339 research outputs found
Comparisons of the North Polar Cap of Mars and the Earth's Northern Hemisphere snow cover
The boundaries of the polar caps of Mars have been measured on more than 3000 photographs since 1905 from the plate collection at the Lowell Observatory. For the Earth the polar caps have been accurately mapped only since the mid 1960's when satellites were first available to synoptically view the polar regions. The polar caps of both planets wax and wane in response to changes in the seasons, and interannual differences in polar cap behavior on Mars as well as Earth are intimately linked to global energy balance. In this study data on the year to year variations in the extent of the polar caps of Mars and Earth were assembled and analyzed together with data on annual variations in solar activity to determine if associations exist between these data. It was found that virtually no correlation exists between measurements of Mars north polar cap and solar variability. An inverse relationship was found between variations in the size of the north polar caps of Mars and Earth, although only 6 years of concurrent data were available for comparison
Soil moisture variation patterns observed in Hand County, South Dakota
Soil moisture data were taken during 1976 (April, June, October), 1977 (April, May, June), and 1978 (May, June, July) Hand County, South Dakota as part of the ground truth used in NASA's aircraft experiments to study the use of microwave radiometers for the remote sensing of soil moisture. The spatial variability observed on the ground during each of the sampling events was studied. The data reported are the mean gravimetric soil moisture contained in three surface horizon depths: 0 to 2.5, 0 to 5 and 0 to 10 cm. The overall moisture levels ranged from extremely dry conditions in June 1976 to very wet in May 1978, with a relatively even distribution of values within that range. It is indicated that well drained sites have to be partitioned from imperfectly drained areas when attempting to characterize the general moisture profile throughout an area of varying soil and cover type conditions. It is also found that the variability in moisture content is greatest in the 0 to 2.5 cm measurements and decreases as the measurements are integrated over a greater depth. It is also determined that the sampling intensity of 10 measurements per km is adequate to estimate the mean moisture with an uncertainty of + or - 3 percent under average moisture conditions in areas of moderate to good drainage
WIMP Dark Matter and the QCD Equation of State
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) of mass m freeze out at a
temperature T_f ~ m/25, i.e. in the range 400 MeV -- 40 GeV for a particle in
the typical mass range 10 -- 1000 GeV. The WIMP relic density, which depends on
the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom at T_f, may be measured
to better than 1% by Planck, warranting comparable theoretical precision.
Recent theoretical and experimental advances in the understanding of high
temperature QCD show that the quark gluon plasma departs significantly from
ideal behaviour up to temperatures of several GeV, necessitating an improvement
of the cosmological equation of state over those currently used. We discuss how
this increases the relic density by approximately 1.5 -- 3.5% in benchmark
mSUGRA models, with an uncertainly in the QCD corrections of 0.5 -- 1 %. We
point out what further work is required to achieve a theoretical accuracy
comparable with the expected observational precision, and speculate that the
effective number of degrees of freedom at T_f may become measurable in the
foreseeable future.Comment: 4pp, 2figs. More info including Matlab scripts used to generate
equation of state curves at
http://www.pact.cpes.sussex.ac.uk/arXiv/hep-ph/0501232
The Polyakov Loop and its Relation to Static Quark Potentials and Free Energies
It appears well accepted in the literature that the correlator of Polyakov
loops in a finite temperature system decays with the "average" free energy of
the static quark-antiquark system, and can be decomposed into singlet and
adjoint (or octet for QCD) contributions. By fixing a gauge respecting the
transfer matrix, attempts have been made to extract those contributions
separately. In this paper we point out that the "average" and "adjoint"
channels of Polyakov loop correlators are misconceptions. We show analytically
that all channels receive contributions from singlet states only, and give a
corrected definition of the singlet free energy. We verify this finding by
simulations of the 3d SU(2) pure gauge theory in the zero temperature limit,
which allows to cleanly extract the ground state exponents and the non-trivial
matrix elements. The latter account for the difference between the channels
observed in previous simulations.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; note and reference adde
Cutoff effects of Wilson fermions on the QCD equation of state to O(g^2)
We compute the O(g^2) contribution to the thermodynamic pressure for Wilson
fermions in the standard, the twisted mass, and clover improved formulation in
lattice perturbation theory, including finite mass effects. We compare the
continuum approaches of these discretizations for the massive ideal and
interacting gas. In all cases, for N_t \geq 8 cutoff effects of Wilson type
fermions are comparable to those of staggered fermions, but asymptotic scaling
requires .Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. Version shortened to a brief report accepted by
PR
L band push broom microwave radiometer: Soil moisture verification and time series experiment Delmarva Peninsula
