48,005 research outputs found
Cool stars in NGC 2547 and pre main sequence lithium depletion
We present the results of a spectroscopic survey of X-ray selected, low-mass
candidate members of the young open cluster NGC 2547. Using a combination of
photometry, spectroscopic indices and radial velocities we refine our candidate
list and then use our spectroscopy to study the progression of lithium
depletion in low-mass pre main sequence stars. We derive lithium abundances or
upper limits for all our candidate members, which have effective temperatures
in the range 5000>Teff>3200K, and compare these with predictions for lithium
burning and depletion provided by a number of models and also with the lithium
depletion seen in younger and older stars. We find that some models can
reproduce the lithium abundance pattern of NGC 2547 if the cluster has an age
of ~20-35Myr, which is also indicated by fits to low-mass isochrones in the
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. But the lack of significant further lithium
depletion between NGC 2547 and older clusters argues for an age of at least
50Myr, more in keeping with the lack of lithium observed in even fainter NGC
2547 candidates. We show that reconciliation of these age estimates may require
additions to the physics incorporated in current generations of pre main
sequence models.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS (better version of Fig.1 available
at http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/~rdj/
Adiabatic Gate Teleportation
The difficulty in producing precisely timed and controlled quantum gates is a
significant source of error in many physical implementations of quantum
computers. Here we introduce a simple universal primitive, adiabatic gate
teleportation, which is robust to timing errors and many control errors and
maintains a constant energy gap throughout the computation above a degenerate
ground state space. Notably this construction allows for geometric robustness
based upon the control of two independent qubit interactions. Further, our
piecewise adiabatic evolution easily relates to the quantum circuit model,
enabling the use of standard methods from fault-tolerance theory for
establishing thresholds.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, with additional 3 pages and 2 figures in an
appendix. v2 Refs added. Video abstract available at
http://www.quantiki.org/video_abstracts/0905090
Space-time Torsion and Neutrino Oscillations in Vacuum
The objective of this study is to verify the consistency of the prescription
of alternative minimum coupling (connection) proposed by the Teleparallel
Equivalent to General Relativity (TEGR) for the Dirac equation. With this aim,
we studied the problem of neutrino oscillations in Weitzenbock space-time in
the Schwarzschild metric. In particular, we calculate the phase dynamics of
neutrinos. The relation of spin of the neutrino with the space-time torsion is
clarified through the determination of the phase differences between spin
eigenstates of the neutrinos.Comment: 07 pages, no figure
Corrections to Finite Size Scaling in Percolation
A 1/L-expansion for percolation problems is proposed, where L is the lattice
finite length. The square lattice with 27 different sizes L = 18, 22 ... 1594
is considered. Certain spanning probabilities were determined by Monte Carlo
simulations, as continuous functions of the site occupation probability p. We
estimate the critical threshold pc by applying the quoted expansion to these
data. Also, the universal spanning probability at pc for an annulus with aspect
ratio r=1/2 is estimated as C = 0.876657(45)
The low-mass Initial Mass Function in the young cluster NGC 6611
NGC 6611 is the massive young cluster (2-3 Myr) that ionises the Eagle
Nebula. We present very deep photometric observations of the central region of
NGC 6611 obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope and the following filters:
ACS/WFC F775W and F850LP and NIC2 F110W and F160W, loosely equivalent to
ground-based IZJH filters. This survey reaches down to I ~ 26 mag. We construct
the Initial Mass Function (IMF) from ~ 1.5 Msun well into the brown dwarf
regime (down to ~ 0.02 Msun). We have detected 30-35 brown dwarf candidates in
this sample. The low-mass IMF is combined with a higher-mass IMF constructed
from the groundbased catalogue from Oliveira et al. (2005). We compare the
final IMF with those of well studied star forming regions: we find that the IMF
of NGC 6611 more closely resembles that of the low-mass star forming region in
Taurus than that of the more massive Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC). We conclude
that there seems to be no severe environmental effect in the IMF due to the
proximity of the massive stars in NGC 6611.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS (main journal); 18 pages, 12
figures and 3 table
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