Broad Band Optical Polarimetric Study of IC 1805

We present the BVR broad band polarimetric observations of 51 stars belonging to the young open cluster IC 1805. Along with the photometric data from the literature we have modeled and subtracted the foreground dust contribution from the maximum polarization (P_{max}) and colour excess (E_{B-V}). The mean value of the P_max for intracluster medium and the foreground are found to be 5.008 +/-0.005 % and 4.865 +/-0.022 % respectively. Moreover, the mean value of the wavelength of maximum polarization (lambda_{max}) for intracluster medium is 0.541 +/- 0.003 micro m, which is quite similar as the general interstellar medium (ISM). The resulting intracluster dust component is found to have negligible polarization efficiency as compared to interstellar dust. Some of the observed stars in IC 1805 have shown the indication of intrinsic polarization in their measurements.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Coexistence of magnetism and superconductivity in a t-J bilayer

We investigate coexistence of antiferromagnetic and superconducting correlations in bilayered materials using a two-dimensional t-J model with couplings across the layers using variational Monte Carlo calculations. It is found that the underdoped regime supports a coexisting phase, beyond which the (d-wave) superconducting state becomes stable. Further, the effects of interplanar coupling parameters on the magnetic and superconducting correlations as a function of hole doping are studied in details. The magnetic correlations are found to diminish with increasing interplanar hopping away from half filling, while the exchange across the layers strengthens interplanar antiferromagnetic correlations both at and away from half filling. The superconducting correlations show more interesting features where larger interplanar hopping considerably reduces planar correlations at optimal doping, while an opposite behaviour, i.e. stabilisation of the superconducting state is realised in the overdoped regime, with the interplanar exchange all the while playing a dormant role.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, RevTex4, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Physical Electronics and Surface Physics

Contains reports on one research project.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300

Polarization in young open cluster NGC 6823

We present multiwavelength linear polarimetric observations of 104 stars towards the region of young open cluster NGC 6823. The polarization towards NGC 6823 is dominated by foreground dust grains and we found the evidence for the presence of several layers of dust towards the line of sight. The first layer of dust is located approximately within 200 pc towards the cluster, which is much closer to the Sun than the cluster (~ 2.1 kpc). The radial distribution of the position angles for the member stars are found to show a systematic change while the polarization found to reduce towards the outer parts of the cluster and the average position angle of coronal region of the cluster is very close to the inclination of the Galactic parallel (~ 32 degree). The size distribution of the grains within NGC 6823 is similar to those in general interstellar medium. The patchy distribution of foreground dust grains are suggested to be mainly responsible for the both differential reddening and polarization towards NGC 6823. The majority of the observed stars do not show the evidence of intrinsic polarization in their light.Comment: 16 pages, 6 tables, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA

The Barrier Method: A Technique for Calculating Very Long Transition Times

In many dynamical systems there is a large separation of time scales between typical events and "rare" events which can be the cases of interest. Rare-event rates are quite difficult to compute numerically, but they are of considerable practical importance in many fields: for example transition times in chemical physics and extinction times in epidemiology can be very long, but are quite important. We present a very fast numerical technique that can be used to find long transition times (very small rates) in low-dimensional systems, even if they lack detailed balance. We illustrate the method for a bistable non-equilibrium system introduced by Maier and Stein and a two-dimensional (in parameter space) epidemiology model.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure

Computation of nucleation of a non-equilibrium first-order phase transition using a rare-event algorithm

We introduce a new Forward-Flux Sampling in Time (FFST) algorithm to efficiently measure transition times in rare-event processes in non-equilibrium systems, and apply it to study the first-order (discontinuous) kinetic transition in the Ziff-Gulari-Barshad model of catalytic surface reaction. The average time for the transition to take place, as well as both the spinodal and transition points, are clearly found by this method.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Multi-wavelength polarimetric study towards the open cluster NGC 1893

We present multi-wavelength linear polarimetric observations for 44 stars of the NGC 1893 young open cluster region along with V-band polarimetric observations of stars of other four open clusters located between l ~160 to ~175 degree. We found evidence for the presence of two dust layers located at a distance of ~170 pc and ~360 pc. The dust layers produce a polarization Pv ~2.2%. It is evident from the clusters studied in the present work that, in the Galactic longitude range l ~160 to 175 degree and within the Galactic plane (|b| < 2 degree), the polarization angles remain almost constant, with a mean ~163 degree and a dispersion of 6 degree. The small dispersion in polarization angle could be due to the presence of uniform dust layer beyond 1 kpc. Present observations reveal that in case of NGC 1893, the foreground two dust layers, in addition to the intracluster medium, seems to be responsible for the polarization effects. It is also found that towards the direction of NGC 1893, the dust layer that exists between 2-3 kpc has a negligible contribution towards the total observed polarization. The weighted mean for percentage of polarization (Pmax) and the wavelength at maximum polarization ({\lambda}max) are found to be 2.59 \pm 0.02% and 0.55 \pm 0.01 \mum respectively. The estimated mean value of {\lambda}max indicates that the average size of the dust grains within the cluster is similar to that in the general interstellar medium. The spatial variation of the polarization is found to decrease towards the outer region of the cluster. In the present work, we support the notion, as already has been shown in previous studies, that polarimetry, in combination with (U-B)/(B-V) colour-colour diagram, is a useful tool for identifying non-members in a cluster.Comment: 36 pages, 12 figures, 10 tables, accepted for the publication in MNRA