2,704 research outputs found
WHAM Observations of H-Alpha, [S II], and [N II] toward the Orion and Perseus Arms: Probing the Physical Conditions of the Warm Ionized Medium
A large portion of the Galaxy (l = 123 deg to 164 deg, b = -6 deg to -35
deg), which samples regions of the Local (Orion) spiral arm and the more
distant Perseus arm, has been mapped with the Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM)
in the H-Alpha, [S II] 6716, and [N II] 6583 lines. Several trends noticed in
emission-line investigations of diffuse gas in other galaxies are confirmed in
the Milky Way and extended to much fainter emission. We find that the [S
II]/H-Alpha and [N II]/H-Alpha ratios increase as absolute H-Alpha intensities
decrease. For the more distant Perseus arm emission, the increase in these
ratios is a strong function of Galactic latitude and thus, of height above the
Galactic plane. The [S II]/[N II] ratio is relatively independent of H-Alpha
intensity. Scatter in this ratio appears to be physically significant, and maps
of it suggest regions with similar ratios are spatially correlated. The Perseus
arm [S II]/[N II] ratio is systematically lower than Local emission by 10%-20%.
With [S II]/[N II] fairly constant over a large range of H-Alpha intensities,
the increase of [S II]/H-Alpha and [N II]/H-Alpha with |z| seems to reflect an
increase in temperature. Such an interpretation allows us to estimate the
temperature and ionization conditions in our large sample of observations. We
find that WIM temperatures range from 6,000 K to 9,000 K with temperature
increasing from bright to faint H-Alpha emission (low to high [S II]/H-Alpha
and [N II]/H-Alpha) respectively. Changes in [S II]/[N II] appear to reflect
changes in the local ionization conditions (e.g. the S+/S++ ratio). We also
measure the electron scale height in the Perseus arm to be 1.0+/-0.1 kpc,
confirming earlier, less accurate determinations.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures. Figures 2 and 3 are full color--GIFs provided
here, original PS figures at link below. Accepted for publication in ApJ.
More information about the WHAM project can be found at
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/wham/ . REVISION: Figure 6, bottom panel now
contains the proper points. No other changes have been mad
Reconfiguring experimental archaeology using 3D reconstruction
Experimental archaeology has long yielded valuable insights into the tools and techniques that featured in past peoples’ relationship with the material world around them. We can determine, for example, how many trees would need to be felled to construct a large round-house of the southern British Iron Age (over one hundred), infer the exact angle needed to strike a flint core in order to knap an arrowhead in the manner of a Neolithic hunter-gatherer, or recreate the precise environmental conditions needed to store grain in underground silos over the winter months, with only the technologies and materials available to Romano-Briton villagers (see Coles 1973; Reynolds 1993). However, experimental archaeology has, hitherto, confined itself to rather rigid, empirical and quantitative questions such as those posed in these examples. This is quite understandable, and in line with good scientific practice, which stipulates that any ‘experiment’ must be based on replicable data, and be reproducible. Despite their potential in this area however, it is notable that digital reconstruction technologies have yet to play a significant role in experimental archaeology. Whilst many excellent examples of digital 3D reconstruction of heritage sites exist (for example the Digital Roman Forum project: http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum) most, if not all, of these are characterized by a drive to establish a photorealistic re-creation of physical features. This paper will discuss possibilities that lie beyond straightforward positivist re-creation of heritage sites, in the experimental reconstruction of intangible heritage. Between 2010 and 2012, the authors led the Motion in Place Platform project (MiPP: http://www.motioninplace.org/), a capital grant under the AHRC's DEDEFI scheme developing motion capture and analysis tools for exploring how people move through spaces. In the course of MiPP, a series of experiments were conducted using motion capture hardware and software at the Silchester Roman town archaeological excavation in Hampshire, and at the Butser Ancient Farm facility, where Romano-British and Iron Age dwellings have been constructed according to the best experimental practice. As well as reconstructing such Roman and early British dwellings in 3D, the authors were able to use motion capture to reconstruct the kind of activities that – according to the material evidence – are likely to have been carried out by the occupants who used them. Bespoke motion capture suits developed for the project were employed, and the traces captured and rendered with a combination of Autodesk and Unity3D software. This sheds new light on how the reconstructed spaces - and, by inference, their ancient counterparts - were most likely to have been used. In particular the exercises allowed the evaluation and visualisation of changes in behaviour which occur as a result of familiarity with an environment and the acquisition of expertise over time; and to assess how interaction between different actors affects how everyday tasks are carried out
The frictional Schr\"odinger-Newton equation in models of wave function collapse
Replacing the Newtonian coupling G by -iG, the Schrodinger-Newton equation
becomes ``frictional''. Instead of the reversible Schrodinger-Newton equation,
we advocate its frictional version to generate the set of pointer states for
macroscopic quantum bodies.Comment: 6pp LaTeX for J.Phys.Conf.Ser.+2 figs. Talk given at the Int.
