109 research outputs found
Twisting gauged non-linear sigma-models
We consider gauged sigma-models from a Riemann surface into a Kaehler and
hamiltonian G-manifold X. The supersymmetric N=2 theory can always be twisted
to produce a gauged A-model. This model localizes to the moduli space of
solutions of the vortex equations and computes the Hamiltonian Gromov-Witten
invariants. When the target is equivariantly Calabi-Yau, i.e. when its first
G-equivariant Chern class vanishes, the supersymmetric theory can also be
twisted into a gauged B-model. This model localizes to the Kaehler quotient
X//G.Comment: 33 pages; v2: small additions, published versio
Sweet cherry production in South Patagonia
In South Patagonia, the total sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) area has increased from 176 ha in 1997 to 507 ha in 2004, of which 232 ha are located in Los Antiguos (46°19¿ SL; 220 m elevation), 158 ha in the Lower Valley of Chubut River (LVCHR) (43°16¿ SL; 30 m elevation), 52 ha in Sarmiento (45°35¿ SL; 270 m elevation), 35 ha in Esquel (42°55¿ SL; 570 m elevation) and 30 ha in Comodoro Rivadavia (45°52¿ SL; 50 m elevation). The most common varieties are `Lapins¿, `Bing¿, `Newstar¿, `Sweetheart¿, `Stella¿, `Sunburst¿ and `Van¿ grafted on `Mahaleb¿, `Pontaleb¿, `SL 64¿, `Colt¿ or `Mazzard¿ rootstocks. Trees generally are drip-irrigated and planted at high densities, using training systems such as Tatura, central leader and modified vase (2700, 1100 and 1000 trees ha-1, respectively). Growers in Los Antiguos are more traditional, planting mainly as vase (400 to 1000 trees ha-1) or freestanding trees (280 trees ha-1) and irrigating by gravity (74% of the area). Only 4.4% of the area of Los Antiguos is frost protected, as growers rely strongly on the moderating effect of Lake Buenos Aires. Frost control systems are absent in Comodoro Rivadavia because the established orchards are located next to the sea, in an area with low risk of frost. The frost-protected area is 49% in Sarmiento, 35% in Esquel and 57% in LVCHR. Fruit are harvested from November (LVCHR) to the end of January (Los Antiguos and Esquel), and the harvest-only labour demand during the 2004/2005 season was 100,000 h. In that season, seven packinghouses exported 390 t (45% of the total production) to Europe. Most orchards have not yet reached their mature stage and new ones are being established. Therefore, fruit volumes will continue to increase and shortages of labour and packing facilities may become a constraint
Mapping Orthorhombic Domains with Geometrical Phase Analysis in Rare-Earth Nickelate Heterostructures
Most perovskite oxides belong to the Pbnm space group, composed by an
anisotropic unit cell, A-site antipolar displacements and oxygen octahedral
tilts. Mapping the orientation of the orthorhombic unit cell in epitaxial
heterostructures that consist of at least one Pbnm compound is often required
to understand and control the different degrees of coupling established at
their coherent interfaces and, therefore, their resulting physical properties.
