64,399 research outputs found
Probing the effects of a thermonuclear X-ray burst on the neutron star accretion flow with NuSTAR
Observational evidence has been accumulating that thermonuclear X-ray bursts
ignited on the surface of neutron stars influence the surrounding accretion
flow. Here, we exploit the excellent sensitivity of NuSTAR up to 79 keV to
analyze the impact of an X-ray burst on the accretion emission of the neutron
star LMXB 4U 1608-52. The ~200 s long X-ray burst occurred during a hard X-ray
spectral state, and had a peak intensity of ~30-50 per cent of the Eddington
limit with no signs of photospheric radius expansion. Spectral analysis
suggests that the accretion emission was enhanced up to a factor of ~5 during
the X-ray burst. We also applied a linear unsupervised decomposition method,
namely non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), to study this X-ray burst. We
find that the NMF performs well in characterizing the evolution of the burst
emission and is a promising technique to study changes in the underlying
accretion emission in more detail than is possible through conventional
spectral fitting. For the burst of 4U 1608-52, the NMF suggests a possible
softening of the accretion spectrum during the X-ray burst, which could
potentially be ascribed to cooling of a corona. Finally, we report a small (~3
per cent) but significant rise in the accretion emission ~0.5 h before the
X-ray burst, although it is unclear whether this was related to the X-ray burst
ignition.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, to appear in MNRA
Self-consistent approach for the quantum confined Stark effect in shallow quantum wells
A computationally efficient, self-consistent complex scaling approach to
calculating characteristics of excitons in an external electric field in
quantum wells is introduced. The method allows one to extract the resonance
position as well as the field-induced broadening for the exciton resonance. For
the case of strong confinement the trial function is represented in factorized
form. The corresponding coupled self-consistent equations, which include the
effective complex potentials, are obtained. The method is applied to the
shallow quantum well. It is shown that in this case the real part of the
effective exciton potential is insensitive to changes of external electric
field up to the ionization threshold, while the imaginary part has
non-analytical field dependence and small for moderate electric fields. This
allows one to express the exciton quasi-energy at some field through the
renormalized expression for the zero-field bound state.Comment: 13 pages, RevTeX4, 6 figure
An investigation of the performance portability of OpenCL
This paper reports on the development of an MPI/OpenCL implementation of LU, an application-level benchmark from the NAS Parallel Benchmark Suite. An account of the design decisions addressed during the development of this code is presented, demonstrating the importance of memory arrangement and work-item/work-group distribution strategies when applications are deployed on different device types. The resulting platform-agnostic, single source application is benchmarked on a number of different architectures, and is shown to be 1.3–1.5× slower than native FORTRAN 77 or CUDA implementations on a single node and 1.3–3.1× slower on multiple nodes. We also explore the potential performance gains of OpenCL’s device fissioning capability, demonstrating up to a 3× speed-up over our original OpenCL implementation
Squared-field amplitude modulus and radiation intensity nonequivalence within nonlinear slabs
This paper presents a novel approach to wave propagation inside the
Fabry-Perot framework. It states that the time-averaged Poynting vector modulus
could be nonequivalent with the squared-field amplitude modulus. This fact
permits the introduction of a new kind of nonlinear medium whose nonlinearity
is proportional to the time-averaged Poynting vector modulus. Its transmittance
is calculated and found to differ with that obtained for the Kerr medium, whose
nonlinearity is proportional to the squared-field amplitude modulus. The latter
emphasizes the nonequivalence of these magnitudes. A space-time symmetry
analysis shows that the Poynting nonlinearity should be only possible in
noncentrosymmetric materials.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, added space-time symmetry analysis and reference
Techniques for the Synthesis of Reversible Toffoli Networks
This paper presents novel techniques for the synthesis of reversible networks
of Toffoli gates, as well as improvements to previous methods. Gate count and
technology oriented cost metrics are used. Our synthesis techniques are
independent of the cost metrics. Two new iterative synthesis procedure
employing Reed-Muller spectra are introduced and shown to complement earlier
synthesis approaches. The template simplification suggested in earlier work is
enhanced through introduction of a faster and more efficient template
application algorithm, updated (shorter) classification of the templates, and
presentation of the new templates of sizes 7 and 9. A novel ``resynthesis''
approach is introduced wherein a sequence of gates is chosen from a network,
and the reversible specification it realizes is resynthesized as an independent
problem in hopes of reducing the network cost. Empirical results are presented
to show that the methods are effective both in terms of the realization of all
3x3 reversible functions and larger reversible benchmark specifications.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure
Zero dimensional area law in a gapless fermion system
The entanglement entropy of a gapless fermion subsystem coupled to a gapless
bulk by a "weak link" is considered. It is demonstrated numerically that each
independent weak link contributes an entropy proportional to lnL, where L is
linear dimension of the subsystem.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures; added 3d computatio
Massey products in symplectic manifolds
The paper is devoted to study of Massey products in symplectic manifolds.
