8,131 research outputs found
Robustness evaluation of seismic pile response considering uncertainty mechanism of soil properties
Robustness analysis of the seismic pile response of a structureâpileâsoil system with uncertain soil properties and concrete Youngâs modulus is presented in this paper. The bounds of the bending moment of a pile are investigated by means of the previously proposed uncertainty analysis method (Updated Reference-Point method) and the newly developed revised method (NURP method). An efficient finite-element model of a structureâpileâsoil system with smart displacement functions for connecting elements is adopted and a response spectrum method is applied in the evaluation of the seismic pile responses of the system. Two cases of soil uncertainties resulting from different uncertainty mechanisms are considered. It is shown that the worst combination of uncertain soil parameters can be determined by the NURP method in an accurate manner
A Solution for Little Hierarchy Problem and b --> s gamma
We show that all the parameters which destabilize the weak scale can be taken
around the weak scale in the MSSM without conflicting with the SM Higgs mass
bound set by LEP experiment. The essential point is that if the lightest
CP-even Higgs h in the MSSM has only a small coupling to Z boson, g_{ZZh}, LEP
cannot generate the Higgs sufficiently. In the scenario, the SM Higgs mass
bound constrains the mass of the heaviest CP-even Higgs H which has the SM like
g_{ZZH} coupling. However, it is easier to make the heaviest Higgs heavy by the
effect of off-diagonal elements of the mass matrix of the CP-even Higgs because
the larger eigenvalue of 2 times 2 matrix becomes larger by introducing
off-diagonal elements. Thus, the smaller stop masses can be consistent with the
LEP constraints. Moreover, the two excesses observed at LEP Higgs search can
naturally be explained as the signals of the MSSM Higgs h and H in this
scenario. One of the most interesting results in the scenario is that all the
Higgs in the MSSM have the weak scale masses. For example, the charged Higgs
mass should be around 130 GeV. This looks inconsistent with the lower bound
obtained by the b --> s gamma process as m_{H^\pm}>350GeV. However, we show
that the amplitude induced by the charged Higgs can naturally be compensated by
that of the chargino if we take the mass parameters by which the little
hierarchy problem can be solved. The point is that the both amplitudes have the
same order of magnitudes when all the fields in the both loops have the same
order of masses.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, input parameter slightly changed, figures
replaced, references correcte
The X-ray Properties of the Nearby Star-Forming Galaxy IC 342: The XMM-Newton View
We present the X-ray properties of IC342 using XMM-Newton. Thirty-five
sources are detected coincident with the disk of IC342 (more than tripling the
number known), of which ~31 are likely to be intrinsic to IC342. This
population shows a range of spectral properties and has an X-ray luminosity
function slope and infrared luminosity comparable to that of starburst galaxies
such as M82 and the Antennae, while its relative lack of extended X-ray
emission is similar to the properties of quiescent spirals. We do detect
long-term variability between this observation and the 1991 ROSAT and 1993/2000
ASCA observations for five sources. Notably, the second most luminous source
IC342 X-2 is is found to be in its the lowest luminosity state observed for X-2
to date, although the slope of the spectrum is intermediate between the
previously observed low/hard and high/soft states. IC342 X-1, on the other
hand, is found to be in an identical state to that observed in 2000 with ASCA.
Assuming X-1 is in an anomalous very high (VH) state, then either (1) X-1 has
remained in this state between 2000 and 2002, and is therefore the longest
duration VH-state binary ever observed, or (2) it was simply caught in a VH
state by chance in both the 2000 ASCA and 2002 XMM-Newton observations. We have
also confirmed the ROSAT HRI result that the nucleus of IC342 is made up of
both point-like and extended emission. The relative fluxes of the two spectral
components suggest that the nucleus is complex, with a soft extended component
contributing approximately half of the total luminosity. (Abridged)Comment: AJ in press (December 2003), 9 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables,
emulateapj.cls use
Accretion Disk Spectra of the Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources in Nearby Spiral Galaxies and Galactic Superluminal Jet Sources
Ultra-luminous Compact X-ray Sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies and
Galactic superluminal jet sources share the common spectral characteristic that
they have unusually high disk temperatures which cannot be explained in the
framework of the standard optically thick accretion disk in the Schwarzschild
metric. On the other hand, the standard accretion disk around the Kerr black
hole might explain the observed high disk temperature, as the inner radius of
the Kerr disk gets smaller and the disk temperature can be consequently higher.
