General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of general relativity, the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG) commissioned a Centennial Volume, edited by the authors of this article. We jointly wrote introductions to the four Parts of the Volume which are collected here. Our goal is to provide a bird's eye view of the advances that have been made especially during the last 35 years, i.e., since the publication of volumes commemorating Einstein's 100th birthday. The article also serves as a brief preview of the 12 invited chapters that contain in-depth reviews of these advances. The volume will be published by Cambridge University Press and released in June 2015 at a Centennial conference sponsored by ISGRG and the Topical Group of Gravitation of the American Physical Society.Comment: 37 page

Sudden collapse of a colloidal gel

Metastable gels formed by weakly attractive colloidal particles display a distinctive two-stage time-dependent settling behavior under their own weight. Initially a space-spanning network is formed that for a characteristic time, which we define as the lag time \taud, resists compaction. This solid-like behavior persists only for a limited time. Gels whose age \tw is greater than \taud yield and suddenly collapse. We use a combination of confocal microscopy, rheology and time-lapse video imaging to investigate both the process of sudden collapse and its microscopic origin in an refractive-index matched emulsion-polymer system. We show that the height $h$ of the gel in the early stages of collapse is well described by the surprisingly simple expression, h(\ts) = \h0 - A \ts^{3/2}, with \h0 the initial height and \ts = \tw-\taud the time counted from the instant where the gel first yields. We propose that this unexpected result arises because the colloidal network progressively builds up internal stress as a consequence of localized rearrangement events which leads ultimately to collapse as thermal equilibrium is re-established.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, final versio

Local freedom in the gravitational field revisited

Maartens {\it et al.}\@ gave a covariant characterization, in a 1+3 formalism based on a perfect fluid's velocity, of the parts of the first derivatives of the curvature tensor in general relativity which are ``locally free'', i.e. not pointwise determined by the fluid energy momentum and its derivative. The full decomposition of independent curvature derivative components given in earlier work on the spinor approach to the equivalence problem enables analogous general results to be stated for any order: the independent matter terms can also be characterized. Explicit relations between the two sets of results are obtained. The 24 Maartens {\it et al.} locally free data are shown to correspond to the $\nabla \Psi$ quantities in the spinor approach, and the fluid terms are similarly related to the remaining 16 independent quantities in the first derivatives of the curvature.Comment: LaTeX. 13 pp. To be submitted to Class. Quant. Gra

Subsonic high-angle-of-attack aerodynamic characteristics of a cone and cylinder with triangular cross sections and a cone with a square cross section

Experiments were conducted in the 12-Foot Pressure Wind Tunnel at Ames Research Center on three models with noncircular cross sections: a cone having a square cross section with rounded corners and a cone and cylinder with triangular cross sections and rounded vertices. The cones were tested with both sharp and blunt noses. Surface pressures and force and moment measurements were obtained over an angle of attack range from 30 deg to 90 deg and selected oil-flow experiments were conducted to visualize surface flow patterns. Unit Reynolds numbers ranged from 0.8x1,000,000/m to 13.0x1,000,000/m at a Mach number of 0.25, except for a few low-Reynolds-number runs at a Mach number of 0.17. Pressure data, as well as force data and oil-flow photographs, reveal that the three dimensional flow structure at angles of attack up to 75 deg is very complex and is highly dependent on nose bluntness and Reynolds number. For angles of attack from 75 deg to 90 deg the sectional aerodynamic characteristics are similar to those of a two dimensional cylinder with the same cross section

Multiwavelength observations of the Be/X-ray binary 4U1145-619

We report optical and infrared observations of the massive X-ray binary system 4U1145-619 (V801 Cen) which show that the circumstellar disc of the Be star component is in decline. Infrared J,H,K,L magnitudes of V801Cen have been monitored from 1993 March to 1996 April. H alpha spectra have been obtained throughout the same period. We find that both the infrared excess and the Balmer emission have been in decline throughout the period of observations. A 13 year optical and X-ray history of the source has been collated, revealing a possible correlation between the optical and X-ray activity. In addition, we have used u,v,b,y,beta indices, corrected for both circumstellar and interstellar effects, to calculate the physical parameters of the underlying B star.Comment: 8 pages postscript. Accepted by MNRA

Electronic properties of buried hetero-interfaces of LaAlO3 on SrTiO3

We have made very thin films of LaAlO3 on TiO2 terminated SrTiO3 and have measured the properties of the resulting interface in various ways. Transport measurements show a maximum sheet carrier density of 1016 cm-2 and a mobility around 104 cm2 V-1 s-1. In situ ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) indicates that for these samples a finite density of states exists at the Fermi level. From the oxygen pressure dependence measured in both transport as well as the UPS, we detail, as reported previously by us, that oxygen vacancies play an important role in the creation of the charge carriers and that these vacancies are introduced by the pulsed laser deposition process used to make the heterointerfaces. Under the conditions studied the effect of LaAlO3 on the carrier density is found to be minimal.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure

Tuning the effects of Landau-level mixing on anisotropic transport in quantum Hall systems

Electron-electron interactions in half-filled high Landau levels in two-dimensional electron gases in a strong perpendicular magnetic field can lead to states with anisotropic longitudinal resistance. This longitudinal resitance is generally believed to arise from broken rotational invariance, which is indicated by charge density wave (CDW) order in Hartree-Fock calculations. We use the Hartree-Fock approximation to study the influence of externally tuned Landau level mixing on the formation of interaction induced states that break rotational invariance in two-dimensional electron and hole systems. We focus on the situation when there are two non-interacting states in the vicinity of the Fermi level and construct a Landau theory to study coupled charge density wave order that can occur as interactions are tuned and the filling or mixing are varied. We examine in detail a specific example where mixing is tuned externally through Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We calculate the phase diagram and find the possibility of ordering involving coupled striped or triangular charge density waves in the two levels. Our results may be relevant to recent transport experiments on quantum Hall nematics in which Landau-level mixing plays an important role.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure