249 research outputs found
Interpreting the Development and Growth of Convict Criminology in South America
The Convict Criminology (CC) network has expanded beyond its American and Canadian roots to the United Kingdom and Europe. Although increasing documentation of CCâs activities and scholarship built upon CC has been produced in these countries and region, less well known are efforts beyond these locations. This article reviews attempts to build a network of scholars who are interested in the growth of Convict Criminology in South America. It may also serve as a discussion paper for a possible conference to be held in SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil, Santiago de Chile, or Quito, Ecuador in the near future. The balance of the article reviews some of the dynamics for the conference
Transverse magnetization in Cu/Ni/Cu epitaxial nanorings
The micromagnetic structure in epitaxial (001)-oriented Cu/Ni(14 nm)/Cu rings fabricated by electron beam and focused ion beam lithographies with external diameter of 3 ”m and linewidths between 100 and 500 nm is presented. We found that a state with radial orientation of the magnetization prevails at remanence. The evaluation of the magnetoelastic, magnetocrystalline and magnetostatic energies shows that a value as low as 1.5 à 10-3 for the anisotropic relaxation of the in-plane strain components is enough to induce an effective radial easy magnetization direction
Soft lepton-flavor violation in a multi-Higgs-doublet seesaw model
We consider the Standard Model with an arbitrary number n_H of Higgs doublets
and enlarge the lepton sector by adding to each lepton family \ell a
right-handed neutrino singlet \nu_{\ell R}. We assume that all Yukawa-coupling
matrices are diagonal, but the Majorana mass matrix M_R of the right-handed
neutrino singlets is an arbitrary symmetric matrix, thereby introducing an
explicit but soft violation of all lepton numbers. We investigate
lepton-flavor-violating processes within this model. We pay particular
attention to the large-m_R behavior of the amplitudes for these processes,
where m_R is the order of magnitude of the matrix elements of M_R. While the
amplitudes for processes like tau^- --> mu^- gamma and Z --> tau^+ mu^- drop as
1/m_R^2 for arbitrary n_H, processes like tau^- --> mu^- e^+ e^- and mu^- -->
e^- e^+ e^- obey this power law only for n_H = 1. For n_H \geq 2, on the
contrary, those amplitudes do not fall off when m_R increases, rather they
converge towards constants. This non-decoupling of the right-handed scale
occurs because of the sub-process ell^- --> ell'^- {S_b^0}^*, where S_b^0 is a
neutral scalar which subsequently decays to e^+ e^-. That sub-process has a
contribution from charged-scalar exchange which, for n_H \geq 2, does not
decrease when m_R tends to infinity. We also perform a general study of the
non-decoupling and argue that, after performing the limit m_R --> \infty and
removing the \nu_R from the Lagrangian, our model becomes a multi-Higgs-doublet
Standard Model with suppressed flavor-changing Yukawa couplings. Finally, we
show that, with the usual assumptions about the mass scales in the seesaw
mechanism, the branching ratios of all lepton-flavor-changing processes are
several orders of magnitude smaller than present experimental limits.Comment: 46 pages, 2 figures, Revte
A first-principles approach to electrical transport in atomic-scale nanostructures
We present a first-principles numerical implementation of Landauer formalism
for electrical transport in nanostructures characterized down to the atomic
level. The novelty and interest of our method lies essentially on two facts.
First of all, it makes use of the versatile Gaussian98 code, which is widely
used within the quantum chemistry community. Secondly, it incorporates the
semi-infinite electrodes in a very generic and efficient way by means of Bethe
lattices. We name this method the Gaussian Embedded Cluster Method (GECM). In
order to make contact with other proposed implementations, we illustrate our
technique by calculating the conductance in some well-studied systems such as
metallic (Al and Au) nanocontacts and C-atom chains connected to metallic (Al
and Au) electrodes. In the case of Al nanocontacts the conductance turns out to
be quite dependent on the detailed atomic arrangement. On the contrary, the
conductance in Au nanocontacts presents quite universal features. In the case
of C chains, where the self-consistency guarantees the local charge transfer
and the correct alignment of the molecular and electrode levels, we find that
the conductance oscillates with the number of atoms in the chain regardless of
the type of electrode. However, for short chains and Al electrodes the even-odd
periodicity is reversed at equilibrium bond distances.Comment: 14 pages, two-column format, submitted to PR
Volatiles in lunar felsite clasts: Impact-related delivery of hydrous material to an ancient dry lunar crust
