343 research outputs found
Universality and saturation of intermittency in passive scalar turbulence
The statistical properties of a scalar field advected by the non-intermittent
Navier-Stokes flow arising from a two-dimensional inverse energy cascade are
investigated. The universality properties of the scalar field are directly
probed by comparing the results obtained with two different types of injection
mechanisms. Scaling properties are shown to be universal, even though
anisotropies injected at large scales persist down to the smallest scales and
local isotropy is not fully restored. Scalar statistics is strongly
intermittent and scaling exponents saturate to a constant for sufficiently high
orders. This is observed also for the advection by a velocity field rapidly
changing in time, pointing to the genericity of the phenomenon. The persistence
of anisotropies and the saturation are both statistical signatures of the
ramp-and-cliff structures observed in the scalar field.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure
Orientation cues for high-flying nocturnal insect migrants: do turbulence-induced temperature and velocity fluctuations indicate the mean wind flow?
Migratory insects flying at high altitude at night often show a degree of common alignment, sometimes with quite small angular dispersions around the mean. The observed orientation directions are often close to the downwind direction and this would seemingly be adaptive in that large insects could add their self-propelled speed to the wind speed, thus maximising their displacement in a given time. There are increasing indications that high-altitude orientation may be maintained by some intrinsic property of the wind rather than by visual perception of relative ground movement. Therefore, we first examined whether migrating insects could deduce the mean wind direction from the turbulent fluctuations in temperature. Within the atmospheric boundary-layer, temperature records show characteristic ramp-cliff structures, and insects flying downwind would move through these ramps whilst those flying crosswind would not. However, analysis of vertical-looking radar data on the common orientations of nocturnally migrating insects in the UK produced no evidence that the migrants actually use temperature ramps as orientation cues. This suggests that insects rely on turbulent velocity
and acceleration cues, and refocuses attention on how these can be detected, especially as small-scale turbulence is usually held to be directionally invariant (isotropic). In the second part of the paper we present a theoretical analysis and simulations showing that velocity fluctuations and accelerations felt by an insect are predicted to be anisotropic even when the small-scale turbulence (measured at a fixed point or along the trajectory of a fluid-particle) is isotropic. Our results thus provide further evidence that insects do indeed use turbulent velocity and acceleration cues as indicators of the mean wind direction
Electromagnetic Meson Production in the Nucleon Resonance Region
Recent experimental and theoretical advances in investigating electromagnetic
meson production reactions in the nucleon resonance region are reviewed.Comment: 75 pages, 42 figure
Recommended from our members
Scintillometry in urban and complex environments: a review
Knowledge of turbulent exchange in complex environments is relevant to a wide range of hydro-meteorological applications. Observations are required to improve understanding and inform model parameterisations but the very nature of complex environments presents challenges for measurements. Scintillometry offers several advantages as a technique for providing spatially-integrated turbulence data (structure parameters and fluxes), particularly in areas that would be impracticable to monitor using eddy covariance, such as across a valley, above a city or over heterogeneous landscapes. Despite much of scintillometry theory assuming flat, homogeneous surfaces and ideal conditions, over the last 20 years scintillometers have been deployed in increasingly complex locations, including urban and mountainous areas. This review draws together fundamental and applied research in complex environments, to assess what has been learnt, summarise the state-of-the-art and identify key areas for future research. Particular attention is given to evidence, or relative lack thereof, of the impact of complex environments on scintillometer data. Practical and theoretical considerations to account for the effects of complexity are discussed, with the aim of developing measurement capability towards more reliable and accurate observations in future. The usefulness of structure parameter measurements (in addition to fluxes, which must be derived using similarity theory) should not be overlooked, particularly when comparing or combining scintillometry with other measurement techniques and model simulations
Photoproduction of phi(1020) mesons on the proton at large momentum transfer
The cross section for meson photoproduction on the proton has been