However, we point out that the observable Kerr disk spectra becomes
significantly harder than Schwarzschild disk spectra only when the disk is
highly inclined. This is because the emission from the innermost part of the
accretion disk is Doppler-boosted for an edge-on Kerr disk, while hardly seen
for a face-on disk. The Galactic superluminal jet sources are known to be
highly inclined systems, thus their energy spectra may be explained with the
standard Kerr disk with known black hole masses. For ULXs, on the other hand,
the standard Kerr disk model seems implausible, since it is highly unlikely
that their accretion disks are preferentially inclined, and, if edge-on Kerr
disk model is applied, the black hole mass becomes unreasonably large (> 300
M_solar). Instead, the slim disk (advection dominated optically thick disk)
model is likely to explain the observed super-Eddington luminosities, hard
energy spectra, and spectral variations of ULXs. We suggest that ULXs are
accreting black holes with a few tens of solar mass, which is not unexpected
from the standard stellar evolution scenario, and that their X-ray emission is
from the slim disk shining at super-Eddington luminosities.Comment: ApJ, accepte
Synapse efficiency diverges due to synaptic pruning following over-growth
In the development of the brain, it is known that synapses are pruned
following over-growth. This pruning following over-growth seems to be a
universal phenomenon that occurs in almost all areas -- visual cortex, motor
area, association area, and so on. It has been shown numerically that the
synapse efficiency is increased by systematic deletion. We discuss the synapse
efficiency to evaluate the effect of pruning following over-growth, and
analytically show that the synapse efficiency diverges as O(log c) at the limit
where connecting rate c is extremely small. Under a fixed synapse number
criterion, the optimal connecting rate, which maximize memory performance,
exists.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figure
Structural phase transitions in multipole traps
A small number of laser-cooled ions trapped in a linear radiofrequency
multipole trap forms a hollow tube structure. We have studied, by means of
molecular dynamics simulations, the structural transition from a double ring to
a single ring of ions. We show that the single-ring configuration has the
advantage to inhibit the thermal transfer from the rf-excited radial components
of the motion to the axial component, allowing to reach the Doppler limit
temperature along the direction of the trap axis. Once cooled in this
particular configuration, the ions experience an angular dependency of the
confinement if the local adiabaticity parameter exceeds the empirical limit.
Bunching of the ion structures can then be observed and an analytic expression
is proposed to take into account for this behaviour
Effective theoretical approach of Gauge-Higgs unification model and its phenomenological applications
We derive the low energy effective theory of Gauge-Higgs unification (GHU)
models in the usual four dimensional framework. We find that the theories are
described by only the zero-modes with a particular renormalization condition in
which essential informations about GHU models are included. We call this
condition ``Gauge-Higgs condition'' in this letter. In other wards, we can
describe the low energy theory as the SM with this condition if GHU is a model
as the UV completion of the Standard Model. This approach will be a powerful
tool to construct realistic models for GHU and to investigate their low energy
phenomena.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures; Two paragraphs discussing the applicable scope
of this approach are adde
Higgs coupling constants as a probe of new physics
We study new physics effects on the couplings of weak gauge bosons with the
lightest CP-even Higgs boson (), , and the tri-linear coupling of the
lightest Higgs boson, , at the one loop order, as predicted by the two
Higgs doublet model. Those renormalized coupling constants can deviate from the
Standard Model (SM) predictions due to two distinct origins; the tree level
mixing effect of Higgs bosons and the quantum effect of additional particles in
loop diagrams. The latter can be enhanced in the renormalized coupling
constant when the additional particles show the non-decoupling property.
Therefore, even in the case where the coupling is close to the SM value,
deviation in the coupling from the SM value can become as large as plus
100 percent, while that in the coupling is at most minus 1 percent level.
Such large quantum effect on the Higgs tri-linear coupling is distinguishable
from the tree level mixing effect, and is expected to be detectable at a future
linear collider.Comment: 52 pages, 10 figures, revtex
Discovery of Spectral Transitions from Two Ultra-Luminous Compact X-Ray Sources in Ic342
Two {\it ASCA} observations were made of two ultra-luminous compact X-ray
sources (ULXs), Source 1 and Source 2, in the spiral galaxy IC 342. In the 1993
observation, Source 2 showed a 0.5--10 keV luminosity of
ergs s (assuming a distance of 4.0 Mpc), and a hard power-law spectrum
of photon index . As already reported, Source 1 was times
brighter on that occasion, and exhibited a soft spectrum represented by a
multi-color disk model of inner-disk temperature keV. The second
observation made in February 2000 revealed that Source 1 had made a transition
into a hard spectral state, while Source 2 into a soft spectral state. The ULXs
are therefore inferred to exhibit two distinct spectral states, and sometimes
make transitions between them. These results significantly reinforce the
scenario which describes ULXs as mass-accreting black holes.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; acceoted for ApJ
Does the Slim-Disk Model Correctly Consider Photon-Trapping Effects?
We investigate the photon-trapping effects in the super-critical black hole
accretion flows by solving radiation transfer as well as the energy equations
of radiation and gas. It is found that the slim-disk model generally
overestimates the luminosity of the disk at around the Eddington luminosity
(L_E) and is not accurate in describing the effective temperature profile,
since it neglects time delay between energy generation at deeper inside the
disk and energy release at the surface. Especially, the photon-trapping effects
are appreciable even below L ~ L_E, while they appear above ~ 3L_E according to
the slim disk. Through the photon-trapping effects, the luminosity is reduced
and the effective temperature profile becomes flatter than r^{-3/4} as in the
standard disk. In the case that the viscous heating is effective only around
the equatorial plane, the luminosity is kept around the Eddington luminosity
even at very large mass accretion rate, Mdot>>L_E/c^2. The effective
temperature profile is almost flat, and the maximum temperature decreases in
accordance with rise in the mass accretion rate. Thus, the most luminous radius
shifts to the outer region when Mdot/(L_E/c^2) >> 10^2. In the case that the
energy is dissipated equally at any heights, the resultant luminosity is
somewhat larger than in the former case, but the energy-conversion efficiency
still decreases with increase of the mass accretion rate, as well. The most
luminous radius stays around the inner edge of the disk in the latter case.
Hence, the effective temperature profile is sensitive to the vertical
distribution of energy production rates, so is the spectral shape. Future
observations of high L/L_E objects will be able to test our model.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
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