Workshop DICE2006 "Quantum Mechanics between Decoherence and Determinism: new
aspects from particle physics to cosmology" Piombino, Sept 11-15, 200
From Heisenberg matrix mechanics to EBK quantization: theory and first applications
Despite the seminal connection between classical multiply-periodic motion and
Heisenberg matrix mechanics and the massive amount of work done on the
associated problem of semiclassical (EBK) quantization of bound states, we show
that there are, nevertheless, a number of previously unexploited aspects of
this relationship that bear on the quantum-classical correspondence. In
particular, we emphasize a quantum variational principle that implies the
classical variational principle for invariant tori. We also expose the more
indirect connection between commutation relations and quantization of action
variables. With the help of several standard models with one or two degrees of
freedom, we then illustrate how the methods of Heisenberg matrix mechanics
described in this paper may be used to obtain quantum solutions with a modest
increase in effort compared to semiclassical calculations. We also describe and
apply a method for obtaining leading quantum corrections to EBK results.
Finally, we suggest several new or modified applications of EBK quantization.Comment: 37 pages including 3 poscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Early Results from the Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper Southern Sky Survey
After a successful eleven-year campaign at Kitt Peak, we moved the Wisconsin
H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) to Cerro Tololo in early 2009. Here we present some of
the early data after a few months under southern skies. These maps begin to
complete the first all-sky, kinematic survey of the diffuse H-alpha emission
from the Milky Way. Much of this emission arises from the Warm Ionized Medium
(WIM), a significant component of the ISM that extends a few kiloparsecs above
the Galactic disk. While this first look at the data focuses on the H-alpha
survey, WHAM is also capable of observing many other optical emission lines,
revealing fascinating trends in the temperature and ionization state of the
WIM. Our ongoing studies of the physical conditions of diffuse ionized gas will
continue from the southern hemisphere following the H-alpha survey. In
addition, future observations will cover the full velocity range of the
Magellanic Stream, Bridge, and Clouds to trace the ionized gas associated with
these neighboring systems.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in "The Dynamic ISM: A celebration of
the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey," ASP Conference Serie
Self-Referential Noise and the Synthesis of Three-Dimensional Space
Generalising results from Godel and Chaitin in mathematics suggests that
self-referential systems contain intrinsic randomness. We argue that this is
relevant to modelling the universe and show how three-dimensional space may
arise from a non-geometric order-disorder model driven by self-referential
noise.Comment: Figure labels correcte
A map-based method for eliminating systematic modes from galaxy clustering power spectra with application to BOSS
We develop a practical methodology to remove modes from a galaxy survey power
spectrum that are associated with systematic errors. We apply this to the BOSS
CMASS sample, to see if it removes the excess power previously observed beyond
the best-fit CDM model on very large scales. We consider several
possible sources of data contamination, and check whether they affect the
number of targets that can be observed and the power spectrum measurements. We
describe a general framework for how such knowledge can be transformed into
template fields. Mode subtraction can then be used to remove these systematic
contaminants at least as well as applying corrective weighting to the observed
galaxies, but benefits from giving an unbiased power. Even after applying
templates for all known systematics, we find a large-scale power excess, but
this is reduced compared with that observed using the weights provided by the
BOSS team. This excess is at much larger scales than the BAO scale and does not
affect the main results of BOSS. However, it will be important for the
measurement of a scale-dependent bias due to primordial non-Gaussianity. The
excess is beyond that allowed by any simple model of non-Gaussianity matching
