451 research outputs found
Biology and Behaviour
Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) of the families Steinernematidae and Heterorhabditidae are lethal pathogens of insects. These pathogens contribute to the regulation of natural populations of insects, but the main interest in them is as an inundatively applied biocontrol agent. Their success in this role can be attributed to the unique partnership between a host-seeking nematode and a lethal insect-pathogenic bacterium. Because of their biocontrol potential, considerable attention has been directed over the past few decades to Heterorhabditis and Steinernema and their respective bacterial partners, Photorhabdus and Xenorhabdus
Optical control of photon tunneling through an array of nanometer scale cylindrical channels
We report first observation of photon tunneling gated by light at a different
wavelength in an artificially created array of nanometer scale cylindrical
channels in a thick gold film. Polarization properties of gated light provide
strong proof of the enhanced nonlinear optical mixing in nanometric channels
involved in the process. This suggests the possibility of building a new class
of "gated" photon tunneling devices for massive parallel all-optical signal and
image processing.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Non-detection of a statistically anisotropic power spectrum in large-scale structure
We search a sample of photometric luminous red galaxies (LRGs) measured by
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) for a quadrupolar anisotropy in the
primordial power spectrum, in which P(\vec{k}) is an isotropic power spectrum
P(k) multiplied by a quadrupolar modulation pattern. We first place limits on
the 5 coefficients of a general quadrupole anisotropy. We also consider
axisymmetric quadrupoles of the form P(\vec{k}) = P(k){1 +
g_*[(\hat{k}\cdot\hat{n})^2-1/3]} where \hat{n} is the axis of the anisotropy.
When we force the symmetry axis \hat{n} to be in the direction (l,b)=(94
degrees,26 degrees) identified in the recent Groeneboom et al. analysis of the
cosmic microwave background, we find g_*=0.006+/-0.036 (1 sigma). With uniform
priors on \hat{n} and g_* we find that -0.41<g_*<+0.38 with 95% probability,
with the wide range due mainly to the large uncertainty of asymmetries aligned
with the Galactic Plane. In none of these three analyses do we detect evidence
for quadrupolar power anisotropy in large scale structure.Comment: 23 pages; 10 figures; 3 tables; replaced with version published in
JCAP (added discussion of scale-varying quadrupolar anisotropy
Perturbations in electromagnetic dark energy
It has been recently proposed that the presence of a temporal electromagnetic
field on cosmological scales could explain the phase of accelerated expansion
that the universe is currently undergoing. The field contributes as a
cosmological constant and therefore, the homogeneous cosmology produced by such
a model is exactly the same as that of CDM. However, unlike a
cosmological constant term, electromagnetic fields can acquire perturbations
which in principle could affect CMB anisotropies and structure formation. In
this work, we study the evolution of inhomogeneous scalar perturbations in this
model. We show that provided the initial electromagnetic fluctuations generated
during inflation are small, the model is perfectly compatible with both CMB and
large scale structure observations at the same level of accuracy as
CDM.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Added new comments to match the published
versio
The Dynamics of a Rigid Body in Potential Flow with Circulation
We consider the motion of a two-dimensional body of arbitrary shape in a
planar irrotational, incompressible fluid with a given amount of circulation
around the body. We derive the equations of motion for this system by
performing symplectic reduction with respect to the group of volume-preserving
diffeomorphisms and obtain the relevant Poisson structures after a further
Poisson reduction with respect to the group of translations and rotations. In
this way, we recover the equations of motion given for this system by Chaplygin
and Lamb, and we give a geometric interpretation for the Kutta-Zhukowski force
as a curvature-related effect. In addition, we show that the motion of a rigid
body with circulation can be understood as a geodesic flow on a central
extension of the special Euclidian group SE(2), and we relate the cocycle in
the description of this central extension to a certain curvature tensor.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figures; v2: typos correcte
Ab initio study of the beta$-tin->Imma->sh phase transitions in silicon and germanium
We have investigated the structural sequence of the high-pressure phases of
silicon and germanium. We have focussed on the cd->beta-tin->Imma->sh phase
transitions. We have used the plane-wave pseudopotential approach to the
density-functional theory implemented within the Vienna ab-initio simulation
package (VASP). We have determined the equilibrium properties of each structure
and the values of the critical parameters including a hysteresis effect at the
phase transitions. The order of the phase transitions has been obtained
alternatively from the pressure dependence of the enthalpy and of the internal
structure parameters. The commonly used tangent construction is shown to be
very unreliable. Our calculations identify a first-order phase transition from
the cd to the beta-tin and from the Imma to the sh phase, and they indicate the
possibility of a second-order phase-transition from the beta-tin to the Imma
phase. Finally, we have derived the enthalpy barriers between the phases.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure
Extended chiral algebras and the emergence of SU(2) quantum numbers in the Coulomb gas
We study a set of chiral symmetries contained in degenerate operators beyond
the `minimal' sector of the c(p,q) models. For the operators
h_{(2j+2)q-1,1}=h_{1,(2j+2)p-1} at conformal weight [ (j+1)p-1 ][ (j+1)q -1 ],
for every 2j \in N, we find 2j+1 chiral operators which have quantum numbers of
a spin j representation of SU(2). We give a free-field construction of these
operators which makes this structure explicit and allows their OPEs to be
calculated directly without any use of screening charges. The first non-trivial
chiral field in this series, at j=1/2, is a fermionic or para-fermionic
doublet. The three chiral bosonic fields, at j=1, generate a closed W-algebra
and we calculate the vacuum character of these triplet models.Comment: 23 pages Late
An Estimator for statistical anisotropy from the CMB bispectrum
Various data analyses of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provide
observational hints of statistical isotropy breaking. Some of these features
can be studied within the framework of primordial vector fields in inflationary
theories which generally display some level of statistical anisotropy both in
the power spectrum and in higher-order correlation functions. Motivated by
these observations and the recent theoretical developments in the study of
primordial vector fields, we develop the formalism necessary to extract
statistical anisotropy information from the three-point function of the CMB
temperature anisotropy. We employ a simplified vector field model and
parametrize the bispectrum of curvature fluctuations in such a way that all the
information about statistical anisotropy is encoded in some parameters
lambda_{LM} (which measure the anisotropic to the isotropic bispectrum
amplitudes). For such a template bispectrum, we compute an optimal estimator
for lambda_{LM} and the expected signal-to-noise ratio. We estimate that, for
f_{NL} ~ 30, an experiment like Planck can be sensitive to a ratio of the
anisotropic to the isotropic amplitudes of the bispectrum as small as 10%. Our
results are complementary to the information coming from a power spectrum
analysis and particularly relevant for those models where statistical
anisotropy turns out to be suppressed in the power spectrum but not negligible
in the bispectrum.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX file. Matches version accepted for publication in
JCAP; some references added; Appendix C added to explain the order of the
Edgeworth expansion employe
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