Research on the application of satellite remote sensing to local, state, regional, and national programs involved with resource management and environmental quality

Project summaries and project reports are presented in the area of satellite remote sensing as applied to local, regional, and national environmental programs. Projects reports include: (1) Douglas County applications program; (2) vegetation damage and heavy metal concentration in new lead belt; (3) evaluating reclamation of strip-mined land; (4) remote sensing applied to land use planning at Clinton Reservoir; and (5) detailed land use mapping in Kansas City, Kansas

Role of oxygen in the electron-doped superconducting cuprates

We report on resistivity and Hall measurements in thin films of the electron-doped superconducting cuprate Pr$_{2-x}$Ce$_{x}$CuO$_{4\pm\delta}$. Comparisons between x = 0.17 samples subjected to either ion-irradiation or oxygenation demonstrate that changing the oxygen content has two separable effects: 1) a doping effect similar to that of cerium, and 2) a disorder effect. These results are consistent with prior speculations that apical oxygen removal is necessary to achieve superconductivity in this compound.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Simple supersymmetric solution to the strong CP problem

It is shown that the minimal supersymmetric left-right model can provide a natural solution to the strong {\it CP} problem without the need for an axion, nor any additional symmetries beyond supersymmetry and parity.Comment: Plain Latex. 10 pages, including two figures which are part of the Latex file. Shortened version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. 7

Transverse mass and invariant mass observables for measuring the mass of a semi-invisibly decaying heavy particle

Formulae are derived for the positions of end-points in the invariant mass and transverse mass distributions obtained from the products of heavy states decaying to pairs of semi-invisibly decaying lighter states. Formulae are derived both for the special case where the two decay chains are identical and the more general case where they are different. The formulae are tested with a simple case study of heavy SUSY higgs particles decaying to gauginos at the LHC.Comment: 13 pages, 8 eps figure

SUSY and Dark Matter Constraints from the LHC

The ability of the LHC to make statements about the dark matter problem is considered, with a specific focus on supersymmetry. After reviewing the current strategies for supersymmetry searches at the LHC (in both CMS and ATLAS), some key ATLAS studies are used to demonstrate how one could establish that SUSY exists before going on to measure the relic density of a neutralino WIMP candidate. Finally, the general prospects for success at the LHC are investigated by looking at different points in the MSSM parameter space.Comment: Talk given at the XLIrst Rencontres de Moriond session devoted to Electroweak Interactions And Unified Theories in March 2006, to be published in the associated proceedings. 10 pages, 8 figure

A hybrid method for determining particle masses at the Large Hadron Collider with fully identified cascade decays

A new technique for improving the precision of measurements of SUSY particle masses at the LHC is introduced. The technique involves kinematic fitting of events with two fully identified decay chains. We incorporate both event ETmiss constraints and independent constraints provided by kinematic end-points in experiment invariant mass distributions of SUSY decay products. Incorporation of the event specific information maximises the information used in the fit and is shown to reduce the mass measurement uncertainites by ~30% compared to conventional fitting of experiment end-point constraints for the SPS1a benchmark model.Comment: 10 pages, 2 .eps figures, JHEP3 styl

Supersymmetric particle mass measurement with the boost-corrected contransverse mass

A modification to the contransverse mass (MCT) technique for measuring the masses of pair-produced semi-invisibly decaying heavy particles is proposed in which MCT is corrected for non-zero boosts of the centre-of-momentum (CoM) frame of the heavy states in the laboratory transverse plane. Lack of knowledge of the mass of the CoM frame prevents exact correction for this boost, however it is shown that a conservative correction can nevertheless be derived which always generates an MCT value which is less than or equal to the true value of MCT in the CoM frame. The new technique is demonstrated with case studies of mass measurement with fully leptonic ttbar events and with SUSY events possessing a similar final state.Comment: 33 pages, 33 .eps figures, JHEP3 styl

Simultaneous Ultraviolet and X-ray Observations of the Seyfert Galaxy NGC 4151. II. Physical Conditions in the UV Absorbers

We present a detailed analysis of the intrinsic absorption in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151 using UV spectra from the HST/STIS and FUSE, obtained 2002 May as part of a set of contemporaneous observations that included Chandra/HETGS spectra. In our analysis of the Chandra spectra, we determined that the soft X-ray absorber was the source of the saturated UV lines of O VI, C IV, and N V associated with the absorption feature at a radial velocity of ~ -500 km/sec, which we referred to as component D+E. In the present work, we have derived tighter constrains on the the line-of-sight covering factors, densities, and radial distances of the absorbers. We find that the Equivalent Widths (EWs) of the low-ionization lines associated with D+E varied over the period from 1999 July to 2002 May. The drop in the EWs of these lines between 2001 April and 2002 May are suggestive of bulk motion of gas out of our line-of-sight. If these lines from these two epochs arose in the same sub-component, the transverse velocity of the gas is ~ 2100 km/sec. Transverse velocities of this order are consistent with an origin in a rotating disk, at the roughly radial distance we derived for D+E.Comment: 51 pages, including 12 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ Supplement