Planck data, and is not matched in other surveys. We show that this power
excess can further be reduced but is still present using "phenomenological"
templates, designed to consider further potentially unknown sources of
systematic contamination. As all discrepant angular modes can be removed using
"phenomenological" templates, the potentially remaining contaminant acts
radially.Comment: 19 pages, accepted by MNRA
Noise gates for decoherent quantum circuits
A major problem in exploiting microscopic systems for developing a new
technology based on the principles of Quantum Information is the influence of
noise which tends to work against the quantum features of such systems. It
becomes then crucial to understand how noise affects the evolution of quantum
circuits: several techniques have been proposed among which stochastic
differential equations (SDEs) can represent a very convenient tool. We show how
SDEs naturally map any Markovian noise into a linear operator, which we will
call a noise gate, acting on the wave function describing the state of the
circuit, and we will discuss some examples. We shall see that these gates can
be manipulated like any standard quantum gate, thus simplifying in certain
circumstances the task of computing the overall effect of the noise at each
stage of the protocol. This approach yields equivalent results to those derived
from the Lindblad equation; yet, as we show, it represents a handy and fast
tool for performing computations, and moreover, it allows for fast numerical
simulations and generalizations to non Markovian noise. In detail we review the
depolarizing channel and the generalized amplitude damping channel in terms of
this noise gate formalism and show how these techniques can be applied to any
quantum circuit.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures: journal reference added + some typos correcte
Quantum noise and stochastic reduction
In standard nonrelativistic quantum mechanics the expectation of the energy
is a conserved quantity. It is possible to extend the dynamical law associated
with the evolution of a quantum state consistently to include a nonlinear
stochastic component, while respecting the conservation law. According to the
dynamics thus obtained, referred to as the energy-based stochastic Schrodinger
equation, an arbitrary initial state collapses spontaneously to one of the
energy eigenstates, thus describing the phenomenon of quantum state reduction.
In this article, two such models are investigated: one that achieves state
reduction in infinite time, and the other in finite time. The properties of the
associated energy expectation process and the energy variance process are
worked out in detail. By use of a novel application of a nonlinear filtering
method, closed-form solutions--algebraic in character and involving no
integration--are obtained for both these models. In each case, the solution is
expressed in terms of a random variable representing the terminal energy of the
system, and an independent noise process. With these solutions at hand it is
possible to simulate explicitly the dynamics of the quantum states of
complicated physical systems.Comment: 50 page
First-order thermal correction to the quadratic response tensor and rate for second harmonic plasma emission
Three-wave interactions in plasmas are described, in the framework of kinetic
theory, by the quadratic response tensor (QRT). The cold-plasma QRT is a common
approximation for interactions between three fast waves. Here, the first-order
thermal correction (FOTC) to the cold-plasma QRT is derived for interactions
between three fast waves in a warm unmagnetized collisionless plasma, whose
particles have an arbitrary isotropic distribution function. The FOTC to the
cold-plasma QRT is shown to depend on the second moment of the distribution
function, the phase speeds of the waves, and the interaction geometry. Previous
calculations of the rate for second harmonic plasma emission (via Langmuir-wave
coalescence) assume the cold-plasma QRT. The FOTC to the cold-plasma QRT is
used here to calculate the FOTC to the second harmonic emission rate, and its
importance is assessed in various physical situations. The FOTC significantly
increases the rate when the ratio of the Langmuir phase speed to the electron
thermal speed is less than about 3.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasma
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