7,500 research outputs found
Some Dynamical Effects of the Cosmological Constant
Newton's law gets modified in the presence of a cosmological constant by a
small repulsive term (antigarvity) that is proportional to the distance.
Assuming a value of the cosmological constant consistent with the recent SnIa
data () we investigate the significance of this
term on various astrophysical scales. We find that on galactic scales or
smaller (less than a few tens of kpc) the dynamical effects of the vacuum
energy are negligible by several orders of magnitude. On scales of 1Mpc or
larger however we find that vacuum energy can significantly affect the
dynamics. For example we show that the velocity data in the Local Group of
galaxies correspond to galactic masses increased by 35% in the presence of
vacuum energy. The effect is even more important on larger low density systems
like clusters of galaxies or superclusters.Comment: 5 two column pages, 2 figure
Gravitational lensing statistics with extragalactic surveys. II. Analysis of the Jodrell Bank-VLA Astrometric Survey
We present constraints on the cosmological constant from
gravitational lensing statistics of the Jodrell Bank-VLA Astrometric Survey
(JVAS). Although this is the largest gravitational lens survey which has been
analysed, cosmological constraints are only comparable to those from optical
surveys. This is due to the fact that the median source redshifts of JVAS are
lower, which leads to both relatively fewer lenses in the survey and a weaker
dependence on the cosmological parameters. Although more approximations have to
be made than is the case for optical surveys, the consistency of the results
with those from optical gravitational lens surveys and other cosmological tests
indicate that this is not a major source of uncertainty in the results.
However, joint constraints from a combination of radio and optical data are
much tighter. Thus, a similar analysis of the much larger Cosmic Lens All-Sky
Survey should provide even tighter constraints on the cosmological constant,
especially when combined with data from optical lens surveys.
At 95% confidence, our lower and upper limits on ,
using the JVAS lensing statistics information alone, are respectively -2.69 and
0.68. For a flat universe, these correspond to lower and upper limits on
\lambda_{0} of respectively -0.85 and 0.84. Using the combination of JVAS
lensing statistics and lensing statistics from the literature as discussed in
Quast & Helbig (Paper I) the corresponding values are
-1.78 and 0.27. For a flat universe, these correspond to lower and upper limits
on of respectively -0.39 and 0.64.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, 18 PostScript files in 6 figures. Paper version
available on request. Data available from
http://gladia.astro.rug.nl:8000/ceres/data_from_papers/papers.htm
The alpha-dependence of transition frequencies for some ions of Ti, Mn, Na, C, and O, and the search for variation of the fine structure constant
We use the relativistic Hartree-Fock method, many-body perturbation theory
and configuration-interaction method to calculate the dependence of atomic
transition frequencies on the fine structure constant, alpha. The results of
these calculations will be used in the search for variation of the fine
structure constant in quasar absorption spectra.Comment: 4 pages, 5 table
Antisymmetric-Tensor and Electromagnetic effects in an alpha'-non-perturbative Four-Dimensional String Cosmology
Starting from an exact (in the Regge slope alpha') functional method for a
bosonic stringy sigma-model, we investigate four-dimensional cosmological
string solutions in graviton, dilaton and antisymmetric tensor backgrounds,
compatible with world-sheet conformal invariance, and valid beyond perturbative
expansions in powers of alpha'. The antisymmetric tensor field, playing the
role of an axion in the four-dimensional target space time, leads to spatial
anisotropies of the emergent Robertson-Walker expanding Universe, and, upon
coupling the system to the electromagnetic field, it results in non-trivial
optical activity. Some estimates of the corresponding effects are made and
their relevance to current cosmology is briefly discussed
Varying Alpha Monopoles
We study static magnetic monopoles in the context of varying alpha theories
and show that there is a group of models for which the t'Hooft-Polyakov
solution is still valid. Nevertheless, in general static magnetic monopole
solutions in varying alpha theories depart from the classical t'Hooft-Polyakov
solution with the electromagnetic energy concentrated inside the core seeding
spatial variations of the fine structure constant. We show that Equivalence
Principle constraints impose tight limits on the allowed variations of alpha
induced by magnetic monopoles which confirms the difficulty to generate
significant large-scale spatial variation of the fine structure constant found
in previous works. This is true even in the most favorable case where magnetic
monopoles are the source for these variations.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures; Version to be published in Phys. Rev.
Measuring Cosmological Parameters with the JVAS and CLASS Gravitational Lens Surveys
The JVAS (Jodrell Bank-VLA Astrometric Survey) and CLASS (Cosmic Lens All-Sky
Survey) are well-defined surveys containing about ten thousand flat-spectrum
radio sources. For many reasons, flat-spectrum radio sources are particularly
well-suited as a population from which one can obtain unbiased samples of
gravitational lenses. These are by far the largest gravitational (macro)lens
surveys, and particular attention was paid to constructing a cleanly-defined
sample for the survey itself and for the underlying luminosity function. Here
we present the constraints on cosmological parameters, particularly the
cosmological constant, derived from JVAS and combine them with constraints from
optical gravitational lens surveys, `direct' measurements of ,
and the age of the universe, and constraints derived from CMB
anisotropies, before putting this final result into the context of the latest
results from other, independent cosmological tests.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, 6 PostScript figures, uses texas.sty. To appear in
the Proceedings of the 19th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics and
Cosmology (CD-ROM). Paper version available on request. Actual poster (A0 and
A4 versions) available from
http://multivac.jb.man.ac.uk:8000/helbig/research/publications/info/
texas98.htm
Provisioning of data locality for HEP analysis workflows
The heavily increasing amount of data produced by current experiments in high energy particle physics challenge both end users and providers of computing resources. The boosted data rates and the complexity of analyses require huge datasets being processed in short turnaround cycles. Usually, data storages and computing farms are deployed by different providers, which leads to data delocalization and a strong influence of the interconnection transfer rates. The CMS collaboration at KIT has developed a prototype enabling data locality for HEP analysis processing via two concepts. A coordinated and distributed caching approach that reduce the limiting factor of data transfers by joining local high performance devices with large background storages were tested. Thereby, a throughput optimization was reached by selecting and allocating critical data within user work-flows. A highly performant setup using these caching solutions enables fast processing of throughput dependent analysis workflows
Evaluation of the LEP Centre-of-Mass Energy Above the W-Pair Production Threshold
Knowledge of the centre-of-mass energy at LEP2 is of primary importance to
set the absolute energy scale for the measurement of the W-boson mass. The beam
energy above 80 GeV is derived from continuous measurements of the magnetic
bending field by 16 NMR probes situated in a number of the LEP dipoles. The
relationship between the fields measured by the probes and the beam energy is
calibrated against precise measurements of the average beam energy between 41
and 55 GeV made using the resonant depolarisation technique. The linearity of
the relationship is tested by comparing the fields measured by the probes with
the total bending field measured by a flux loop. This test results in the
largest contribution to the systematic uncertainty. Several further corrections
are applied to derive the the centre-of-mass energies at each interaction
point. In addition the centre-of-mass energy spread is evaluated. The beam
energy has been determined with a precision of 25 MeV for the data taken in
1997, corresponding to a relative precision of 2.7x10^{-4}. This is small in
comparison to the present uncertainty on the W mass measurement at LEP.
However, the ultimate statistical precision on the W mass with the full LEP2
data sample should be around 25 MeV, and a smaller uncertainty on the beam
energy is desirable. Prospects for improvements are outlined.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, Latex, epsfig; replaced by version accepted by
European Physical Journal
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