Photolytic Hazes in the Atmosphere of 51 Eri b

We use a 1D model to address photochemistry and possible haze formation in the irradiated warm Jupiter, 51 Eridani b. The intended focus was to be carbon, but sulfur photochemistry turns out to be important. The case for organic photochemical hazes is intriguing but falls short of being compelling. If organic hazes form, they are likeliest to do so if vertical mixing in 51 Eri b is weaker than in Jupiter, and they would be found below the altitudes where methane and water are photolyzed. The more novel result is that photochemistry turns H$_2$S into elemental sulfur, here treated as S$_8$. In the cooler models, S$_8$ is predicted to condense in optically thick clouds of solid sulfur particles, whilst in the warmer models S$_8$ remains a vapor along with several other sulfur allotropes that are both visually striking and potentially observable. For 51 Eri b, the division between models with and without condensed sulfur is at an effective temperature of 700 K, which is within error its actual effective temperature; the local temperature where sulfur condenses is between 280 and 320 K. The sulfur photochemistry we have discussed is quite general and ought to be found in a wide variety of worlds over a broad temperature range, both colder and hotter than the 650-750 K range studied here, and we show that products of sulfur photochemistry will be nearly as abundant on planets where the UV irradiation is orders of magnitude weaker than it is on 51 Eri b.Comment: 24 pages including 11 figures and a tabl

Influence of Homeotropic Anchoring Walls upon Nematic and Smectic Phases

McMillan liquid crystal model sandwiched between strong homeotropic anchoring walls is studied. Phase transitions between isotropic, nematic, and smectic A phases are investigated for wide ranges of an interaction parameter and of the system thickness. It is confirmed that the anchoring walls induce an increase in transition temperatures, dissappearance of phase transitions, and an appearance of non-spontaneous nematic phase. The similarity between influence of anchoring walls and that of external fields is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Temperature dependence of the interlayer magnetoresistance of quasi-one-dimensional Fermi liquids at the magic angles

The interlayer magnetoresistance of a quasi-one-dimensional Fermi liquid is considered for the case of a magnetic field that is rotated within the plane perpendicular to the most-conducting direction. Within semi-classical transport theory dips in the magnetoresistance occur at integer amgic angles only when the electronic dispersion parallel to the chains is nonlinear. If the field direction is fixed at one of the magic angles and the temperature is varied the resulting variation of the scattering rate can lead to a non-monotonic variation of the interlayer magnetoresistance with temperature. Although the model considered here gives a good description of some of the properties of the Bechgaard salts, (TMTSF)2PF6 for pressures less than 8kbar and (TMTSF)2ClO4 it gives a poor description of their properties when the field is parallel to the layers and of the intralayer transport.Comment: 10pages, RevTeX + epsf, 3 figure

Fingering Instability in Combustion

A thin solid (e.g., paper), burning against an oxidizing wind, develops a fingering instability with two decoupled length scales. The spacing between fingers is determined by the P\'eclet number (ratio between advection and diffusion). The finger width is determined by the degree two dimensionality. Dense fingers develop by recurrent tip splitting. The effect is observed when vertical mass transport (due to gravity) is suppressed. The experimental results quantitatively verify a model based on diffusion limited transport

Hydrocarbon ions in the lower ionosphere of Saturn

[1] Radio occultation measurements of the Saturn ionosphere have shown that persistent but variable electron density layers appear well below the major peaks. We model here the region of hydrocarbon ions that is below the main peak and is produced by absorption of solar photons in the wavelength range 842 to 1116 Å, which penetrate to altitudes below the methane homopause in the wings of the H2 absorption lines, and in the gaps between groups of lines. In this wavelength range, H2 absorbs photons in discrete transitions to rovibrational levels of electronically excited states, which then decay to a range of rovibrational levels of the electronic ground state, or to the continuum of the ground state. The cross sections for these discrete absorptions vary by several orders of magnitude from the peaks to the wings of the absorption lines. We find that the adoption of high resolution photoabsorption cross sections for the H2 bands leads to different photoionization profiles for both the hydrocarbons and H atoms, and to peak inline imagephotoproduction profiles that are more than an order of magnitude larger than those computed with low resolution cross sections. For the present model, we find that ionization by energetic electrons that accompany the absorption of soft X-rays appears in the same altitude range. We predict that a broad region of hydrocarbon ions appears well below the main peak, in the altitude range 600 to 1000 km above the 1 bar level (2–0.04 μbar) with a maximum electron density of ∼3×103cm−3 at low solar activity

Molecular Model of the Contractile Ring

We present a model for the actin contractile ring of adherent animal cells. The model suggests that the actin concentration within the ring and consequently the power that the ring exerts both increase during contraction. We demonstrate the crucial role of actin polymerization and depolymerization throughout cytokinesis, and the dominance of viscous dissipation in the dynamics. The physical origin of two phases in cytokinesis dynamics ("biphasic cytokinesis") follows from a limitation on the actin density. The model is consistent with a wide range of measurements of the midzone of dividing animal cells.Comment: PACS numbers: 87.16.Ka, 87.16.Ac http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16197254 http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/tlusty/papers/PhysRevLett2005.pd

Density functional study of the adsorption and van der Waals binding of aromatic and conjugated compounds on the basal plane of MoS2

Accurate calculations of adsorption energies of cyclic molecules are of key importance in investigations of, e.g., hydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalysis. The present density functional theory (DFT) study of a set of important reactants, products, and inhibitors in HDS catalysis demonstrates that van der Waals interactions are essential for binding energies on MoS2 surfaces and that DFT with a recently developed exchange-correlation functional (vdW-DF) accurately calculates the van der Waals energy. Values are calculated for the adsorption energies of butadiene, thiophene, benzothiophene, pyridine, quinoline, benzene, and naphthalene on the basal plane of MoS2, showing good agreement with available experimental data, and the equilibrium geometry is found as flat at a separation of about 3.5 \uc5 for all studied molecules. This adsorption is found to be due to mainly van der Waals interactions. Furthermore, the manifold of adsorption-energy values allows trend analyses to be made, and they are found to have a linear correlation with the number of main atoms. \ua9 2009 American Institute of Physics

Spitzer Secondary Eclipse Observations of Five Cool Gas Giant Planets and Empirical Trends in Cool Planet Emission Spectra

In this work we present Spitzer 3.6 and 4.5 micron secondary eclipse observations of five new cool (<1200 K) transiting gas giant planets: HAT-P-19b, WASP-6b, WASP-10b, WASP-39b, and WASP-67b. We compare our measured eclipse depths to the predictions of a suite of atmosphere models and to eclipse depths for planets with previously published observations in order to constrain the temperature- and mass-dependent properties of gas giant planet atmospheres. We find that the dayside emission spectra of planets less massive than Jupiter require models with efficient circulation of energy to the night side and/or increased albedos, while those with masses greater than that of Jupiter are consistently best-matched by models with inefficient circulation and low albedos. At these relatively low temperatures we expect the atmospheric methane to CO ratio to vary as a function of metallicity, and we therefore use our observations of these planets to constrain their atmospheric metallicities. We find that the most massive planets have dayside emission spectra that are best-matched by solar metallicity atmosphere models, but we are not able to place strong constraints on metallicities of the smaller planets in our sample. Interestingly, we find that the ratio of the 3.6 and 4.5 micron brightness temperatures for these cool transiting planets is independent of planet temperature, and instead exhibits a tentative correlation with planet mass. If this trend can be confirmed, it would suggest that the shape of these planets' emission spectra depends primarily on their masses, consistent with the hypothesis that lower-mass planets are more likely to have metal-rich atmospheres.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Ap