12,110 research outputs found
The pulsed air gust generator Final report
Wind tunnel simulation of jet pulsing apparatus for controlled gust
The construction and evaluation of four series of lessons to stimulate the flow of ideas in the creative writing of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade pupils.
Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit
Light-Front Holography: A First Approximation to QCD
Starting from the Hamiltonian equation of motion in QCD, we identify an
invariant light-front coordinate which allows the separation of the
dynamics of quark and gluon binding from the kinematics of constituent spin and
internal orbital angular momentum. The result is a single variable light-front
Schrodinger equation for QCD which determines the eigenspectrum and the
light-front wavefunctions of hadrons for general spin and orbital angular
momentum. This light-front wave equation is equivalent to the equations of
motion which describe the propagation of spin- modes on anti-de Sitter (AdS)
space.Comment: 4 pages. The limits of validity of the model are further discussed.
To appear in Physical Review Letter
Balmer and Metal Absorption Feature Gradients in M32
Spectra from MDM Observatory are used to assess Lick/IDS feature strength
gradients inside the half-light radius of the compact Local Group elliptical
galaxy M32. All but a few (of 24 measured) indices show a statistically
significant gradient. Comparing with models, the index gradients indicate a
mean age and abundance gradient in the sense that the nucleus is a factor of
2.5 younger and a factor of 0.3 dex more metal-rich than at 1 effective radius.
This conclusion is only weakly dependent on which index combinations are used
and is robust to high accuracy. Stars near the M32 nucleus have a mean age and
heavy element abundance [M/H] of (4.7 Gyr, +0.02), judging from models by
Worthey with variable abundance ratios. This result has very small formal
random errors, although, of course, there is significant age-metallicity
degeneracy along an (age, abundance) line segment from (5.0 Gyr, 0.00) to (4.5
Gyr, +0.05). An abundance pattern of [C/M]=+0.077, [N/M]=-0.13, [Mg/M]=-0.18,
[Fe/M]~0.0, and [Na/M]=+0.12 is required to fit the feature data, with a
fitting precision of about 0.01 dex. Model uncertainties make the accuracies of
these values at least twice the magnitude of the precision. Forcing
scaled-solar abundances does not change the age very much, but it increases the
rms goodness of model-data fit by a factor of 3 and broadens the allowed range
of age to Gyr. The overall abundance pattern contrasts with larger
elliptical galaxies, in which all measurable lighter elements are enhanced
relative to iron and calcium.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, Astronomical Journal, in pres
Quantum circuits with uniformly controlled one-qubit gates
Uniformly controlled one-qubit gates are quantum gates which can be
represented as direct sums of two-dimensional unitary operators acting on a
single qubit. We present a quantum gate array which implements any n-qubit gate
of this type using at most 2^{n-1} - 1 controlled-NOT gates, 2^{n-1} one-qubit
gates and a single diagonal n-qubit gate. The circuit is based on the so-called
quantum multiplexor, for which we provide a modified construction. We
illustrate the versatility of these gates by applying them to the decomposition
of a general n-qubit gate and a local state preparation procedure. Moreover, we
study their implementation using only nearest-neighbor gates. We give upper
bounds for the one-qubit and controlled-NOT gate counts for all the
aforementioned applications. In all four cases, the proposed circuit topologies
either improve on or achieve the previously reported upper bounds for the gate
counts. Thus, they provide the most efficient method for general gate
decompositions currently known.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. v2 has simpler notation and sharpens some
result
Gaia eclipsing binary and multiple systems. Two-Gaussian models applied to OGLE-III eclipsing binary light curves in the Large Magellanic Cloud
The advent of large scale multi-epoch surveys raises the need for automated
light curve (LC) processing. This is particularly true for eclipsing binaries
(EBs), which form one of the most populated types of variable objects. The Gaia
mission, launched at the end of 2013, is expected to detect of the order of few
million EBs over a 5-year mission.
We present an automated procedure to characterize EBs based on the geometric
morphology of their LCs with two aims: first to study an ensemble of EBs on a
statistical ground without the need to model the binary system, and second to
enable the automated identification of EBs that display atypical LCs. We model
the folded LC geometry of EBs using up to two Gaussian functions for the
eclipses and a cosine function for any ellipsoidal-like variability that may be
present between the eclipses. The procedure is applied to the OGLE-III data set
of EBs in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) as a proof of concept. The bayesian
information criterion is used to select the best model among models containing
various combinations of those components, as well as to estimate the
significance of the components.
Based on the two-Gaussian models, EBs with atypical LC geometries are
successfully identified in two diagrams, using the Abbe values of the original
and residual folded LCs, and the reduced . Cleaning the data set from
the atypical cases and further filtering out LCs that contain non-significant
eclipse candidates, the ensemble of EBs can be studied on a statistical ground
using the two-Gaussian model parameters. For illustration purposes, we present
the distribution of projected eccentricities as a function of orbital period
for the OGLE-III set of EBs in the LMC, as well as the distribution of their
primary versus secondary eclipse widths.Comment: 20 pages, 29 figures. Submitted to A&
The Distance to the Coma Cluster from Surface Brightness Fluctuations
We report on the first determination of the distance to the Coma Cluster
based on surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) measurements obtained from Hubble
Space Telescope WFPC2 observations of the bright E0 galaxy NGC 4881 in the Coma
Cluster and ground-based observations of the standard E1 galaxy NGC 3379 in the
Leo-I group. Relative distances based on the I-band fluctuation magnitude,
I(SBF), are strongly dependent on metallicity and age of the stellar
population. However, the radial changes in the stellar populations of the two
giant ellipticals, NGC 3379 and NGC 4881, are well described by published Mg_2
gradients, and the ground-based measurements of I(SBF) at several radial points
in NGC 3379 are used to calibrate I(SBF) in terms of the Mg_2 index. The
distance to NGC 3379, assumed to be identical to the average SBF distance of
the Leo-I group, is combined with the new SBF measurements of NGC 4881 to
obtain a Coma Cluster distance of 102+-14 Mpc. Combining this distance with the
cosmic recession velocity of Coma (7186+-428 km/s), we find the Hubble constant
to be H_0 = 71+-11 km/s/Mpc.Comment: 12 pages, LaTex, includes aaspp4.sty and 3 eps figures. To appear in
ApJ Letter
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