3,269 research outputs found
Phosphorus Management on ‘Extensive' Organic Farms with Infertile Soils
Two case-study farms with negative P balances maintained acceptable productivity without fertilisers, apparently by ‘mining’ ‘available’ P reserves in surface and subsoil. The question for these organic farms is ‘how long before fertiliser is needed?’ With six farms on lower-fertility, weakly acidic to alkaline soils and modest rainfall (380-580 mm/yr), low productivity was related to P deficiency despite positive P balances from using allowable fertilisers. Useful supplies of compost or manure were unavailable. Until effective allowable fertilisers or microbial inoculants have been developed, there is a case for using soluble forms of P fertiliser on soils where soil-solution P is low and soil P-sorption is high, so that additions of soluble P ‘feed the soil, not the plant’
The Challenges in Gravitational Wave Astronomy for Space-Based Detectors
The Gravitational Wave (GW) universe contains a wealth of sources which, with
the proper treatment, will open up the universe as never before. By observing
massive black hole binaries to high redshifts, we should begin to explore the
formation process of seed black holes and track galactic evolution to the
present day. Observations of extreme mass ratio inspirals will allow us to
explore galactic centers in the local universe, as well as providing tests of
General Relativity and constraining the value of Hubble's constant. The
detection of compact binaries in our own galaxy may allow us to model stellar
evolution in the Milky Way. Finally, the detection of cosmic (super)strings and
a stochastic background would help us to constrain cosmological models.
However, all of this depends on our ability to not only resolve sources and
carry out parameter estimation, but also on our ability to define an optimal
data analysis strategy. In this presentation, I will examine the challenges
that lie ahead in GW astronomy for the ESA L3 Cosmic Vision mission, eLISA.Comment: 12 pages. Plenary presentation to appear in the Proceedings of the
Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics, Sant Cugat, April 22-25, 201
Gravity Waves, Chaos, and Spinning Compact Binaries
Spinning compact binaries are shown to be chaotic in the Post-Newtonian
expansion of the two body system. Chaos by definition is the extreme
sensitivity to initial conditions and a consequent inability to predict the
outcome of the evolution. As a result, the spinning pair will have
unpredictable gravitational waveforms during coalescence. This poses a
challenge to future gravity wave observatories which rely on a match between
the data and a theoretical template.Comment: Final version published in PR
Chaos in Quantum Cosmology
Much of the foundational work on quantum cosmology employs a simple
minisuperspace model describing a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe
containing a massive scalar field. We show that the classical limit of this
model exhibits deterministic chaos and explore some of the consequences for the
quantum theory. In particular, the breakdown of the WKB approximation calls
into question many of the standard results in quantum cosmology.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTex two column style. Minor revisions and
clarifications to reflect version published in Phys. Rev. Let
Does a relativistic metric generalization of Newtonian gravity exist in 2+1 dimensions?
It is shown that, contrary to previous claims, a scalar tensor theory of
Brans-Dicke type provides a relativistic generalization of Newtonian gravity in
2+1 dimensions. The theory is metric and test particles follow the space-time
geodesics. The static isotropic solution is studied in vacuum and in regions
filled with an incompressible perfect fluid. It is shown that the solutions can
be consistently matched at the matter vacuum interface, and that the Newtonian
behavior is recovered in the weak field regime.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, Revtex4. Some discussions on the physical nature
of the interior solution and on the omega->infinity limit and some references
added. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.
A Solution to the Galactic Foreground Problem for LISA
Low frequency gravitational wave detectors, such as the Laser Interferometer
Space Antenna (LISA), will have to contend with large foregrounds produced by
millions of compact galactic binaries in our galaxy. While these galactic
signals are interesting in their own right, the unresolved component can
obscure other sources. The science yield for the LISA mission can be improved
if the brighter and more isolated foreground sources can be identified and
regressed from the data. Since the signals overlap with one another we are
faced with a ``cocktail party'' problem of picking out individual conversations
in a crowded room. Here we present and implement an end-to-end solution to the
galactic foreground problem that is able to resolve tens of thousands of
sources from across the LISA band. Our algorithm employs a variant of the
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, which we call the Blocked Annealed
Metropolis-Hastings (BAM) algorithm. Following a description of the algorithm
and its implementation, we give several examples ranging from searches for a
single source to searches for hundreds of overlapping sources. Our examples
include data sets from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges.Comment: 19 pages, 27 figure
Extracting galactic binary signals from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges
We report on the performance of an end-to-end Bayesian analysis pipeline for
detecting and characterizing galactic binary signals in simulated LISA data.
Our principal analysis tool is the Blocked-Annealed Metropolis Hasting (BAM)
algorithm, which has been optimized to search for tens of thousands of
overlapping signals across the LISA band. The BAM algorithm employs Bayesian
model selection to determine the number of resolvable sources, and provides
posterior distribution functions for all the model parameters. The BAM
algorithm performed almost flawlessly on all the Round 1 Mock LISA Data
Challenge data sets, including those with many highly overlapping sources. The
only misses were later traced to a coding error that affected high frequency
sources. In addition to the BAM algorithm we also successfully tested a Genetic
Algorithm (GA), but only on data sets with isolated signals as the GA has yet
to be optimized to handle large numbers of overlapping signals.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Proceedings of GWDAW-11 (Berlin,
Dec. '06
Detection Strategies for Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals
The capture of compact stellar remnants by galactic black holes provides a
unique laboratory for exploring the near horizon geometry of the Kerr
spacetime, or possible departures from general relativity if the central cores
prove not to be black holes. The gravitational radiation produced by these
Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals (EMRIs) encodes a detailed map of the black hole
geometry, and the detection and characterization of these signals is a major
scientific goal for the LISA mission. The waveforms produced are very complex,
and the signals need to be coherently tracked for hundreds to thousands of
cycles to produce a detection, making EMRI signals one of the most challenging
data analysis problems in all of gravitational wave astronomy. Estimates for
the number of templates required to perform an exhaustive grid-based
matched-filter search for these signals are astronomically large, and far out
of reach of current computational resources. Here I describe an alternative
approach that employs a hybrid between Genetic Algorithms and Markov Chain
Monte Carlo techniques, along with several time saving techniques for computing
the likelihood function. This approach has proven effective at the blind
extraction of relatively weak EMRI signals from simulated LISA data sets.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Updated for LISA 8 Symposium Proceeding
Chaotic Scattering and Capture of Strings by Black Hole
We consider scattering and capture of circular cosmic strings by a
Schwarzschild black hole. Although being a priori a very simple axially
symmetric two-body problem, it shows all the features of chaotic scattering. In
particular, it contains a fractal set of unstable periodic solutions; a
so-called strange repellor. We study the different types of trajectories and
obtain the fractal dimension of the basin-boundary separating the space of
initial conditions according to the different asymptotic outcomes. We also
consider the fractal dimension as a function of energy, and discuss the
transition from order to chaos.Comment: RevTeX 3.1, 9 pages, 5 figure
Certain aspects of regularity in scalar field cosmological dynamics
We consider dynamics of the FRW Universe with a scalar field. Using
Maupertuis principle we find a curvature of geodesics flow and show that zones
of positive curvature exist for all considered types of scalar field potential.
Usually, phase space of systems with the positive curvature contains islands of
regular motion. We find these islands numerically for shallow scalar field
potentials. It is shown also that beyond the physical domain the islands of
regularity exist for quadratic potentials as well.Comment: 15 pages with 4 figures; typos corrected, final version to appear in
Regular and Chaotic Dynamic
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