The verification of a multi-sensor aircraft system developed to study soil moisture applications is discussed. This system consisted of a three beam push broom L band microwave radiometer, a thermal infrared scanner, a multispectral scanner, video and photographic cameras and an onboard navigational instrument. Ten flights were made of agricultural sites in Maryland and Delaware with little or no vegetation cover. Comparisons of aircraft and ground measurements showed that the system was reliable and consistent. Time series analysis of microwave and evaporation data showed a strong similarity that indicates a potential direction for future research
Space-based passive microwave soil moisture retrievals and the correction for a dynamic open water fraction
The large observation footprint of low-frequency satellite microwave emissions complicates the interpretation of near-surface soil moisture retrievals. While the effect of sub-footprint lateral heterogeneity is relatively limited under unsaturated conditions, open water bodies (if not accounted for) cause a strong positive bias in the satellite-derived soil moisture retrieval. This bias is generally assumed static and associated with large, continental lakes and coastal areas. Temporal changes in the extent of smaller water bodies as small as a few percent of the sensor footprint size, however, can cause significant and dynamic biases. We analysed the influence of such small open water bodies on near-surface soil moisture products derived from actual (non-synthetic) data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) for three areas in Oklahoma, USA. Differences between on-ground observations, model estimates and AMSR-E retrievals were related to dynamic estimates of open water fraction, one retrieved from a global daily record based on higher frequency AMSR-E data, a second derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and a third through inversion of the radiative transfer model, used to retrieve soil moisture. The comparison demonstrates the presence of relatively small areas (<0.05) of open water in or near the sensor footprint, possibly in combination with increased, below-critical vegetation density conditions (optical density <0.8), which contribute to seasonally varying biases in excess of 0.2 (m<sup>3</sup> m<sup>−3</sup>) soil water content. These errors need to be addressed, either through elimination or accurate characterisation, if the soil moisture retrievals are to be used effectively in a data assimilation scheme
Land Surface Temperature from Ka-band (37 GHZ) Passive Microwave Observations
An alternative to thermal infrared satellite sensors for measuring land surface temperature (T<inf>s</inf>) is presented. The 37 GHz vertical polarized brightness temperature is used to derive T<inf>s</inf> because it is considered the most appropriate microwave frequency for temperature retrieval. This channel balances a reduced sensitivity to soil surface characteristics with a relatively high atmospheric transmissivity. It is shown that with a simple linear relationship, accurate values for T<inf>s</inf> can be obtained from this frequency, with a theoretical bias of within 1 K for 70% of vegetated land areas of the globe. Barren, sparsely vegetated, and open shrublands cannot be accurately described with this single channel approach because variable surface conditions become important. The precision of the retrieved land surface temperature is expected to be better than 2.5 K for forests and 3.5 K for low vegetation. This method can be used to complement existing infrared derived temperature products, especially during clouded conditions. With several microwave radiometers currently in orbit, this method can be used to observe the diurnal temperature cycles with surprising accuracy. © 2009 by the American Geophysical Union
The pressure of strong coupling lattice QCD with heavy quarks, the hadron resonance gas model and the large N limit
In this paper we calculate the pressure of pure lattice Yang-Mills theories
and lattice QCD with heavy quarks by means of strong coupling expansions.
Dynamical fermions are introduced with a hopping parameter expansion, which
also allows for the incorporation of finite quark chemical potential. We show
that in leading orders the results are in full agreement with expectations from
the hadron resonance gas model, thus validating it with a first principles
calculation. For pure Yang-Mills theories we obtain the corresponding ideal
glueball gas, in QCD with heavy quarks our result equals that of an ideal gas
of mesons and baryons. Another finding is that the Yang-Mills pressure in the
large N limit is of order to the calculated orders, when the inverse
't Hooft coupling is used as expansion parameter. This property is expected in
the confined phase, where our calculations take place.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Stress Transmission through Three-Dimensional Ordered Granular Arrays
We measure the local contact forces at both the top and bottom boundaries of
three-dimensional face-centered-cubic and hexagonal-close-packed granular
crystals in response to an external force applied to a small area at the top
surface. Depending on the crystal structure, we find markedly different results
which can be understood in terms of force balance considerations in the
specific geometry of the crystal. Small amounts of disorder are found to create
additional structure at both the top and bottom surfaces.Comment: 9 pages including 9 figures (many in color) submitted to PR
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