2,928 research outputs found
Recombination Ghosts in Littrow Configuration: Implications for Spectrographs Using Volume Phase Holographic Gratings
We report the discovery of optical ghosts generated when using Volume Phase
Holographic (VPH) gratings in spectrographs employing the Littrow
configuration. The ghost is caused by light reflected off the detector surface,
recollimated by the camera, recombined by, and reflected from, the grating and
reimaged by the camera onto the detector. This recombination can occur in two
different ways. We observe this ghost in two spectrographs being developed by
the University of Wisconsin - Madison: the Robert Stobie Spectrograph for the
Southern African Large Telescope and the Bench Spectrograph for the WIYN 3.5m
telescope. The typical ratio of the brightness of the ghost relative to the
integrated flux of the spectrum is of order 10^-4, implying a recombination
efficiency of the VPH gratings of order 10^-3 or higher, consistent with the
output of rigorous coupled wave analysis. Any spectrograph employing VPH
gratings, including grisms, in Littrow configuration will suffer from this
ghost, though the general effect is not intrinsic to VPH gratings themselves
and has been observed in systems with conventional gratings in non-Littrow
configurations. We explain the geometric configurations that can result in the
ghost as well as a more general prescription for predicting its position and
brightness on the detector. We make recommendations for mitigating the ghost
effects for spectrographs and gratings currently built. We further suggest
design modifications for future VPH gratings to eliminate the problem entirely,
including tilted fringes and/or prismatic substrates. We discuss the resultant
implications on the spectrograph performance metrics.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, emulateapj style, accepted for publication in
PAS
Traces of Thermalization at RHIC
I argue that measurements of Au+Au collisions at 20, 130 and 200 GeV of the
centrality dependence of the mean p_t together with p_t and net-charge
fluctuations reflect the approach to local thermal equilibrium.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figures, for proc. Quark Matter 2004, to be published
in J. Phys.
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A comparison of methods for treatment selection in seamless phase II/III clinical trials incorporating information on short-term endpoints
In an adaptive seamless phase II/III clinical trial interim
analysis data are used for treatment selection, enabling resources to be focussed on comparison of more effective treatment(s) with a control. In this paper we compare two methods recently proposed to enable use of short-term endpoint data for decision-making at the interim analysis. The comparison focusses on the power and the probability of correctly identifying the most promising treatment. We show that the choice of method depends on how well short-term data predict the best treatment, which may be measured by the correlation between treatment effects on short-term and long-term endpoints
Heavy ion collisions: Correlations and Fluctuations in particle production
Correlations and fluctuations (the latter are directly related to the
2-particle correlations) is one of the important directions in analysis of
heavy ion collisions. At the current stage of RHIC exploration, when the
details matter, basically any physics question is addressed with help of
correlation techniques. In this talk I start with a general introduction to the
correlation and fluctuation formalism and discuss weak and strong sides of
different type of observables. In more detail, I discuss the two-particle
correlations/\mpt fluctuations. In spite of not observing any dramatic
changes in the event-by-event fluctuations with energy, which would indicate a
possible phase transition, such correlations measurements remain an interesting
and important subject, bringing valuable information. Lastly, I show how radial
flow can generate characteristic azimuthal, transverse momentum and rapidity
correlations, which could qualitatively explain many of recently observed
phenomena in nuclear collisions.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. Invited talk at 5th International Conference on
Physics and Astrophysics of Quark Gluon Plasma, February 8-12, 2005, Salt
Lake City, Kolkata, Indi
Shooting for Equity: Division II Basketball Coaches\u27 Perspectives of Gender Discrimination
The Extended Shapes of Galactic Satellites
We are exploring the extended stellar distributions of Galactic satellite
galaxies and globular clusters. For seven objects studied thus far, the
observed profile departs from a King function at large r, revealing a ``break
population'' of stars. In our sample, the relative density of the ``break''
correlates to the inferred M/L of these objects. We discuss opposing hypotheses
for this trend: (1) Higher M/L objects harbor more extended dark matter halos
that support secondary, bound, stellar ``halos''. (2) The extended populations
around dwarf spheroidals (and some clusters) consist of unbound, extratidal
debris from their parent objects, which are undergoing various degrees of tidal
disruption. In this scenario, higher M/L ratios reflect higher degrees of
virial non-equilibrium in the parent objects, thus invalidating a precept
underlying the use of core radial velocities to obtain masses.Comment: 8 pages, including 2 figures Yale Cosmology Workshop: The Shapes of
Galaxies and Their Halo
Classes of Multiple Decision Functions Strongly Controlling FWER and FDR
This paper provides two general classes of multiple decision functions where
each member of the first class strongly controls the family-wise error rate
(FWER), while each member of the second class strongly controls the false
discovery rate (FDR). These classes offer the possibility that an optimal
multiple decision function with respect to a pre-specified criterion, such as
the missed discovery rate (MDR), could be found within these classes. Such
multiple decision functions can be utilized in multiple testing, specifically,
but not limited to, the analysis of high-dimensional microarray data sets.Comment: 19 page
Inclusive neutron cross-sections at forward angles from Nb Nb and Au Au collisions at 800-MeV/nucleon
Inclusive neutron spectra were measured at 0°, 4°, 8°, 15°, 30°, and 42° from Nb-Nb and Au-Au collisions at 800 MeV/nucleon. A peak that originates from neutron evaporation from the projectile appears in the spectra at angles out to 8°. The shapes and magnitudes of the spectra are compared with those calculated from models of nucleus-nucleus collisions. The differential cross sections for Au-Au collisions are about four times those for Nb-Nb collisions. The predictions of the Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (VUU) and QMD theories agree with the angular distributions of the differential cross sections except at small angles; the VUU prediction overestimates the angular distributions from a few degrees to about 20°, whereas the QMD prediction underestimates the angular distributions below 8°. The Firestreak model overestimates the angular distribution for Nb-Nb collisions and underestimates it for Au-Au collisions. Also, the VUU and QMD models agree with the measured double-differential cross sections in more angular and energy regions than the Firestreak and intranuclear cascade models; however, none of the models can account for the peaks at small angles (θ≤15°)
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