4,077 research outputs found
Conductivity of a graphene strip: width and gate-voltage dependencies
We study the conductivity of a graphene strip taking into account
electrostatically-induced charge accumulation on its edges. Using a local
dependency of the conductivity on the carrier concentration we find that the
electrostatic size effect in doped graphene strip of the width of 0.5 - 3 m can result in a significant (about 40%) enhancement of the effective
conductivity in comparison to the infinitely wide samples. This effect should
be taken into account both in the device simulation as well as for verification
of scattering mechanisms in graphene.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure
A remarkable recurrent nova in M 31: The 2010 eruption recovered and evidence of a six-month period
The Andromeda Galaxy recurrent nova M31N 2008-12a has been caught in eruption
nine times. Six observed eruptions in the seven years from 2008 to 2014
suggested a duty cycle of ~1 year, which makes this the most rapidly recurring
system known and the leading single-degenerate Type Ia Supernova progenitor
candidate; but no 2010 eruption has been found so far. Here we present evidence
supporting the recovery of the 2010 eruption, based on archival images taken at
and around the time. We detect the 2010 eruption in a pair of images at 2010
Nov 20.52 UT, with a magnitude of m_R = 17.84 +/- 0.19. The sequence of seven
eruptions shows significant indications of a duty cycle slightly shorter than
one year, which makes successive eruptions occur progressively earlier in the
year. We compared three archival X-ray detections with the well observed
multi-wavelength light curve of the 2014 eruption to accurately constrain the
time of their optical peaks. The results imply that M31N 2008-12a might have in
fact a recurrence period of ~6 months (175 +/- 11 days), making it even more
exceptional. If this is the case, then we predict that soon two eruptions per
year will be observable. Furthermore, we predict the next eruption will occur
around late Sep 2015. We encourage additional observations.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables; submitted to A&A Letter
Scaling Theory of Antiferromagnetic Heisenberg Ladder Models
The antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on multi-leg ladders is
investigated. Criticality of the ground-state transition is explored by means
of finite-size scaling. The ladders with an even number of legs and those with
an odd number of legs are distinguished clearly. In the former, the energy gap
opens up as , where is the strength of the
antiferromagnetic inter-chain coupling. In the latter, the critical phase with
the central charge extends over the whole region of .Comment: 12 pages with 9 Postscript figures. To appear in J. Phys. A: Math.
Ge
Deep K_s-near-infrared Surface Photometry of 80 Dwarf Irregular Galaxies in the Local Volume
We present deep near-infrared (K_s) images and surface photometry for 80 dwarf irregular galaxies (dIs) within ~5 Mpc of the Milky Way. The galaxy images were obtained at five different facilities between 2004 and 2006. The image reductions and surface photometry have been performed using methods specifically designed for isolating faint galaxies from the high and varying near-infrared sky level. Fifty-four of the 80 dIs have surface brightness profiles which could be fit to a hyperbolic-secant (sech) function, while the remaining profiles could be fit to the sum of a sech and a Gaussian function. From these fits, we have measured central surface brightnesses, scale lengths, and integrated magnitudes. This survey is part of a larger study of the connection between large-scale structure and the global properties of dIs, the hypothesized building-blocks of more massive galaxies
Lifting the Dusty Veil II: A Large-Scale Study of the Galactic Infrared Extinction Law
We combine near-infrared (2MASS) and mid-infrared (Spitzer-IRAC) photometry
to characterize the IR extinction law (1.2-8 microns) over nearly 150 degrees
of contiguous Milky Way midplane longitude. The relative extinctions in 5
passbands across these wavelength and longitude ranges are derived by
calculating color excess ratios for G and K giant red clump stars in contiguous
midplane regions and deriving the wavelength dependence of extinction in each
one. Strong, monotonic variations in the extinction law shape are found as a
function of angle from the Galactic center, symmetric on either side of it.
