Smoking and Social Interaction

We study the social interaction of non-smokers and smokers as a sequential game, incorporating insights from social psychology and experimental economics into an economic model. Social norms a®ect human behavior such that non-smokers do not ask smokers to stop smoking and stay with them, even though disutility from smoking exceeds utility from social interaction. Overall, smoking is unduly often accepted when accommodating smoking is the social norm. The introduction of smoking and non-smoking areas does not overcome this speci¯c ine±ciency. We conclude that smoking bans may represent a required (second-best) policy. smoking policy, health, social norms, guilt aversion, social interactio

Detection of gravitational waves from the QCD phase transition with pulsar timing arrays

If the cosmological QCD phase transition is strongly first order and lasts sufficiently long, it generates a background of gravitational waves which may be detected via pulsar timing experiments. We estimate the amplitude and the spectral shape of such a background and we discuss its detectability prospects.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figs. Version accepted by PR

Gravitational Radiation from Preheating with Many Fields

Parametric resonances provide a mechanism by which particles can be created just after inflation. Thus far, attention has focused on a single or many inflaton fields coupled to a single scalar field. However, generically we expect the inflaton to couple to many other relativistic degrees of freedom present in the early universe. Using simulations in an expanding Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker spacetime, in this paper we show how preheating is affected by the addition of multiple fields coupled to the inflaton. We focus our attention on gravitational wave production--an important potential observational signature of the preheating stage. We find that preheating and its gravitational wave signature is robust to the coupling of the inflaton to more matter fields.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, v2 submission version, thank you for comments

Neutrino-Nucleus Reactions and Muon Capture in 12C

The neutrino-nucleus cross section and the muon capture rate are discussed within a simple formalism which facilitates the nuclear structure calculations. The corresponding formulae only depend on four types of nuclear matrix elements, which are currently used in the nuclear beta decay. We have also considered the non-locality effects arising from the velocity-dependent terms in the hadronic current. We show that for both observables in 12C the higher order relativistic corrections are of the order of ~5 only, and therefore do not play a significant role. As nuclear model framework we use the projected QRPA (PQRPA) and show that the number projection plays a crucial role in removing the degeneracy between the proton-neutron two quasiparticle states at the level of the mean field. Comparison is done with both the experimental data and the previous shell model calculations. Possible consequences of the present study on the determination of the $\nu_\mu ->\nu_e$ neutrino oscillation probability are briefly addressed.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures, Revtex4. Several changes were made to the previous manuscript, the results and final conclusions remain unalterable. It has been accepted for publication as a Regular Article in Physical Review

Non-Markovian large amplitude motion and nuclear fission

The general problem of dissipation in macroscopic large-amplitude collective motion and its relation to energy diffusion of intrinsic degrees of freedom of a nucleus is studied. By applying the cranking approach to the nuclear many body system, a set of coupled dynamical equations for the collective classical variables and the quantum mechanical occupancies of the intrinsic nuclear states is derived. Different dynamical regimes of the intrinsic nuclear motion and its consequences on time properties of collective dissipation are discussed. The approach is applied to the descant of the nucleus from the fission barrier.Comment: 9 pages and 3 figure

Searching for gravitational wave burst in PTA data with piecewise linear functions

Transient gravitational waves (aka gravitational wave bursts) within the nanohertz frequency band could be generated by a variety of astrophysical phenomena such as the encounter of supermassive black holes, the kinks or cusps in cosmic strings, or other as-yet-unknown physical processes. Radio-pulses emitted from millisecond pulsars could be perturbed by passing gravitational waves, hence the correlation of the perturbations in a pulsar timing array can be used to detect and characterize burst signals with a duration of $\mathcal{O}(1\text{-}10)$ years. We propose a fully Bayesian framework for the analysis of the pulsar timing array data, where the burst waveform is generically modeled by piecewise straight lines, and the waveform parameters in the likelihood can be integrated out analytically. As a result, with merely three parameters (in addition to those describing the pulsars' intrinsic and background noise), one is able to efficiently search for the existence and the sky location of {a burst signal}. If a signal is present, the posterior of the waveform can be found without further Bayesian inference. We demonstrate this model by analyzing simulated data sets containing a stochastic gravitational wave background {and a burst signal generated by the parabolic encounter of two supermassive black holes.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure