Experimental investigation of a magnetically balanced arc in a transverse argon flow

"Reprinted from Journal of Engineering for Power January, 1966.""An experimental study of an electric arc in crossed convective and magnetic fields has been made. An electric arc was established across a rectangular test section through which argon gas was flowing at approximately atmospheric pressure and velocities up to 100 m/sec. Magnetic field strengths up to 3 webers/m2, oriented so that the Lorentz force opposed the convective force on the arc, were applied perpendicular lo both the arc and the direction of the argon gas flow. The test apparatus and the procedure used to obtain the experimental relationship between the velocity of the argon flow and the balancing magnetic field are described. An analysis which assumed the magnetically balanced arc lo be a gaseous cylinder positioned between the electrodes and with a diameter varying directly as the arc current satisfactorily explained the observed dependence of the balancing magnetic field on the gas velocity."--Page 1

Chemical telemetry of OH observed to measure interstellar magnetic fields

We present models for the chemistry in gas moving towards the ionization front of an HII region. When it is far from the ionization front, the gas is highly depleted of elements more massive than helium. However, as it approaches the ionization front, ices are destroyed and species formed on the grain surfaces are injected into the gas phase. Photodissociation removes gas phase molecular species as the gas flows towards the ionization front. We identify models for which the OH column densities are comparable to those measured in observations undertaken to study the magnetic fields in star forming regions and give results for the column densities of other species that should be abundant if the observed OH arises through a combination of the liberation of H2O from surfaces and photodissociation. They include CH3OH, H2CO, and H2S. Observations of these other species may help establish the nature of the OH spatial distribution in the clouds, which is important for the interpretation of the magnetic field results.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Generalized harmonic formulation in spherical symmetry

In this pedagogically structured article, we describe a generalized harmonic formulation of the Einstein equations in spherical symmetry which is regular at the origin. The generalized harmonic approach has attracted significant attention in numerical relativity over the past few years, especially as applied to the problem of binary inspiral and merger. A key issue when using the technique is the choice of the gauge source functions, and recent work has provided several prescriptions for gauge drivers designed to evolve these functions in a controlled way. We numerically investigate the parameter spaces of some of these drivers in the context of fully non-linear collapse of a real, massless scalar field, and determine nearly optimal parameter settings for specific situations. Surprisingly, we find that many of the drivers that perform well in 3+1 calculations that use Cartesian coordinates, are considerably less effective in spherical symmetry, where some of them are, in fact, unstable.Comment: 47 pages, 15 figures. v2: Minor corrections, including 2 added references; journal version

Neural correlates of probabilistic category learning in patients with schizophrenia

Functional neuroimaging studies of probabilistic category learning in healthy adults report activation of cortical-striatal circuitry. Based on previous findings of normal learning rate concurrent with an overall performance deficit in patients with schizophrenia, we hypothesized that relative to healthy adults, patients with schizophrenia would display preserved caudate nucleus and abnormal prefrontal cortex activation during probabilistic category learning. Forty patients with schizophrenia receiving antipsychotic medication and 25 healthy participants were assessed on interleaved blocks of probabilistic category learning and control tasks while undergoing blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. In addition to the whole sample of patients with schizophrenia and healthy adults, a subset of patients and healthy adults matched for good learning was also compared. In the whole sample analysis, patients with schizophrenia displayed impaired performance in conjunction with normal learning rate relative to healthy adults. The matched comparison of patients and healthy adults classified as good learners revealed greater caudate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity in the healthy adults and greater activation in a more rostral region of the dorsolateral prefrontal, cingulate, parahippocampal and parietal cortex in patients. These results demonstrate that successful probabilistic category learning can occur in the absence of normal frontal-striatal function. Based on analyses of the patients and healthy adults matched on learning and performance, a minority of patients with schizophrenia achieve successful probabilistic category learning and performance levels through differential activation of a circumscribed neural network which suggests a compensatory mechanism in patients showing successful learning. Copyright © 2009 Society for Neuroscience

Electromagnetic Dissociation of Nuclei in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Large discrepancies have been observed between measured Electromagnetic Dissociation(ED) cross sections and the predictions of the semiclassical Weiz\"acker-Williams-Fermi(WWF) method. In this paper, the validity of the semiclassical approximation is examined. The total cross section for electromagnetic excitation of a nuclear target by a spinless projectile is calculated in first Born approximation, neglecting recoil. The final result is expressed in terms of correlation functions and convoluted densities in configuration space. The result agrees with the WWF approximation to leading order(unretarded electric dipole approximation), but the method allows an analytic evaluation of the cutoff, which is determined by the details of the electric dipole transition charge density. Using the Goldhaber-Teller model of that density, and uniform charge densities for both projectile and target, the cutoff is determined for the total cross section in the nonrelativistic limit, and found to be smaller than values currently used for ED calculations. In addition, cross sections are calculated using a phenomenological momentum space cutoff designed to model final state interactions. For moderate projectile energies, the calculated ED cross section is found to be smaller than the semiclassical result, in qualitative agreement with experiment.Comment: 28 page

