C (123 K). In the ferromagnetic phase well defined spin waves are observed, with a gapless ($\Delta <0.04$ meV) dispersion relation E=Dq^{2} as expected for an ideal isotropic ferromagnet. As T approaches T_C from low T, the spin waves renormalize, but no significant central diffusive component to the fluctuation spectrum is observed in stark contrast to the La$_{1-x}$(Ca,Ba,Sr)$_x$MnO$_3$ system. These results argue strongly that the mechanism responsible for the magnetoresistive effect has a different origin in these two classes of materials.Comment: 4 pages (RevTex), 4 figures (encapsulated postscript), to be published in Phys. Rev. Let

First-order nature of the ferromagnetic phase transition in (La-Ca)MnO_3 near optimal doping

Neutron scattering has been used to study the nature of the ferromagnetic transition in single crystals of La_0.7Ca_0.3MnO_3 and La_0.8Ca_0.2MnO_3, and polycrystalline samples of La_0.67Ca_0.33MnO_3 and La_5/8Ca_3/8MnO_3 where the naturally occurring O-16 can be replaced with the O-18 isotope. Small angle neutron scattering on the x=0.3 single crystal reveals a discontinuous change in the scattering at the Curie temperature for wave vectors below ~0.065 A^-1. Strong relaxation effects are observed for this domain scattering, for the magnetic order parameter, and for the quasielastic scattering, demonstrating that the transition is not continuous in nature. There is a large oxygen isotope effect observed for the T_C in the polycrystalline samples. For the optimally doped x=3/8 sample we observed T_C(O-16)=266.5 K and T_C(O-18)=261.5 K at 90% O-18 substitution. The temperature dependence of the spin-wave stiffness is found to be identical for the two samples despite changes in T_C. Hence, T_C is not solely determined by the magnetic subsystem, but instead the ferromagnetic phase is truncated by the formation of polarons which cause an abrupt transition to the paramagnetic, insulating state. Application of uniaxial stress in the x=0.3 single crystal sharply enhances the polaron scattering at room temperature. Measurements of the phonon density-of-states show only modest differences above and below T_C and between the two different isotopic samples.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Chiral Three-Nucleon Interactions in Light Nuclei, Neutron-α\alpha Scattering, and Neutron Matter

We present quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei, neutron-$\alpha$ scattering, and neutron matter using local two- and three-nucleon ($3N$) interactions derived from chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^2$LO). The two undetermined $3N$ low-energy couplings are fit to the $^4$He binding energy and, for the first time, to the spin-orbit splitting in the neutron-$\alpha$ $P$-wave phase shifts. Furthermore, we investigate different choices of local $3N$-operator structures and find that chiral interactions at N$^2$LO are able to simultaneously reproduce the properties of $A=3,4,5$ systems and of neutron matter, in contrast to commonly used phenomenological $3N$ interactions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table - updated version: small wording changes, one reference chang