In this detailed geochemical, petrological, and microstructural study of felsite clast materials contained in Apollo breccia samples 12013, 14321, and 15405, little evidence was found for relatively enriched reservoirs of endogenic lunar volatiles. NanoSIMS measurements have revealed very low volatile abundances (â€2â18 ppm hydrogen) in nominally anhydrous minerals (NAMS) plagioclase, potassic alkali feldspar, and SiO2 that make up a majority of these felsic lithologies. Yet these mineral assemblages and clast geochemistries on Earth would normally yield relatively high volatiles contents in their NAMS (âŒ20 to â„80 ppm hydrogen). This difference is particularly notable in felsite 14321,1062 that exhibits extremely low volatile abundances (â€2 ppm hydrogen) and a relatively low amount of microstructural evidence for shock metamorphism given that it is a clast of the most evolved (âŒ74 wt.% SiO2) rock-type returned from the Moon. If taken at face value, âwetâ felsic magmas (âŒ1.2â1.7 wt.% water) are implied by the relatively high hydrogen contents of feldspar in felsite clasts in Apollo samples 12013 and 15405, but these results are likely misleading. These felsic clasts have microstructural features indicative of significantly higher shock stress than 14321,1062. These crustal lithologies likely obtained no more water from the lunar interior than the magma body producing 14321,1062. Rather, we suggest hydrogen was enriched in samples 12013 and 15405 by impact induced exchange, and/or partial assimilation of volatiles added to the surface of the Moon by a hydrated impactor (asteroid or comet) or the solar wind. Thus, the best estimate for magmatic water contents of felsic lunar magmas comes from 14321,1062 that leads to a calculated magmatic water content of â€0.2 wt.%. This dry felsic magma has a slightly greater, but comparable water content to the ancient mafic magmas implied by the other lithologies that we have studied. Based on this and expanding evidence for a significantly dry ancient or early degassed Moon it is likely that some recent estimates (100's ppm) of the water abundances in the lunar parental magma ocean have been overestimated
Quantum Kinetic Theory III: Quantum kinetic master equation for strongly condensed trapped systems
We extend quantum kinetic theory to deal with a strongly Bose-condensed
atomic vapor in a trap. The method assumes that the majority of the vapor is
not condensed, and acts as a bath of heat and atoms for the condensate. The
condensate is described by the particle number conserving Bogoliubov method
developed by one of the authors. We derive equations which describe the
fluctuations of particle number and phase, and the growth of the Bose-Einstein
condensate. The equilibrium state of the condensate is a mixture of states with
different numbers of particles and quasiparticles. It is not a quantum
superposition of states with different numbers of particles---nevertheless, the
stationary state exhibits the property of off-diagonal long range order, to the
extent that this concept makes sense in a tightly trapped condensate.Comment: 3 figures submitted to Physical Review
Lepton Flavour Violating Leptonic/Semileptonic Decays of Charged Leptons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model
We consider the leptonic and semileptonic (SL) lepton flavour violating (LFV)
decays of the charged leptons in the minimal supersymmetric standard model
(MSSM). The formalism for evaluation of branching fractions for the SL LFV
charged-lepton decays with one or two pseudoscalar mesons, or one vector meson
in the final state, is given. Previous amplitudes for the SL LFV charged-lepton
decays in MSSM are improved, for instance the -penguin amplitude is
corrected to assure the gauge invariance. The decays are studied not only in
the model-independent formulation of the theory in the frame of MSSM, but also
within the frame of the minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model within which the
parameters of the MSSM are determined. The latter model gives predictions for
the neutrino-Dirac Yukawa coupling matrix, once free parameters in the model
are appropriately fixed to accommodate the recent neutrino oscillation data.
Using this unambiguous neutrino-Dirac Yukawa couplings, we calculate the LFV
leptonic and SL decay processes assuming the minimal supergravity scenario. A
very detailed numerical analysis is done to constrain the MSSM parameters.
Numerical results for SL LFV processes are given, for instance for tau -> e
(mu) pi0, tau -> e (mu) eta, tau -> e (mu) eta', tau -> e (mu) rho0, tau -> e
(mu) phi, tau -> e (mu) omega, etc.Comment: 36 pages, 3 tables, 5 .eps figure
Muon Track Reconstruction and Data Selection Techniques in AMANDA
The Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) is a high-energy
neutrino telescope operating at the geographic South Pole. It is a lattice of
photo-multiplier tubes buried deep in the polar ice between 1500m and 2000m.
The primary goal of this detector is to discover astrophysical sources of high
energy neutrinos. A high-energy muon neutrino coming through the earth from the
Northern Hemisphere can be identified by the secondary muon moving upward
through the detector. The muon tracks are reconstructed with a maximum
likelihood method. It models the arrival times and amplitudes of Cherenkov
photons registered by the photo-multipliers. This paper describes the different
methods of reconstruction, which have been successfully implemented within
AMANDA. Strategies for optimizing the reconstruction performance and rejecting
background are presented. For a typical analysis procedure the direction of
tracks are reconstructed with about 2 degree accuracy.Comment: 40 pages, 16 Postscript figures, uses elsart.st
Results from the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA)
We show new results from both the older and newer incarnations of AMANDA
(AMANDA-B10 and AMANDA-II, respectively). These results demonstrate that AMANDA
is a functioning, multipurpose detector with significant physics and
astrophysics reach. They include a new higher-statistics measurement of the
atmospheric muon neutrino flux and preliminary results from searches for a
variety of sources of ultrahigh energy neutrinos: generic point sources,
gamma-ray bursters and diffuse sources producing muons in the detector, and
diffuse sources producing electromagnetic or hadronic showers in or near the
detector.Comment: Invited talk at the XXth International Conference on Neutrino Physics
and Astrophysics (Neutrino 2002), Munich, Germany, May 25-30, 200
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