CHRYSANTHEMUM PRODUCTION PLANNING UNDER TIME-TO-HARVEST UNCERTAINTY

Crop Production/Industries,

Anomalous Axion Interactions and Topological Currents in Dense Matter

Recently an effective Lagrangian for the interactions of photons, Nambu-Goldstone bosons and superfluid phonons in dense quark matter has been derived using anomaly matching arguments. In this paper we illuminate the nature of certain anomalous terms in this Lagrangian by an explicit microscopic calculation. We also generalize the corresponding construction to introduce the axion field. We derive an anomalous axion effective Lagrangian describing the interactions of axions with photons and superfluid phonons in the dense matter background. This effective Lagrangian, among other things, implies that an axion current will be induced in the presence of magnetic field. We speculate that this current may be responsible for the explanation of neutron star kicks.Comment: 10 page

So Far so Good: Age, Happiness, and Relative Income

In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Survey, we first confirm the standard negative effects of comparison income on life satisfaction with all age groups, and many controls. However when we split the West German sample by age we find a positive significant effect of comparison income in the under 45s, and the usual negative effect only in the over 45 group. With the same split in UK and East German data, comparison income loses significance, which is consistent with the model prediction for the younger group. Our results provide first evidence that the standard aggregation with only a quadratic control for age can obscure major differences in the effects of relative income.Subjective life-satisfaction, comparison income, reference groups, age, welfare

Axion Cosmology and the Energy Scale of Inflation

We survey observational constraints on the parameter space of inflation and axions and map out two allowed windows: the classic window and the inflationary anthropic window. The cosmology of the latter is particularly interesting; inflationary axion cosmology predicts the existence of isocurvature fluctuations in the CMB, with an amplitude that grows with both the energy scale of inflation and the fraction of dark matter in axions. Statistical arguments favor a substantial value for the latter, and so current bounds on isocurvature fluctuations imply tight constraints on inflation. For example, an axion Peccei-Quinn scale of 10^16 GeV excludes any inflation model with energy scale > 3.8*10^14 GeV (r > 2*10^(-9)) at 95% confidence, and so implies negligible gravitational waves from inflation, but suggests appreciable isocurvature fluctuations.Comment: 10 PRD pages, 4 figs, V3: updated to match published versio

Omniscopes: Large Area Telescope Arrays with only N log N Computational Cost

We show that the class of antenna layouts for telescope arrays allowing cheap analysis hardware (with correlator cost scaling as N log N rather than N^2 with the number of antennas N) is encouragingly large, including not only previously discussed rectangular grids but also arbitrary hierarchies of such grids, with arbitrary rotations and shears at each level. We show that all correlations for such a 2D array with an n-level hierarchy can be efficiently computed via a Fast Fourier Transform in not 2 but 2n dimensions. This can allow major correlator cost reductions for science applications requiring exquisite sensitivity at widely separated angular scales, for example 21cm tomography (where short baselines are needed to probe the cosmological signal and long baselines are needed for point source removal), helping enable future 21cm experiments with thousands or millions of cheap dipole-like antennas. Such hierarchical grids combine the angular resolution advantage of traditional array layouts with the cost advantage of a rectangular Fast Fourier Transform Telescope. We also describe an algorithm for how a subclass of hierarchical arrays can efficiently use rotation synthesis to produce global sky maps with minimal noise and a well-characterized synthesized beam.Comment: Replaced to match accepted PRD version. 10 pages, 9 fig

Three-Omega Thermal-Conductivity Measurements with Curved Heater Geometries

The three-omega method, a powerful technique to measure the thermal conductivity of nanometer-thick films and the interfaces between them, has historically employed straight conductive wires to act as both heaters and thermometers. When investigating stochastically prepared samples such as two-dimensional materials and nanomembranes, residue and excess material can make it difficult to fit the required millimeter-long straight wire on the sample surface. There are currently no available criteria for how diverting three-omega heater wires around obstacles affects the validity of the thermal measurement. In this Letter, we quantify the effect of wire curvature by performing three-omega experiments with a wide range of frequencies using both curved and straight heater geometries on SiO$_2$/Si samples. When the heating wire is curved, we find that the measured Si substrate thermal conductivity changes by only 0.2%. Similarly, we find that wire curvature has no significant effect on the determination of the thermal resistance of a $\sim$65 nm SiO$_2$ layer, even for the sharpest corners considered here, for which the largest measured ratio of the thermal penetration depth of the applied thermal wave to radius of curvature of the heating wire is 4.3. This result provides useful design criteria for three-omega experiments by setting a lower bound for the maximum ratio of thermal penetration depth to wire radius of curvature.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Chemical probing spectroscopy of H3+ above the barrier to linearity

We have performed chemical probing spectroscopy of H3+ ions trapped in a cryogenic 22-pole ion trap. The ions were buffer-gas cooled to 55K by collisions with helium and argon. Excitation to states above the barrier to linearity was achieved by a Ti:Sa laser operated between 11300 and 13300 cm-1. Subsequent collisions of the excited H3+ ions with argon lead to the formation of ArH+ ions that were detected by a quadrupole mass spectrometer with high sensitivity. We report the observation of 17 previously unobserved transitions to states above the barrier to linearity. Comparison to theoretical calculations suggests that the transition strengths of some of these lines are more than five orders of magnitude smaller than those of the fundamental band, which renders them - to the best of our knowledge - the weakest H3+ transitions observed to date.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, submitted to JC

Dedication of the Palomar Observatory and the Hale Telescope

The dedication of the Palomar Observatory, if it were being held in England, would be accompanied by brilliant pageantry both of the state, with its knights, heralds, pursuivants, kings at arms, admirals and captains, and of the church with its bishops, priests and deacons, crucifiers and choirs; and I am sure that we feel the quality of religion in this ceremony. We would hear the choirs chanting in antiphony that great canticle which so delights the choir boys: Benedicite, omnia opera Domini