50,109 research outputs found
No periodicity revealed for an "eclipsing" ultraluminous supersoft X-ray source in M81
Luminous supersoft X-ray sources found in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds
are likely white dwarfs that steadily or cyclically burn accreted matter on
their surface, which are promising type Ia supernova progenitors. Observations
of distant galaxies with Chandra and XMM-Newton have revealed supersoft sources
that are generally hotter and more luminous, including some ultraluminous
supersoft sources (ULSs) that are possibly intermediate mass black holes of a
few thousand solar masses. In this paper we report our X-ray spectral and
timing analysis for M81-ULS1, an ultraluminous supersoft source in the nearby
spiral galaxy M81. M81-ULS1 has been persistently supersoft in 17 Chandra ACIS
observations spanning six years, and its spectrum can be described by either a
eV blackbody for a white dwarf, or a
eV multicolor accretion disk for a
intermediate mass black hole. In two observations, the light curves exhibited
dramatic flux drop/rise on time scales of seconds, reminiscent of
eclipse ingress/egress in eclipsing X-ray binaries. However, the exhaustive
search for periodicity in the reasonable range of 50 ksec to 50 days failed to
reveal an orbital period. The failure to reveal any periodicity is consistent
with the long period ( yrs) predicted for this system given the optical
identification of the secondary with an asymptotic giant star. Also, the
eclipse-like dramatic flux changes in hours are hard to explain under the white
dwarf model, but can in principle be explained by disk temperature changes
induced by accretion rate variations under the intermediate mass black hole
model.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, to appear in ApJ
The General Theory of Quantum Field Mixing
We present a general theory of mixing for an arbitrary number of fields with
integer or half-integer spin. The time dynamics of the interacting fields is
solved and the Fock space for interacting fields is explicitly constructed. The
unitary inequivalence of the Fock space of base (unmixed) eigenstates and the
physical mixed eigenstates is shown by a straightforward algebraic method for
any number of flavors in boson or fermion statistics. The oscillation formulas
based on the nonperturbative vacuum are derived in a unified general
formulation and then applied to both two and three flavor cases. Especially,
the mixing of spin-1 (vector) mesons and the CKM mixing phenomena in the
Standard Model are discussed emphasizing the nonperturbative vacuum effect in
quantum field theory
Adaptive Genetic Algorithm for Crystal Structure Prediction
We present a genetic algorithm (GA) for structural search that combines the
speed of structure exploration by classical potentials with the accuracy of
density functional theory (DFT) calculations in an adaptive and iterative way.
This strategy increases the efficiency of the DFT-based GA by several orders of
magnitude. This gain allows considerable increase in size and complexity of
systems that can be studied by first principles. The method's performance is
illustrated by successful structure identifications of complex binary and
ternary inter-metallic compounds with 36 and 54 atoms per cell, respectively.
The discovery of a multi-TPa Mg-silicate phase with unit cell containing up to
56 atoms is also reported. Such phase is likely to be an essential component of
terrestrial exoplanetary mantles.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
Mixing and oscillations of neutral particles in Quantum Field Theory
We study the mixing of neutral particles in Quantum Field Theory: neutral
boson field and Majorana field are treated in the case of mixing among two
generations. We derive the orthogonality of flavor and mass representations and
show how to consistently calculate oscillation formulas, which agree with
previous results for charged fields and exhibit corrections with respect to the
usual quantum mechanical expressions.Comment: 8 pages, revised versio
Crystal Structure and Chemistry of Topological Insulators
Topological surface states, a new kind of electronic state of matter, have
recently been observed on the cleaved surfaces of crystals of a handful of
small band gap semiconductors. The underlying chemical factors that enable
these states are crystal symmetry, the presence of strong spin orbit coupling,
and an inversion of the energies of the bulk electronic states that normally
contribute to the valence and conduction bands. The goals of this review are to
briefly introduce the physics of topological insulators to a chemical audience
and to describe the chemistry, defect chemistry, and crystal structures of the
compounds in this emergent field.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Materials Chemistry, 47 double spaced pages,
9 figure
Nucleon-Quarkonium Elastic Scattering and the Gluon Contribution to Nucleon Spin
It is shown that the amplitude for the scattering of a heavy quarkonium
system from a nucleon near threshold is completely determined by the fraction
of angular momentum, as well as linear momentum, carried by gluons in the
nucleon. A form for the quarkonium-nucleon non-relativistic potential is
derived.Comment: 4 pages, no figures. Author's e-mail: [email protected]
Lepton charge and neutrino mixing in pion decay processes
We consider neutrino mixing and oscillations in quantum field theory and
compute the neutrino lepton charge in decay processes where neutrinos are
generated. We also discuss the proper definition of flavor charge and states
and clarify the issues of the possibility of different mass parameters in field
mixing.Comment: 13 page
Higher moments of nucleon spin structure functions in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory and in a resonance model
The third moment of the twist-3 part of the nucleon spin structure
function is generalized to arbitrary momentum transfer and is
evaluated in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory (HBChPT) up to order
and in a unitary isobar model (MAID). We show how to link
as well as higher moments of the nucleon spin structure functions
and to nucleon spin polarizabilities. We compare our results with the
most recent experimental data, and find a good description of these available
data within the unitary isobar model. We proceed to extract the twist-4 matrix
element which appears in the suppressed term in the twist
expansion of the spin structure function for proton and neutron.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figure
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