816 research outputs found
Monte Carlo Simulation Calculation of Critical Coupling Constant for Continuum \phi^4_2
We perform a Monte Carlo simulation calculation of the critical coupling
constant for the continuum {\lambda \over 4} \phi^4_2 theory. The critical
coupling constant we obtain is [{\lambda \over \mu^2}]_crit=10.24(3).Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, LaTe
Climate Impacts on Agriculture: Implications for Forage and Rangeland Production
Projections of temperature and precipitation patterns across the United States during the next 50 yr anticipate a 1.5 to 2°C warming and a slight increase in precipitation as a result of global climate change. There have been relatively few studies of climate change effects on pasture and rangeland (grazingland) species compared to those on crop species, despite the economic and ecological importance of the former. Here we review the literature on responses of pastureland and rangeland species to rising atmospheric CO2 and climate change (temperature and precipitation) and discuss plant and management factors likely to influence pastureland and rangeland responses to change (e.g., community composition, plant competition, perennial growth habit, seasonal productivity, and management methods). Overall, the response of pastureland and rangeland species to increased [CO2] is consistent with the general responses of C3 and C4 vegetation, although exceptions exist. Both pastureland and rangeland species may experience accelerated metabolism and advanced development with rising temperature, often resulting in a longer growing season. However, soil resources will often constrain temperature effects. In general, it is expected that increases in [CO2] and precipitation will enhance rangeland net primary production (NPP) whereas increased air temperatures will either increase or decrease NPP. Much of the uncertainty in predicting how pastureland and rangeland species will respond to climate change is due to uncertainty in future projections of precipitation, both globally and regionally. This review reveals the need for comprehensive studies of climate change impacts on pastureland and rangeland ecosystems that include an assessment of the mediating effects of grazing regimes and mutualistic relationships (e.g., plant roots-nematodes; N-fixing organisms) as well as changes in water, carbon, and nutrient cycling
Recommended from our members
Persistent Thalamic Sound Processing Despite Profound Cochlear Denervation
Neurons at higher stages of sensory processing can partially compensate for a sudden drop in peripheral input through a homeostatic plasticity process that increases the gain on weak afferent inputs. Even after a profound unilateral auditory neuropathy where >95% of afferent synapses between auditory nerve fibers and inner hair cells have been eliminated with ouabain, central gain can restore cortical processing and perceptual detection of basic sounds delivered to the denervated ear. In this model of profound auditory neuropathy, auditory cortex (ACtx) processing and perception recover despite the absence of an auditory brainstem response (ABR) or brainstem acoustic reflexes, and only a partial recovery of sound processing at the level of the inferior colliculus (IC), an auditory midbrain nucleus. In this study, we induced a profound cochlear neuropathy with ouabain and asked whether central gain enabled a compensatory plasticity in the auditory thalamus comparable to the full recovery of function previously observed in the ACtx, the partial recovery observed in the IC, or something different entirely. Unilateral ouabain treatment in adult mice effectively eliminated the ABR, yet robust sound-evoked activity persisted in a minority of units recorded from the contralateral medial geniculate body (MGB) of awake mice. Sound driven MGB units could decode moderate and high-intensity sounds with accuracies comparable to sham-treated control mice, but low-intensity classification was near chance. Pure tone receptive fields and synchronization to broadband pulse trains also persisted, albeit with significantly reduced quality and precision, respectively. MGB decoding of temporally modulated pulse trains and speech tokens were both greatly impaired in ouabain-treated mice. Taken together, the absence of an ABR belied a persistent auditory processing at the level of the MGB that was likely enabled through increased central gain. Compensatory plasticity at the level of the auditory thalamus was less robust overall than previous observations in cortex or midbrain. Hierarchical differences in compensatory plasticity following sensorineural hearing loss may reflect differences in GABA circuit organization within the MGB, as compared to the ACtx or IC
Negative-Energy Spinors and the Fock Space of Lattice Fermions at Finite Chemical Potential
Recently it was suggested that the problem of species doubling with
Kogut-Susskind lattice fermions entails, at finite chemical potential, a
confusion of particles with antiparticles. What happens instead is that the
familiar correspondence of positive-energy spinors to particles, and of
negative-energy spinors to antiparticles, ceases to hold for the Kogut-Susskind
time derivative. To show this we highlight the role of the spinorial ``energy''
in the Osterwalder-Schrader reconstruction of the Fock space of non-interacting
lattice fermions at zero temperature and nonzero chemical potential. We
consider Kogut-Susskind fermions and, for comparison, fermions with an
asymmetric one-step time derivative.Comment: 14p
Lifshitz transition and van Hove singularity in a Topological Dirac Semimetal
A topological Dirac semimetal is a novel state of quantum matter which has
recently attracted much attention as an apparent 3D version of graphene. In
this paper, we report critically important results on the electronic structure
of the 3D Dirac semimetal Na3Bi at a surface that reveals its nontrivial
groundstate. Our studies, for the first time, reveal that the two 3D Dirac
cones go through a topological change in the constant energy contour as a
function of the binding energy, featuring a Lifshitz point, which is missing in
a strict 3D analog of graphene (in other words Na3Bi is not a true 3D analog of
graphene). Our results identify the first example of a band saddle point
singularity in 3D Dirac materials. This is in contrast to its 2D analogs such
as graphene and the helical Dirac surface states of a topological insulator.
The observation of multiple Dirac nodes in Na3Bi connecting via a Lifshitz
point along its crystalline rotational axis away from the Kramers point serves
as a decisive signature for the symmetry-protected nature of the Dirac
semimetal's topological groundstate.Comment: 5 pages, 4 Figures, Related papers on topological Fermi arcs and Weyl
Semimetals (WSMs) are at
http://physics.princeton.edu/zahidhasangroup/index.htm
London relation and fluxoid quantization for monopole currents in U(1) lattice gauge theory
We explore the analogy between quark confinement and the Meissner effect in
superconductors. We measure the response of color-magnetic "supercurrents" from
Dirac magnetic monopoles to the presence of a static quark-antiquark pair in
four dimensional U(1) lattice gauge theory. Our results indicate that in the
confined phase these currents screen the color-electric flux due to the quarks
in an electric analogy of the Meisner effect. We show that U(1) lattice guage
theory obeys both a dual London equation and an electric fluxoid quantization
condition.Comment: LSUHEP-1-92 May 1992, 13 page
The Color--Flavor Transformation of induced QCD
The Zirnbauer's color-flavor transformation is applied to the
lattice gauge model, in which the gauge theory is induced by a heavy chiral
scalar field sitting on lattice sites. The flavor degrees of freedom can
encompass several `generations' of the auxiliary field, and for each
generation, remaining indices are associated with the elementary plaquettes
touching the lattice site. The effective, color-flavor transformed theory is
expressed in terms of gauge singlet matrix fields carried by lattice links. The
effective action is analyzed for a hypercubic lattice in arbitrary dimension.
We investigate the corresponding d=2 and d=3 dual lattices. The saddle points
equations of the model in the large- limit are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.
- …