10,556 research outputs found
Composite mirror facets for ground based gamma ray astronomy
Composite mirrors for gamma-ray astronomy have been developed to fulfill the
specifications required for the next generation of Cherenkov telescopes
represented by CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array). In addition to the basic
requirements on focus and reflection efficiency, the mirrors have to be stiff,
lightweight, durable and cost efficient. In this paper, the technology
developed to produce such mirrors is described, as well as some tests that have
been performed to validate them. It is shown that these mirrors comply with the
needs of CTA, making them good candidates for use on a significant part of the
array.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, accepted to be published on NIM
Spin superfluidity and spin-orbit gauge symmetry fixing
The Hamiltonian describing 2D electron gas, in a spin-orbit active medium,
can be cast into a consistent non-Abelian gauge field theory leading to a
proper definition of the spin current. The generally advocated gauge symmetric
version of the theory results in current densities that are gauge covariant, a
fact that poses severe concerns on their physical nature. We show that in fact
the problem demands gauge fixing, leaving no room to ambiguity in the
definition of physical spin currents. Gauge fixing also allows for polarized
edge excitations not present in the gauge symmetric case. The scenario here is
analogous to that of superconductivity gauge theory. We develop a variational
formulation that accounts for the constraints between U(1) physical fields and
SU(2) gauge fields and show that gauge fixing renders a physical matter and
radiation currents and derive the particular consequences for the Rashba SO
interaction.Comment: to appear in EP
Hyaluronan synthase mediates dye translocation across liposomal membranes
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hyaluronan (HA) is made at the plasma membrane and secreted into the extracellular medium or matrix by phospolipid-dependent hyaluronan synthase (HAS), which is active as a monomer. Since the mechanism by which HA is translocated across membranes is still unresolved, we assessed the presence of an intraprotein pore within HAS by adding purified <it>Streptococcus equisimilis </it>HAS (SeHAS) to liposomes preloaded with the fluorophore Cascade Blue (CB).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CB translocation (efflux) was not observed with mock-purified material from empty vector control <it>E. coli </it>membranes, but was induced by SeHAS, purified from membranes, in a time- and dose-dependent manner. CB efflux was eliminated or greatly reduced when purified SeHAS was first treated under conditions that inhibit enzyme activity: heating, oxidization or cysteine modification with N-ethylmaleimide. Reduced CB efflux also occurred with SeHAS K48E or K48F mutants, in which alteration of K48 within membrane domain 2 causes decreased activity and HA product size. The above results used liposomes containing bovine cardiolipin (BCL). An earlier study testing many synthetic lipids found that the best activating lipid for SeHAS is tetraoleoyl cardiolipin (TO-CL) and that, in contrast, tetramyristoyl cardiolipin (TM-CL) is an inactivating lipid (Weigel et al, J. <it>Biol. Chem</it>. <b>281</b>, 36542, 2006). Consistent with the effects of these CL species on SeHAS activity, CB efflux was more than 2-fold greater in liposomes made with TO-CL compared to TM-CL.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results indicate the presence of an intraprotein pore in HAS and support a model in which HA is translocated to the exterior by HAS itself.</p
Pasti-Sorokin-Tonin Actions in the Presence of Sources
Pasti, Sorokin and Tonin have recently constructed manifestly
Lorentz-invariant actions for self-dual field strengths and for Maxwell fields
with manifest electromagnetic duality. Using the method of Deser, Gomberoff,
Henneaux and Teitelboim, we generalize these actions in the presence of
sources.Comment: 6 pages, LaTe
Two electron entanglement enhancement by an inelastic scattering process
In order to assess inelastic effects on two fermion entanglement production,
we address an exactly solvable two-particle scattering problem where the target
is an excitable scatterer. Useful entanglement, as measured by the two particle
concurrence, is obtained from post-selection of oppositely scattered particle
states. The matrix formalism is generalized in order to address non-unitary
evolution in the propagating channels. We find the striking result that
inelasticity can actually increase concurrence as compared to the elastic case
by increasing the uncertainty of the single particle subspace. Concurrence
zeros are controlled by either single particle resonance energies or total
reflection conditions that ascertain precisely one of the electron states.
Concurrence minima also occur and are controlled by entangled resonance
situations were the electron becomes entangled with the scatterer, and thus
does not give up full information of its state. In this model, exciting the
scatterer can never fully destroy phase coherence due to an intrinsic limit to
the probability of inelastic events.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev
Metastability of a granular surface in a spinning bucket
The surface shape of a spinning bucket of granular material is studied using
a continuum model of surface flow developed by Bouchaud et al. and Mehta et al.
An experimentally observed central subcritical region is reproduced by the
model. The subcritical region occurs when a metastable surface becomes unstable
via a nonlinear instability mechanism. The nonlinear instability mechanism
destabilizes the surface in large systems while a linear instability mechanism
is relevant for smaller systems. The range of angles in which the granular
surface is metastable vanishes with increasing system size.Comment: 8 pages with postscript figures, RevTex, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Circular Kinks on the Surface of Granular Material Rotated in a Tilted Spinning Bucket
We find that circular kinks form on the surface of granular material when the
axis of rotation is tilted more than the angle of internal friction of the
material. Radius of the kinks is measured as a function of the spinning speed
and the tilting angle. Stability consideration of the surface results in an
explanation that the kink is a boundary between the inner unstable and outer
stable regions. A simple cellular automata model also displays kinks at the
stability boundary
Langevin equation with scale-dependent noise
A new wavelet based technique for the perturbative solution of the Langevin
equation is proposed. It is shown that for the random force acting in a limited
band of scales the proposed method directly leads to a finite result with no
renormalization required. The one-loop contribution to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang
equation Green function for the interface growth is calculated as an example.Comment: LaTeX, 5 page
Density Fluctuations in an Electrolyte from Generalized Debye-Hueckel Theory
Near-critical thermodynamics in the hard-sphere (1,1) electrolyte is well
described, at a classical level, by Debye-Hueckel (DH) theory with (+,-) ion
pairing and dipolar-pair-ionic-fluid coupling. But DH-based theories do not
address density fluctuations. Here density correlations are obtained by
functional differentiation of DH theory generalized to {\it non}-uniform
densities of various species. The correlation length diverges universally
at low density as (correcting GMSA theory). When
one has as
where the amplitudes compare informatively with experimental data.Comment: 5 pages, REVTeX, 1 ps figure included with epsf. Minor changes,
references added. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
- …