These longitudinal variations persist even when dense interstellar regions,
known a priori to have a shallower extinction curve, are removed. The
increasingly steep extinction curves towards the outer Galaxy indicate a steady
decrease in the absolute-to-selective extinction ratio (R_V) and in the mean
dust grain size at greater Galactocentric angles. We note an increasing
strength of the 8 micron extinction inflection at high Galactocentric angles
and, using theoretical dust models, show that this behavior is consistent with
the trend in R_V. Along several lines of sight where the solution is most
feasible, A_lambda/A_Ks as a function of Galactic radius is estimated and shown
to have a Galactic radial dependence. Our analyses suggest that the observed
relationship between extinction curve shape and Galactic longitude is due to an
intrinsic dependence of the extinction law on Galactocentric radius.Comment: Accepted to Ap
Stability of the selfsimilar dynamics of a vortex filament
In this paper we continue our investigation about selfsimilar solutions of
the vortex filament equation, also known as the binormal flow (BF) or the
localized induction equation (LIE). Our main result is the stability of the
selfsimilar dynamics of small pertubations of a given selfsimilar solution. The
proof relies on finding precise asymptotics in space and time for the tangent
and the normal vectors of the perturbations. A main ingredient in the proof is
the control of the evolution of weighted norms for a cubic 1-D Schr\"odinger
equation, connected to the binormal flow by Hasimoto's transform.Comment: revised version, 36 page
The Distance to the Galactic Center Derived From Infrared Photometry of Bulge Red Clump Stars
On the basis of the near infrared observations of bulge red clump stars near
the Galactic center, we have determined the galactocentric distance to be R_0 =
7.52 +- 0.10 (stat) +- 0.35 (sys) kpc. We observed the red clump stars at |l| <
1.0 deg and 0.7 deg < |b| < 1.0 deg with the IRSF 1.4 m telescope and the
SIRIUS camera in the H and Ks bands. After extinction and population
corrections, we obtained (m - M)_0 = 14.38 +- 0.03 (stat) +- 0.10 (sys). The
statistical error is dominated by the uncertainty of the intrinsic local red
clump stars' luminosity. The systematic error is estimated to be +- 0.10
including uncertainties in extinction and population correction, zero-point of
photometry, and the fitting of the luminosity function of the red clump stars.
Our result, R_0 = 7.52 kpc, is in excellent agreement with the distance
determined geometrically with the star orbiting the massive black hole in the
Galactic center. The recent result based on the spatial distribution of
globular clusters is also consistent with our result. In addition, our study
exhibits that the distance determination to the Galactic center with the red
clump stars, even if the error of the population correction is taken into
account, can achieve an uncertainty of about 5%, which is almost the same level
as that in recent geometrical determinations.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Ap
The long Galactic bar as seen by UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey
Over the last decade there have been a series of results supporting the
hypothesis of the existence of a long thin bar in the Milky Way with a
half-length of 4.5 kpc and a position angle of around 45 deg. This is
apparently a very different structure from the triaxial bulge of the Galaxy,
which is thicker and shorter and dominates the star counts at |l|<10 deg. In
this paper, we analyse the stellar distribution in the inner Galaxy to see if
there is clear evidence for two triaxial or bar-like structures in the Milky
Way.
By using the red-clump population as a tracer of Galactic structure, we
determine the apparent morphology of the inner Galaxy. Deeper and higher
spatial resolution NIR photometry from the UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey allows
us to use in-plane data even at the innermost Galactic longitudes, a region
where the source confusion is a dominant effect that makes it impossible to use
other NIR databases such as 2MASS or TCS-CAIN. We show that results previously
obtained with using the red-clump giants are confirmed with the in-plane data
from UKIDSS GPS. There are two different structures coexisting in the inner
Galactic plane: one with a position angle of 23.60+-2.19 deg that can be traced
from the Galactic Centre up to l=10 deg (the Galactic bulge), and other with a
larger position angle of 42.44+-2.14 deg, that ends around l=28 deg (the long
Galactic bar).Comment: (8 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in A&A
- …