However, retrieving this information from the strain maps generated with
high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy can be challenging,
because the three pseudocubic lattice parameters are very similar in these
systems. Here, we present a novel methodology for mapping the crystallographic
orientation in Pbnm systems. It makes use of the geometrical phase analysis
algorithm, as applied to aberration-corrected scanning transition electron
microscopy images, but in an unconventional way. The method is fast and robust,
giving real-space maps of the lattice orientations in Pbnm systems, from both
cross-sectional and plan-view geometries and across large fields of view. As an
example, we apply our methodology to rare-earth nickelate heterostructures, in
order to investigate how the crystallographic orientation of these films
depends on various structural constraints that are imposed by the underlying
single crystal substrates. We observe that the resulting domain distributions
and associated defect landscapes mainly depend on a competition between the
epitaxial compressive/tensile and shear strains, together with the matching of
atomic displacements at the substrate/film interface. The results point towards
strategies for controlling these characteristics by appropriate substrate
choice.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figures, 2 table
Intersecting Solitons, Amoeba and Tropical Geometry
We study generic intersection (or web) of vortices with instantons inside,
which is a 1/4 BPS state in the Higgs phase of five-dimensional N=1
supersymmetric U(Nc) gauge theory on R_t \times (C^\ast)^2 \simeq R^{2,1}
\times T^2 with Nf=Nc Higgs scalars in the fundamental representation. In the
case of the Abelian-Higgs model (Nf=Nc=1), the intersecting vortex sheets can
be beautifully understood in a mathematical framework of amoeba and tropical
geometry, and we propose a dictionary relating solitons and gauge theory to
amoeba and tropical geometry. A projective shape of vortex sheets is described
by the amoeba. Vortex charge density is uniformly distributed among vortex
sheets, and negative contribution to instanton charge density is understood as
the complex Monge-Ampere measure with respect to a plurisubharmonic function on
(C^\ast)^2. The Wilson loops in T^2 are related with derivatives of the Ronkin
function. The general form of the Kahler potential and the asymptotic metric of
the moduli space of a vortex loop are obtained as a by-product. Our discussion
works generally in non-Abelian gauge theories, which suggests a non-Abelian
generalization of the amoeba and tropical geometry.Comment: 39 pages, 11 figure
Competition between Carrier Injection and Structural Distortions in Electron‐Doped Perovskite Nickelate Thin Films
The discovery of superconductivity in doped infinite‐layer nickelate thin films has brought increased attention to the behavior of the doped perovskite phase. Despite this interest, the majority of existing studies pertain to hole‐doped perovskite rare‐earth nickelate thin films, while most electron‐doping studies have been performed on bulk materials so far. To tackle this imbalance, a detailed study that addresses doping of NdNiO thin films using A‐site substitution is presented, using Pb as a dopant and taking advantage of its valence‐skipping nature. Through a combination of complementary techniques including X‐ray diffraction, transport measurements, X‐ray absorption spectroscopy, electron energy‐loss spectroscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy, the valence of Pb in the NdPbNiO structure is confirmed to be 4+, and the behavior of the doped thin films is found to be controlled by a competition between carrier injection and structural distortions, which respectively reduce and increase the metal‐to‐insulator transition temperature. This work provides a systematic study of electron doping in NdNiO, demonstrating that A‐site substitution with Pb is an appropriate method for such doping in perovskite rare‐earth nickelate systems
Competition between Carrier Injection and Structural Distortions in Electron-Doped Perovskite Nickelate Thin Films
The discovery of superconductivity in doped infinite-layer nickelate thin films has brought increased attention to the behavior of the doped perovskite phase. Despite this interest, the majority of existing studies pertain to hole-doped perovskite rare-earth nickelate thin films, while most electron-doping studies have been performed on bulk materials so far. To tackle this imbalance, a detailed study that addresses doping of NdNiO thin films using A-site substitution is presented, using Pb as a dopant and taking advantage of its valence-skipping nature. Through a combination of complementary techniques including X-ray diffraction, transport measurements, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, electron energy-loss spectroscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy, the valence of Pb in the NdPbNiO structure is confirmed to be 4+, and the behavior of the doped thin films is found to be controlled by a competition between carrier injection and structural distortions, which respectively reduce and increase the metal-to-insulator transition temperature. This work provides a systematic study of electron doping in NdNiO, demonstrating that A-site substitution with Pb is an appropriate method for such doping in perovskite rare-earth nickelate systems
Measurement of the Stray Light in the Advanced Virgo Input Mode Cleaner Cavity using an instrumented baffle
A new instrumented baffle was installed in Spring 2021 at Virgo surrounding
the suspended mirror in the input mode cleaner triangular cavity. It serves as
a demonstrator of the technology designed to instrument the baffles in the main