measured for the first time up to a four-momentum transfer -t = 4 GeV^2, using
the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. At low
four-momentum transfer, the differential cross section is well described by
Pomeron exchange. At large four-momentum transfer, above -t = 1.8 GeV^2, the
data support a model where the Pomeron is resolved into its simplest component,
two gluons, which may couple to any quark in the proton and in the .Comment: 5 pages; 7 figure
Comment on the narrow structure reported by Amaryan et al
The CLAS Collaboration provides a comment on the physics interpretation of
the results presented in a paper published by M. Amaryan et al. regarding the
possible observation of a narrow structure in the mass spectrum of a
photoproduction experiment.Comment: to be published in Physical Review
The e p -> e' p eta reaction at and above the S11(1535) baryon resonance
New cross sections for the reaction e p -> ep eta are reported for total
center of mass energy W = 1.5--1.86 GeV and invariant momentum transfer Q^2 =
0.25--1.5 GeV^2. This large kinematic range allows extraction of important new
information about response functions, photocouplings, and eta N coupling
strengths of baryon resonances. Expanded W coverage shows sharp structure at W
\~ 1.7 GeV; this is shown to come from interference between S and P waves and
can be interpreted in terms of known resonances. Improved values are derived
for the photon coupling amplitude for the S11(1535) resonance.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Measurement of Inclusive Spin Structure Functions of the Deuteron
We report the results of a new measurement of spin structure functions of the
deuteron in the region of moderate momentum transfer ( = 0.27 -- 1.3
(GeV/c)) and final hadronic state mass in the nucleon resonance region (
= 1.08 -- 2.0 GeV). We scattered a 2.5 GeV polarized continuous electron beam
at Jefferson Lab off a dynamically polarized cryogenic solid state target
(ND) and detected the scattered electrons with the CEBAF Large
Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS). From our data, we extract the longitudinal
double spin asymmetry and the spin structure function . Our
data are generally in reasonable agreement with existing data from SLAC where
they overlap, and they represent a substantial improvement in statistical
precision. We compare our results with expectations for resonance asymmetries
and extrapolated deep inelastic scaling results. Finally, we evaluate the first
moment of the structure function and study its approach to both the
deep inelastic limit at large and to the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule
at the real photon limit (). We find that the first moment varies
rapidly in the range of our experiment and crosses zero at between
0.5 and 0.8 (GeV/c), indicating the importance of the resonance at
these momentum transfers.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, ReVTeX 4, final version as accepted by Phys.
Rev.
Dependence of Quadrupole Strength in the Transition
Models of baryon structure predict a small quadrupole deformation of the
nucleon due to residual tensor forces between quarks or distortions from the
pion cloud. Sensitivity to quark versus pion degrees of freedom occurs through
the dependence of the magnetic (), electric (), and
scalar () multipoles in the
transition. We report new experimental values for the ratios
and over the range = 0.4-1.8 GeV, extracted from
precision data using a truncated multipole expansion.
Results are best described by recent unitary models in which the pion cloud
plays a dominant role.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. To be published in Phys. Rev. Lett.
(References, figures and table updated, minor changes.
Towards a resolution of the proton form factor problem: new electron and positron scattering data
There is a significant discrepancy between the values of the proton electric
form factor, , extracted using unpolarized and polarized electron
scattering. Calculations predict that small two-photon exchange (TPE)
contributions can significantly affect the extraction of from the
unpolarized electron-proton cross sections. We determined the TPE contribution
by measuring the ratio of positron-proton to electron-proton elastic scattering
cross sections using a simultaneous, tertiary electron-positron beam incident
on a liquid hydrogen target and detecting the scattered particles in the
Jefferson Lab CLAS detector. This novel technique allowed us to cover a wide
range in virtual photon polarization () and momentum transfer
() simultaneously, as well as to cancel luminosity-related systematic
errors. The cross section ratio increases with decreasing at . This measurement is consistent with the size of the form
factor discrepancy at GeV and with hadronic calculations
including nucleon and intermediate states, which have been shown to
resolve the discrepancy up to GeV.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR
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