Theory of generalized and classical Massey products and a general construction
of symplectic manifolds with nontrivial Massey products of arbitrary large
order are exposed. The construction uses the symplectic blow-up and is based on
the author results, which describe conditions under which the blow-up of a
symplectic manifold X along its submanifold Y inherits nontrivial Massey
products from X ot Y. This gives a general construction of nonformal symplectic
manifolds.Comment: LaTeX, 48 pages, 2 figure
H-alpha Survey of the Local Volume: Isolated Southern Galaxies
We present our H-alpha observations of 11 isolated southern galaxies: SDIG,
PGC 51659, E 222-010, E 272-025, E 137-018, IC 4662, Sag DIG, IC 5052, IC 5152,
UGCA 438, and E149-003, with distances from 1 to 7 Mpc. We have determined the
total H-alpha fluxes from these galaxies. The star formation rates in these
galaxies range from 10^{-1} (IC 4662) to 10^{-4}_{\odot}/yr (SDIG) and the gas
depletion time at the observed star formation rates lies within the range from
1/6 to 24 Hubble times H_0^{-1} .Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure
Predictive analysis of a hydrodynamics application on large-scale CMP clusters
We present the development of a predictive performance model for the high-performance computing code Hydra, a hydrodynamics benchmark developed and maintained by the United Kingdom Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). The developed model elucidates the parallel computation of Hydra, with which it is possible to predict its runtime and scaling performance on varying large-scale chip multiprocessor (CMP) clusters. A key feature of the model is its granularity; with the model we are able to separate the contributing costs, including computation, point-to-point communications, collectives, message buffering and message synchronisation. The predictions are validated on two contrasting large-scale HPC systems, an AMD Opteron/ InfiniBand cluster and an IBM BlueGene/P, both of which are located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the US. We validate the model on up to 2,048 cores, where it achieves a > 85% accuracy in weak-scaling studies. We also demonstrate use of the model in exposing the increasing costs of collectives for this application, and also the influence of node density on network accesses, therefore highlighting the impact of machine choice when running this hydrodynamics application at scale
New chemical profiles for the asteroseismology of ZZ Ceti stars
We compute new chemical profiles for the core and envelope of white dwarfs
appropriate for pulsational studies of ZZ Ceti stars. These profiles are
extracted from the complete evolution of progenitor stars, evolved through the
main sequence and the thermally-pulsing asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stages,
and from time-dependent element diffusion during white dwarf evolution. We
discuss the importance of the initial-final mass relationship for the white
dwarf carbon-oxygen composition. In particular, we find that the central oxygen
abundance may be underestimated by about 15% if the white dwarf mass is assumed
to be the hydrogen-free core mass before the first thermal pulse. We also
discuss the importance for the chemical profiles expected in the outermost
layers of ZZ Ceti stars of the computation of the thermally-pulsing AGB phase
and of the phase in which element diffusion is relevant. We find a strong
dependence of the outer layer chemical stratification on the stellar mass. In
particular, in the less massive models, the double-layered structure in the
helium layer built up during the thermally-pulsing AGB phase is not removed by
diffusion by the time the ZZ Ceti stage is reached. Finally, we perform
adiabatic pulsation calculations and discuss the implications of our new
chemical profiles for the pulsational properties of ZZ Ceti stars. We find that
the whole mode period spectrum and the mode-trapping properties of these
pulsating white dwarfs as derived from our new chemical profiles are
substantially different from those based on chemical profiles widely used in
existing asteroseismological studies. Thus, we expect the asteroseismological
models derived from our chemical profiles to be significantly different from
those found thus far.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 1 table. To be published in Ap
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