A 750 mW, continuous-wave, solid-state laser source at 313 nm for cooling and manipulating trapped 9Be+ ions

We present a solid-state laser system that generates 750 mW of continuous-wave single-frequency output at 313 nm. Sum-frequency generation with fiber lasers at 1550 nm and 1051 nm produces up to 2 W at 626 nm. This visible light is then converted to UV by cavity-enhanced second-harmonic generation. The laser output can be tuned over a 495 GHz range, which includes the 9Be+ laser cooling and repumping transitions. This is the first report of a narrow-linewidth laser system with sufficient power to perform fault-tolerant quantum-gate operations with trapped 9Be+ ions by use of stimulated Raman transitions.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Giant Gravitons - with Strings Attached (III)

We develop techniques to compute the one-loop anomalous dimensions of operators in the ${\cal N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory that are dual to open strings ending on boundstates of sphere giant gravitons. Our results, which are applicable to excitations involving an arbitrary number of open strings, generalize the single string results of hep-th/0701067. The open strings we consider carry angular momentum on an S$^3$ embedded in the S$^5$ of the AdS$_5\times$S$^5$ background. The problem of computing the one loop anomalous dimensions is replaced with the problem of diagonalizing an interacting Cuntz oscillator Hamiltonian. Our Cuntz oscillator dynamics illustrates how the Chan-Paton factors for open strings propagating on multiple branes can arise dynamically.Comment: 66 pages; v2: improved presentatio

The index of the overlap Dirac operator on a discretized 2d non-commutative torus

The index, which is given in terms of the number of zero modes of the Dirac operator with definite chirality, plays a central role in various topological aspects of gauge theories. We investigate its properties in non-commutative geometry. As a simple example, we consider the U(1) gauge theory on a discretized 2d non-commutative torus, in which general classical solutions are known. For such backgrounds we calculate the index of the overlap Dirac operator satisfying the Ginsparg-Wilson relation. When the action is small, the topological charge defined by a naive discretization takes approximately integer values, and it agrees with the index as suggested by the index theorem. Under the same condition, the value of the index turns out to be a multiple of N, the size of the 2d lattice. By interpolating the classical solutions, we construct explicit configurations, for which the index is of order 1, but the action becomes of order N. Our results suggest that the probability of obtaining a non-zero index vanishes in the continuum limit, unlike the corresponding results in the commutative space.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, LaTeX, JHEP3.cls. v3:figures 1 and 2 improved (all the solutions included),version published in JHE

Changes in synaptic transmission and protein expression in the brains of adult offspring after prenatal inhibition of the kynurenine pathway

During early brain development, N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are involved in cell migration, neuritogenesis, axon guidance and synapse formation, but the mechanisms which regulate NMDA receptor density and function remain unclear. The kynurenine pathway of tryptophan metabolism includes an agonist (quinolinic acid) and an antagonist (kynurenic acid) at NMDA receptors and we have previously shown that inhibition of the pathway using the kynurenine-3-monoxygenase inhibitor Ro61-8048 in late gestation produces rapid changes in protein expression in the embryos and effects on synaptic transmission lasting until postnatal day 21 (P21). The present study sought to determine whether any of these effects are maintained into adulthood. After prenatal injections of Ro61-8048 the litter was allowed to develop to P60 when some offspring were euthanized and the brains removed for examination. Analysis of protein expression by Western blotting revealed significantly reduced expression of the GluN2A subunit (32%) and the morphogenetic protein sonic hedgehog (31%), with a 29% increase in the expression of doublecortin, a protein associated with neurogenesis. No changes were seen in mRNA abundance using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Neuronal excitability was normal in the CA1 region of hippocampal slices but paired-pulse stimulation revealed less inhibition at short interpulse intervals. The amount of long-term potentiation was decreased by 49% in treated pups and recovery after low-frequency stimulation was delayed. The results not only strengthen the view that basal, constitutive kynurenine metabolism is involved in normal brain development, but also show that changes induced prenatally can affect the brains of adult offspring and those changes are quite different from those seen previously at weaning (P21). Those changes may be mediated by altered expression of NMDAR subunits and sonic hedgehog

Typicality, Black Hole Microstates and Superconformal Field Theories

We analyze the structure of heavy multitrace BPS operators in N = 1 superconformal quiver gauge theories that arise on the worldvolume of D3-branes on an affine toric cone. We exhibit a geometric procedure for counting heavy mesonic operators with given U(1) charges. We show that for any fixed linear combination of the U(1) charges, the entropy is maximized when the charges are in certain ratios. This selects preferred directions in the charge space that can be determined with the help of a piece of string. We show that almost all heavy mesonic operators of fixed U(1) charges share a universal structure. This universality reflects the properties of the dual extremal black holes whose microstates they create. We also interpret our results in terms of typical configurations of dual giant gravitons in AdS space.Comment: 40 pages + 3 appendices, 11 figure