26,000 research outputs found
The Galactic plane at faint X-ray fluxes - II. Stacked X-ray spectra of a sample of serendipitous XMM-Newton sources
We have investigated the X-ray spectral properties of a sample of 138 X-ray
sources detected serendipitously in observations of the Galactic
plane, at an intermediate to faint flux level. We divide our sample into 5
subgroups according to the spectral hardness of the sources, and stack (i.e.
co-add) the individual source spectra within each subgroup. As expected these
stacked spectra show a softening trend from the hardest to the softest
subgroups, which is reflected in the inferred line-of-sight column density. The
spectra of the three hardest subgroups are characterized by a hard continuum
plus superimpose Fe-line emission in the 6--7 keV bandpass. The average
equivalent width (EW) of the 6.7-keV He-like Fe-K line is
170 eV, whereas the 6.4-keV Fe-K fluorescence line from neutral
iron and the 6.9-keV H-like Fe-Ly line have EWs of 89 eV
and 81 eV respectively, i.e. roughly half that of the 6.7-keV
line. The remaining subgroups exhibit soft thermal spectra. Virtually all of
the spectrally-soft X-ray sources can be associated with relatively nearby
coronally-active late-type stars, which are evident as bright near-infrared
(NIR) objects within the X-ray error circles. On a similar basis only a
minority of the spectrally-hard X-ray sources have likely NIR identifications.
The average continuum and Fe-line properties of the spectrally-hard sources are
consistent with those of magnetic cataclysmic variables but the direct
identification of large numbers of such systems in Galactic X-ray surveys,
probing intermediate to faint flux levels, remains challenging.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA
Testing the Mechanism for the LSP Stability at the LHC
The lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) is a natural candidate for the
cold dark matter of the universe. In this Letter we discuss how to test the
mechanism responsible for the LSP stability at the LHC. We note that if
R-parity is conserved dynamically one should expect a Higgs boson which decays
mainly into two right-handed neutrinos (a "leptonic" Higgs) or into two
sfermions. The first case could exhibit spectacular lepton number violating
signals with four secondary vertices due to the long-lived nature of
right-handed neutrinos. These signals, together with the standard channels for
the discovery of SUSY, could help to establish the underlying theory at the TeV
scale.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, minor corrections, published in Physics
Letters
A non-linear degenerate equation for direct aggregation and traveling wave dynamics
The gregarious behavior of individuals of populations is an important factor in avoiding predators or for reproduction. Here, by using a random biased walk approach, we build a model which, after a transformation, takes the general form [u_{t}=[D(u)u_{x}]_{x}+g(u)] . The model involves a density-dependent non-linear diffusion coefficient [D] whose sign changes as the population density [u] increases. For negative values of [D] aggregation occurs, while dispersion occurs for positive values of [D] . We deal with a family of degenerate negative diffusion equations with logistic-like growth rate [g] . We study the one-dimensional traveling wave dynamics for these equations and illustrate our results with a couple of examples. A discussion of the ill-posedness of the partial differential equation problem is included
Generating functional analysis of complex formation and dissociation in large protein interaction networks
We analyze large systems of interacting proteins, using techniques from the
non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of disordered many-particle systems.
Apart from protein production and removal, the most relevant microscopic
processes in the proteome are complex formation and dissociation, and the
microscopic degrees of freedom are the evolving concentrations of unbound
proteins (in multiple post-translational states) and of protein complexes. Here
we only include dimer-complexes, for mathematical simplicity, and we draw the
network that describes which proteins are reaction partners from an ensemble of
random graphs with an arbitrary degree distribution. We show how generating
functional analysis methods can be used successfully to derive closed equations
for dynamical order parameters, representing an exact macroscopic description
of the complex formation and dissociation dynamics in the infinite system
limit. We end this paper with a discussion of the possible routes towards
solving the nontrivial order parameter equations, either exactly (in specific
limits) or approximately.Comment: 14 pages, to be published in Proc of IW-SMI-2009 in Kyoto (Journal of
Phys Conference Series
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Variable neighbourhood search for the minimum labelling Steiner tree problem
We present a study on heuristic solution approaches to the minimum labelling Steiner tree problem, an NP-hard graph problem related to the minimum labelling spanning tree problem. Given an undirected labelled connected graph, the aim is to find a spanning tree covering a given subset of nodes of the graph, whose edges have the smallest number of distinct labels. Such a model may be used to represent many real world problems in telecommunications and multimodal transportation networks. Several metaheuristics are proposed and evaluated. The approaches are compared to the widely adopted Pilot Method and it is shown that the Variable Neighbourhood Search that we propose is the most effective metaheuristic for the problem, obtaining high quality solutions in short computational running time
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