49,530 research outputs found
The molecular environment of massive star forming cores associated with Class II methanol maser emission
Methanol maser emission has proven to be an excellent signpost of regions
undergoing massive star formation (MSF). To investigate their role as an
evolutionary tracer, we have recently completed a large observing program with
the ATCA to derive the dynamical and physical properties of molecular/ionised
gas towards a sample of MSF regions traced by 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission.
We find that the molecular gas in many of these regions breaks up into multiple
sub-clumps which we separate into groups based on their association
with/without methanol maser and cm continuum emission. The temperature and
dynamic state of the molecular gas is markedly different between the groups.
Based on these differences, we attempt to assess the evolutionary state of the
cores in the groups and thus investigate the role of class II methanol masers
as a tracer of MSF.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, IAU Symposium 242 Conference Proceeding
Disentangling the Imaginary-Time Formalism at Finite Temperature
We rewrite the imaginary-time formalism of finite temperature field theory in
a form that all graphs used in calculating physical processes do not have any
loops. Any production of a particle from a heat bath which is itself not
thermalized or the decay and absorption of a similar particle in the bath is
expressed entirely in terms of the sum of particle interaction processes. These
are themselves very general in meaning. They can be straight forward
interactions or the more subtle and less well-known purely interference
processes that do not have a counter part in the vacuum.Comment: 14 pages revtex style, 20 embedded EPS figures, added discussion of
the connection with the real-time formalism + reference
The universal functorial equivariant Lefschetz invariant
We introduce the universal functorial equivariant Lefschetz invariant for
endomorphisms of finite proper G-CW-complexes, where G is a discrete group. We
use K_0 of the category of "phi-endomorphisms of finitely generated free
RPi(G,X)-modules". We derive results about fixed points of equivariant
endomorphisms of cocompact proper smooth G-manifolds.Comment: 33 pages; shortened version of the author's PhD thesis, supervised by
Wolfgang Lueck, Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster, 200
Trajectory generation for road vehicle obstacle avoidance using convex optimization
This paper presents a method for trajectory generation using convex optimization to find a feasible, obstacle-free path for a road vehicle. Consideration of vehicle rotation is shown to be necessary if the trajectory is to avoid obstacles specified in a fixed Earth axis system. The paper establishes that, despite the presence of significant non-linearities, it is possible to articulate the obstacle avoidance problem in a tractable convex form using multiple optimization passes. Finally, it is shown by simulation that an optimal trajectory that accounts for the vehicle’s changing velocity throughout the manoeuvre is superior to a previous analytical method that assumes constant speed
Elliptic Flow from a Transversally Thermalized Fireball
The agreement of elliptic flow data at RHIC at central rapidity with the
hydrodynamic model has led to the conclusion of very rapid thermalization. This
conclusion is based on the intuitive argument that hydrodynamics, which assumes
instantaneous local thermalization, produces the largest possible elliptic flow
values and that the data seem to saturate this limit. We here investigate the
question whether incompletely thermalized viscous systems may actually produce
more elliptic flow than ideal hydrodynamics. Motivated by the extremely fast
primordial longitudinal expansion of the reaction zone, we investigate a toy
model which exhibits thermalization only in the transverse directions but
undergoes collisionless free-streaming expansion in the longitudinal direction.
For collisions at RHIC energies, elliptic flow results from the model are
compared with those from hydrodynamics. With the final particle yield and
\kt-distribution fixed, the transversally thermalized model is shown not to
be able to produce the measured amount of elliptic flow. This investigation
provides further support for very rapid local kinetic equilibration at RHIC. It
also yields interesting novel results for the elliptic flow of massless
particles such as direct photons.Comment: revtex4, 15 pages + 10 embedded EPS figure
Ultrahigh Transmission Optical Nanofibers
We present a procedure for reproducibly fabricating ultrahigh transmission
optical nanofibers (530 nm diameter and 84 mm stretch) with single-mode
transmissions of 99.95 0.02%, which represents a loss from tapering of
2.6 10 dB/mm when normalized to the entire stretch. When
controllably launching the next family of higher-order modes on a fiber with
195 mm stretch, we achieve a transmission of 97.8 2.8%, which has a loss
from tapering of 5.0 10 dB/mm when normalized to the
entire stretch. Our pulling and transfer procedures allow us to fabricate
optical nanofibers that transmit more than 400 mW in high vacuum conditions.
These results, published as parameters in our previous work, present an
improvement of two orders of magnitude less loss for the fundamental mode and
an increase in transmission of more than 300% for higher-order modes, when
following the protocols detailed in this paper. We extract from the
transmission during the pull, the only reported spectrogram of a fundamental
mode launch that does not include excitation to asymmetric modes; in stark
contrast to a pull in which our cleaning protocol is not followed. These
results depend critically on the pre-pull cleanliness and when properly
following our pulling protocols are in excellent agreement with simulations.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, accepted to AIP Advance
Intermodal Energy Transfer in a Tapered Optical Fiber: Optimizing Transmission
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the energy transfer
between modes during the tapering process of an optical nanofiber through
spectrogram analysis. The results allow optimization of the tapering process,
and we measure transmission in excess of 99.95% for the fundamental mode. We
quantify the adiabaticity condition through calculations and place an upper
bound on the amount of energy transferred to other modes at each step of the
tapering, giving practical limits to the tapering angle.Comment: 29 pages, 17 figure
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