arms in the near future. We present, for the first time, results on the
measured scattered light distribution inside the cavity as determined by the
new device using data collected between May and July 2021, with Virgo in
commissioning phase and operating with an input laser power in the cavity of
28.5~W. The sensitivity of the baffle is discussed and the data is compared to
scattered light simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
Investigating silent strokes in hypertensives : a magnetic resonance imaging study (ISSYS): rationale and protocol design
Altres ajuts: This research has been funded with grants from the the Catalonian Society of Hypertension (6th Grant Research in Hypertension).Silent brain infarcts are detected by neuroimaging in up to 20% of asymptomatic patients based on population studies. They are five times more frequent than stroke in general population, and increase significantly both with advancing age and hypertension. Moreover, they are independently associated with the risk of future stroke and cognitive decline. Despite these numbers and the clinical consequences of silent brain infarcts, their prevalence in Mediterranean populations is not well known and their role as predictors of future cerebrovascular and cardiovascular events in hypertensive remains to be determined. ISSYS (Investigating Silent Strokes in Hypertensives: a magnetic resonance imaging study) is an observational cross-sectional and longitudinal study aimed to: 1- determine the prevalence of silent cerebrovascular infarcts in a large cohort of 1000 hypertensives and to study their associated factors and 2-to study their relationship with the risk of future stroke and cognitive decline. Cohort study in a randomly selected sample of 1000 participants, hypertensive aged 50 to 70 years old, with no history of previous stroke or dementia. On baseline all participants will undergo a brain MRI to determine the presence of brain infarcts and other cerebrovascular lesions (brain microbleeds, white matter changes and enlarged perivascular spaces) and will be also tested to determine other than brain organ damage (heart-left ventricular hypertrophy, kidney-urine albumin to creatinine ratio, vessels-pulse wave velocity, ankle brachial index), in order to establish the contribution of other subclinical conditions to the risk of further vascular events. Several sub-studies assessing the role of 24 hour ambulatory BP monitoring and plasma or genetic biomarkers will be performed. Follow-up will last for at least 3 years, to assess the rate of further stroke/transient ischemic attack, other cardiovascular events and cognitive decline, and their predictors. Improving the knowledge on the frequency and determinants of these lesions in our setting might help in the future to optimize treatments or establish new preventive strategies to minimize clinical and socioeconomic consequences of stroke and cognitive decline
Solitons in the Higgs phase -- the moduli matrix approach --
We review our recent work on solitons in the Higgs phase. We use U(N_C) gauge
theory with N_F Higgs scalar fields in the fundamental representation, which
can be extended to possess eight supercharges. We propose the moduli matrix as
a fundamental tool to exhaust all BPS solutions, and to characterize all
possible moduli parameters. Moduli spaces of domain walls (kinks) and vortices,
which are the only elementary solitons in the Higgs phase, are found in terms
of the moduli matrix. Stable monopoles and instantons can exist in the Higgs
phase if they are attached by vortices to form composite solitons. The moduli
spaces of these composite solitons are also worked out in terms of the moduli
matrix. Webs of walls can also be formed with characteristic difference between
Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories. We characterize the total moduli space
of these elementary as well as composite solitons. Effective Lagrangians are
constructed on walls and vortices in a compact form. We also present several
new results on interactions of various solitons, such as monopoles, vortices,
and walls. Review parts contain our works on domain walls (hep-th/0404198,
hep-th/0405194, hep-th/0412024, hep-th/0503033, hep-th/0505136), vortices
(hep-th/0511088, hep-th/0601181), domain wall webs (hep-th/0506135,
hep-th/0508241, hep-th/0509127), monopole-vortex-wall systems (hep-th/0405129,
hep-th/0501207), instanton-vortex systems (hep-th/0412048), effective
Lagrangian on walls and vortices (hep-th/0602289), classification of BPS
equations (hep-th/0506257), and Skyrmions (hep-th/0508130).Comment: 89 pages, 33 figures, invited review article to Journal of Physics A:
Mathematical and General, v3: typos corrected, references added, the
published versio
An instrumented baffle for the Advanced Virgo Input Mode Cleaner End Mirror
A novel instrumented baffle surrounding the suspended end mirror in the input
mode cleaner cavity of the Virgo interferometer was installed in spring 2021.
Since then, the device has been regularly operated in the experiment and the
obtained results indicate a good agreement with simulations of the stray light
inside the optical cavity. The baffle will operate in the upcoming O4
observation run, serving as a demonstrator of the technology designed to
instrument the baffles in front of the main mirrors in time for O5. In this
paper we present a detailed description of the baffle design, including
mechanics, front-end electronics, data acquisition, as well as optical and
vacuum tests, calibration and installation procedures, and performance results.Comment: 12 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables, to be submitted to PR
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