2,210 research outputs found
A distinctive energy policy for Scotland?
This paper explores the emergence of a distinctive energy policy for Scotland and raises the issue of the desirability of any differentiation from UK energy policy. This requires an examination of both UK and Scottish energy policies, although we adopt a rather broad-brush overview rather than a very detailed analysis
14-moment maximum-entropy modelling of collisionless ions for Hall thruster discharges
Ions in Hall thruster devices are often characterized by a low
collisionality. In the presence of acceleration fields and azimuthal electric
field waves, this results in strong deviations from thermodynamic equilibrium,
introducing kinetic effects. This work investigates the application of the
14-moment maximum-entropy model to this problem. This method consists in a set
of 14 PDEs for the density, momentum, pressure tensor components, heat flux and
fourth-order moment associated to the particle velocity distribution function.
The model is applied to the study of collisionless ion dynamics in a Hall
thruster-like configuration, and its accuracy is assessed against different
models, including the kinetic solution. Three test cases are considered: a
purely axial acceleration problem, the problem of ion-wave trapping and finally
the evolution of ions in the axial-azimuthal plane. Most of this work considers
ions only, and the coupling with electrons is removed by prescribing reasonable
values of the electric field. This allows us to obtain a direct comparison
among different ion models. However, the possibility to run self-consistent
plasma simulations is also briefly discussed, considering quasi-neutral or
multi-fluid models. The maximum-entropy system appears to be a robust and
accurate option for the considered test cases. The accuracy is improved over
the simpler pressureless gas model (cold ions) and the Euler equations for gas
dynamics, while the computational cost shows to remain much lower than direct
kinetic simulations
Bulk Fermi surface coexistence with Dirac surface state in BiSe: a comparison of photoemission and Shubnikov-de Haas measurements
Shubnikov de Haas (SdH) oscillations and Angle Resolved PhotoEmission
Spectroscopy (ARPES) are used to probe the Fermi surface of single crystals of
Bi2Se3. We find that SdH and ARPES probes quantitatively agree on measurements
of the effective mass and bulk band dispersion. In high carrier density
samples, the two probes also agree in the exact position of the Fermi level EF,
but for lower carrier density samples discrepancies emerge in the position of
EF. In particular, SdH reveals a bulk three-dimensional Fermi surface for
samples with carrier densities as low as 10^17cm-3. We suggest a simple
mechanism to explain these differences and discuss consequences for existing
and future transport studies of topological insulators.Comment: 5 mages, 5 figure
The surface-state of the topological insulator BiSe revealed by cyclotron resonance
To date transport measurements of topological insulators have been dominated
by the conductivity of the bulk, leading to substantial difficulties in
resolving the properties of the surface. To this end, we use high magnetic
field, rf- and microwave-spectroscopy to selectively couple to the surface
conductivity of BiSe at high frequency. In the frequency range of a few
GHz we observe a crossover from quantum oscillations indicative of a small 3D
Fermi surface, to cyclotron resonance indicative of a 2D surface state
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Exchange biased anomalous Hall effect driven by frustration in a magnetic kagome lattice.
Co[Formula: see text]Sn[Formula: see text]S[Formula: see text] is a ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal that has been the subject of intense scientific interest due to its large anomalous Hall effect. We show that the coupling of this material's topological properties to its magnetic texture leads to a strongly exchange biased anomalous Hall effect. We argue that this is likely caused by the coexistence of ferromagnetism and geometric frustration intrinsic to the kagome network of magnetic ions, giving rise to spin-glass behavior and an exchange bias
Sampling time and performance in rat whisker sensory system
We designed a behavioural paradigm for vibro-tactile detection to characterise the sampling time and performance in the rat whisker sensory system. Rats initiated a trial by nose-poking into an aperture where their whiskers came into contact with two meshes. A continuous nose-poke for a random duration triggered stimulus presentation. Stimuli were a sequence of discrete Gaussian deflections of the mesh that increased in amplitude over time - across 5 conditions, time to maximum amplitude varied from 0.5 to 8 seconds. Rats indicated the detected stimulus by choosing between two reward spouts. Two rats completed more than 500 trials per condition. Rats' stimulus sampling duration increased and performance dropped with increasing task difficulty. For all conditions the median reaction time was longer for correct trials than incorrect trials. Higher rates of increment in stimulus amplitude resulted in faster rise in performance as a function of stimulus sampling duration. Rats' behaviour indicated a dynamic stimulus sampling whereby nose-poke was maintained until a stimulus was correctly identified or the rat experienced a false alarm. The perception was then manifested in behaviour after a motor delay. We thus modelled the results with 3 parameters: signal detection, false alarm, and motor delay. The model captured the main features of the data and produced parameter estimates that were biologically plausible and highly similar across the two rats
Population decoding in rat barrel cortex: optimizing the linear readout of correlated population responses
Sensory information is encoded in the response of neuronal populations. How might this information be decoded by downstream neurons? Here we analyzed the responses of simultaneously recorded barrel cortex neurons to sinusoidal vibrations of varying amplitudes preceded by three adapting stimuli of 0, 6 and 12 Âľm in amplitude. Using the framework of signal detection theory, we quantified the performance of a linear decoder which sums the responses of neurons after applying an optimum set of weights. Optimum weights were found by the analytical solution that maximized the average signal-to-noise ratio based on Fisher linear discriminant analysis. This provided a biologically plausible decoder that took into account the neuronal variability, covariability, and signal correlations. The optimal decoder achieved consistent improvement in discrimination performance over simple pooling. Decorrelating neuronal responses by trial shuffling revealed that, unlike pooling, the performance of the optimal decoder was minimally affected by noise correlation. In the non-adapted state, noise correlation enhanced the performance of the optimal decoder for some populations. Under adaptation, however, noise correlation always degraded the performance of the optimal decoder. Nonetheless, sensory adaptation improved the performance of the optimal decoder mainly by increasing signal correlation more than noise correlation. Adaptation induced little systematic change in the relative direction of signal and noise. Thus, a decoder which was optimized under the non-adapted state generalized well across states of adaptation
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