Isostaticity and Mechanical Response of Two-Dimensional Granular Piles

We numerically study the static structure and the mechanical response of two-dimensional granular piles. The piles consist of polydisperse disks with and without friction. Special attention is paid for the rigid grain limit by examining the systems with various disk elasticities. It is shown that the static pile structure of frictionless disks becomes isostatic in the rigid limit, while the isostaticity of frictional pile depends on the pile forming procedure, but in the case of the infinite friction is effective, the structure becomes very close to isostatic in the rigid limit. The mechanical response of the piles are studied by infinitesimally displacing one of the disks at the bottom. It is shown that the total amount of the displacement in the pile caused by the perturbation diverges in the case of frictionless pile as it becomes isostatic, while the response remains finite for the frictional pile. In the frictionless isostatic pile, the displacement response in each sample behaves rather complicated way, but its average shows wave like propagation.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure

There are no abnormal solutions of the Bethe−-Salpeter equation in the static model

The four-point Green's function of static QED, where a fermion and an antifermion are located at fixed space positions, is calculated in covariant gauges. The bound state spectrum does not display any abnormal state corresponding to excitations of the relative time. The equation that was established by Mugibayashi in this model and which has abnormal solutions does not coincide with the Bethe$-$Salpeter equation. Gauge transformation from the Coulomb gauge also confirms the absence of abnormal solutions in the Bethe$-$Salpeter equation.Comment: 11 pages, late

The Dog on the Ship: The "Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy" as an Outlying Part of the Argo Star System

Overdensities in the distribution of low latitude, 2MASS giant stars are revealed by systematically peeling away from sky maps the bulk of the giant stars conforming to ``isotropic'' density laws generally accounting for known Milky Way components. This procedure, combined with a higher resolution treatment of the sky density of both giants and dust allows us to probe to lower Galactic latitudes than previous 2MASS giant star studies. While the results show the swath of excess giants previously associated with the Monoceros ring system in the second and third Galactic quadrants at distances of 6-20 kpc, we also find a several times larger overdensity of giants in the same distance range concentrated in the direction of the ancient constellation Argo. Isodensity contours of the large structure suggest that it is highly elongated and inclined by about 3 deg to the disk, although details of the structure -- including the actual location of highest density, overall extent, true shape -- and its origin, remain unknown because only a fraction of it lies outside highly dust-obscured, low latitude regions. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the 2MASS M giant overdensity previously claimed to represent the core of a dwarf galaxy in Canis Major (l ~ 240 deg) is an artifact of a dust extinction window opening to the overall density rise to the more significant Argo structure centered at larger longitude (l ~ 290 +- 10 deg, b ~ -4 +- 2 deg).Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Hydrogen Atom in Relativistic Motion

The Lorentz contraction of bound states in field theory is often appealed to in qualitative descriptions of high energy particle collisions. Surprisingly, the contraction has not been demonstrated explicitly even in simple cases such as the hydrogen atom. It requires a calculation of wave functions evaluated at equal (ordinary) time for bound states in motion. Such wave functions are not obtained by kinematic boosts from the rest frame. Starting from the exact Bethe-Salpeter equation we derive the equal-time wave function of a fermion-antifermion bound state in QED, i.e., positronium or the hydrogen atom, in any frame to leading order in alpha. We show explicitly that the bound state energy transforms as the fourth component of a vector and that the wave function of the fermion-antifermion Fock state contracts as expected. Transverse photon exchange contributes at leading order to the binding energy of the bound state in motion. We study the general features of the corresponding fermion-antifermion-photon Fock states, and show that they do not transform by simply contracting. We verify that the wave function reduces to the light-front one in the infinite momentum frame.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures; v2: some changes in discussion, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

Simple Model for Wet Granular Materials with Liquid Clusters

We propose a simple phenomenological model for wet granular media to take into account many particle interaction through liquid in the funicular state as well as two-body cohesive force by a liquid bridge in the pendular state. In the wet granular media with small liquid content, liquid forms a bridge at each contact point, which induces two-body cohesive force due to the surface tension. As the liquid content increases, some liquid bridges merge, and more than two grains interact through a single liquid cluster. In our model, the cohesive force acts between the grains connected by a liquid-gas interface. As the liquid content increases, the number of grains that interact through the liquid increases, but the liquid-gas interface may decrease when liquid clusters are formed. Due to this competition, our model shows that the shear stress has a maximum as a function of the liquid-content.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures. Discussion is updated. Accepted for publication in EP

An Interaction of a Magellanic Leading Arm High Velocity Cloud with the Milky Way Disk

The Leading Arm of the Magellanic System is a tidally formed HI feature extending \sim 60\arcdeg from the Magellanic Clouds ahead of their direction of motion. Using atomic hydrogen (HI) data from the Galactic All Sky-Survey (GASS), supplemented with data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array, we have found evidence for an interaction between a cloud in the Leading Arm and the Galactic disk where the Leading Arm crosses the Galactic plane. The interaction occurs at velocities permitted by Galactic rotation, which allows us to derive a kinematic distance to the cloud of 21 kpc, suggesting that the Leading Arm crosses the Galactic Plane at a Galactic radius of $R\approx 17$ kpc.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted to Astrophysical Journal Letters. Full resolution version available at ftp://ftp.atnf.csiro.au/pub/people/nmcclure/papers/LeadingArm_apjl.pd

Metal-to-insulator transition in anatase TiO2 thin films induced by growth rate modulation

We demonstrate control of the carrier density of single phase anatase TiO2 thin films by nearly two orders of magnitude by modulating the growth kinetics during pulsed laser deposition, under fixed thermodynamic conditions. The resistivity and the intensity of the photoluminescence spectra of these TiO2 samples, both of which correlate with the number of oxygen vacancies, are shown to depend strongly on the growth rate. A quantitative model is used to explain the carrier density changes.Comment: 13 pages 3 figure

Quasi-Solitons in Dissipative Systems and Exactly Solvable Lattice Models

A system of first-order differential-difference equations with time lag describes the formation of density waves, called as quasi-solitons for dissipative systems in this paper. For co-moving density waves, the system reduces to some exactly solvable lattice models. We construct a shock-wave solution as well as one-quasi-soliton solution, and argue that there are pseudo-conserved quantities which characterize the formation of the co-moving waves. The simplest non-trivial one is given to discuss the presence of a cascade phenomena in relaxation process toward the pattern formation.Comment: REVTeX, 4 pages, 1 figur