2,500 research outputs found
Primordial Nucleosynthesis: from precision cosmology to fundamental physics
We present an up-to-date review of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). We discuss
the main improvements which have been achieved in the past two decades on the
overall theoretical framework, summarize the impact of new experimental results
on nuclear reaction rates, and critically re-examine the astrophysical
determinations of light nuclei abundances. We report then on how BBN can be
used as a powerful test of new physics, constraining a wide range of ideas and
theoretical models of fundamental interactions beyond the standard model of
strong and electroweak forces and Einstein's general relativity.Comment: 148 pages, 66 figures, revised version accepted by Physics Report
A search for Z' in muon neutrino associated charm production
In many extensions of the Standard Model the presence of an extra neutral
boson, Z', is invoked. A precision study of weak neutral-current exchange
processes involving only second generation fermions is still missing. We
propose a search for Z' in muon neutrino associated charm production. This
process only involves Z' couplings with fermions from the second generation. An
experimental method is thoroughly described using an ideal detector. As an
application, the accuracy reachable with present and future experiments has
been estimated.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, late
Statistical Inspired Parton Distributions and the Violation of QPM Sum Rules
A quantum statistical parametrization of parton distributions has been
considered. In this framework, the exclusion Pauli principle connects the
violation of the Gottfried sum rule with the Ellis and Jaffe one, and implies a
defect in the Bjorken sum rule. However, in terms of standard parametrizations
of the polarized distributions a good description of the data is obtained once
a large gluon polarization is provided. Interestingly, in this description
there is no violation of the Bjorken sum rule.Comment: 10 pages, LateX + 15 figures, Talk given at ``Hadrons 96'' Workshop,
Novy Svet (CRIMEA), June 9-1
The footprint of large scale cosmic structure on the ultra-high energy cosmic ray distribution
Current experiments collecting high statistics in ultra-high energy cosmic
rays (UHECRs) are opening a new window on the universe. In this work we discuss
a large scale structure model for the UHECR origin which evaluates the expected
anisotropy in the UHECR arrival distribution starting from a given astronomical
catalogue of the local universe. The model takes into account the main
selection effects in the catalogue and the UHECR propagation effects. By
applying this method to the IRAS PSCz catalogue, we derive the minimum
statistics needed to significatively reject the hypothesis that UHECRs trace
the baryonic distribution in the universe, in particular providing a forecast
for the Auger experiment.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures. Reference added, minor changes, matches
published versio
Dosage compensation in birds
AbstractThe Z and W sex chromosomes of birds have evolved independently from the mammalian X and Y chromosomes [1]. Unlike mammals, female birds are heterogametic (ZW), while males are homogametic (ZZ). Therefore male birds, like female mammals, carry a double dose of sex-linked genes relative to the other sex. Other animals with nonhomologous sex chromosomes possess “dosage compensation” systems to equalize the expression of sex-linked genes. Dosage compensation occurs in animals as diverse as mammals, insects, and nematodes, although the mechanisms involved differ profoundly [2]. In birds, however, it is widely accepted that dosage compensation does not occur [3–5], and the differential expression of Z-linked genes has been suggested to underlie the avian sex-determination mechanism [6]. Here we show equivalent expression of at least six of nine Z chromosome genes in male and female chick embryos by using real-time quantitative PCR [7]. Only the Z-linked ScII gene, whose ortholog in Caenorhabditis elegans plays a crucial role in dosage compensation [8], escapes compensation by this assay. Our results imply that the majority of Z-linked genes in the chicken are dosage compensated
Estrutura dos contratos de integração na suinocultura de Santa Catarina.
bitstream/CNPSA/15857/1/publicacao_o333i3k.pdfPublicado também no site Engormix, 21 fev. 2011
Detection of gravitational-wave bursts with chirplet-like template families
Gravitational Wave (GW) burst detection algorithms typically rely on the
hypothesis that the burst signal is "locally stationary", that is it changes
slowly with frequency. Under this assumption, the signal can be decomposed into
a small number of wavelets with constant frequency. This justifies the use of a
family of sine-Gaussian templates in the Omega pipeline, one of the algorithms
used in LIGO-Virgo burst searches. However there are plausible scenarios where
the burst frequency evolves rapidly, such as in the merger phase of a binary
black hole and/or neutron star coalescence. In those cases, the local
stationarity of sine-Gaussians induces performance losses, due to the mismatch
between the template and the actual signal. We propose an extension of the
Omega pipeline based on chirplet-like templates. Chirplets incorporate an
additional parameter, the chirp rate, to control the frequency variation. In
this paper, we show that the Omega pipeline can easily be extended to include a
chirplet template bank. We illustrate the method on a simulated data set, with
a family of phenomenological binary black-hole coalescence waveforms embedded
into Gaussian LIGO/Virgo-like noise. Chirplet-like templates result in an
enhancement of the measured signal-to-noise ratio.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Class. Quantum Grav. Special issue:
Proceedings of GWDAW-14, Rome (Italy), 2010; fixed several minor issue
High Energy Neutrinos with a Mediterranean Neutrino Telescope
The high energy neutrino detection by a km^3 Neutrino Telescope placed in the
Mediterranean sea provides a unique tool to both determine the diffuse
astrophysical neutrino flux and the neutrino-nucleon cross section in the
extreme kinematical region, which could unveil the presence of new physics.
Here is performed a brief analysis of possible NEMO site performances.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 30th ICRC 200
Disentangling neutrino-nucleon cross section and high energy neutrino flux with a km^3 neutrino telescope
The energy--zenith angular event distribution in a neutrino telescope
provides a unique tool to determine at the same time the neutrino-nucleon cross
section at extreme kinematical regions, and the high energy neutrino flux. By
using a simple parametrization for fluxes and cross sections, we present a
sensitivity analysis for the case of a km^3 neutrino telescope. In particular,
we consider the specific case of an under-water Mediterranean telescope placed
at the NEMO site, although most of our results also apply to an under-ice
detector such as IceCube. We determine the sensitivity to departures from
standard values of the cross sections above 1 PeV which can be probed
independently from an a-priori knowledge of the normalization and energy
dependence of the flux. We also stress that the capability to tag downgoing
neutrino showers in the PeV range against the cosmic ray induced background of
penetrating muons appears to be a crucial requirement to derive meaningful
constraints on the cross section.Comment: 10 pages, 28 figure
Coleman-Weinberg SO(10) GUT theories as inflationary models
The flat-space limit of the one-loop effective potential for SO(10) GUT theories in spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmologies is applied to study the dynamics of the early universe. The numerical integration of the corresponding field equations shows that, for such grand unified theories, a sufficiently long inflationary stage is achieved for suitable choices of the initial conditions. However, a severe fine tuning of these initial conditions is necessary to obtain a large e-fold number. In the direction with residual symmetry SU(4)_{PS} \otimes SU(2)_{L} \otimes SU(2)_{R}, one eventually finds parametric resonance for suitable choices of the free parameters of the classical potential. This phenomenon leads in turn to the end of inflation
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