20,571 research outputs found
Are All Particles Identical?
We consider the possibility that all particles in the world are fundamentally
identical, i.e., belong to the same species. Different masses, charges, spins,
flavors, or colors then merely correspond to different quantum states of the
same particle, just as spin-up and spin-down do. The implications of this
viewpoint can be best appreciated within Bohmian mechanics, a precise
formulation of quantum mechanics with particle trajectories. The implementation
of this viewpoint in such a theory leads to trajectories different from those
of the usual formulation, and thus to a version of Bohmian mechanics that is
inequivalent to, though arguably empirically indistinguishable from, the usual
one. The mathematical core of this viewpoint is however rather independent of
the detailed dynamical scheme Bohmian mechanics provides, and it amounts to the
assertion that the configuration space for N particles, even N
``distinguishable particles,'' is the set of all N-point subsets of physical
3-space.Comment: 12 pages LaTeX, no figure
Investigation of a pulsed electrothermal thruster system
The performance of an ablative wall Pulsed Electrothermal (PET) thruster is accurately characterized on a calibrated thrust stand, using polyethylene propellant. The thruster is tested for four configurations of capillary length and pulse length. The exhaust velocity is determined with twin time-of-flight photodiode stagnation probes, and the ablated mass is measured from the loss over ten shots. Based on the measured thrust impulse and the ablated mass, the specific impulse varies from 1000 to 1750 seconds. The thrust to power varies from .05 N/kW (quasi-steady mode) to .10 N/kW (unsteady mode). The thruster efficiency varies from .56 at 1000 seconds to .42 at 1750 seconds. A conceptual design is presented for a 40 kW PET propulsion system. The point design system performance is .62 system efficiency at 1000 seconds specific impulse. The system's reliability is enhanced by incorporating 20, 20 kW thruster modules which are fired in pairs. The thruster design is non-ablative, and uses water propellant, from a central storage tank, injected through the cathode
Bell-Type Quantum Field Theories
In [Phys. Rep. 137, 49 (1986)] John S. Bell proposed how to associate
particle trajectories with a lattice quantum field theory, yielding what can be
regarded as a |Psi|^2-distributed Markov process on the appropriate
configuration space. A similar process can be defined in the continuum, for
more or less any regularized quantum field theory; such processes we call
Bell-type quantum field theories. We describe methods for explicitly
constructing these processes. These concern, in addition to the definition of
the Markov processes, the efficient calculation of jump rates, how to obtain
the process from the processes corresponding to the free and interaction
Hamiltonian alone, and how to obtain the free process from the free Hamiltonian
or, alternatively, from the one-particle process by a construction analogous to
"second quantization." As an example, we consider the process for a second
quantized Dirac field in an external electromagnetic field.Comment: 53 pages LaTeX, no figure
Electric Deflection of Rotating Molecules
We provide a theory of the deflection of polar and non-polar rotating
molecules by inhomogeneous static electric field. Rainbow-like features in the
angular distribution of the scattered molecules are analyzed in detail.
Furthermore, we demonstrate that one may efficiently control the deflection
process with the help of short and strong femtosecond laser pulses. In
particular the deflection process may by turned-off by a proper excitation, and
the angular dispersion of the deflected molecules can be substantially reduced.
We study the problem both classically and quantum mechanically, taking into
account the effects of strong deflecting field on the molecular rotations. In
both treatments we arrive at the same conclusions. The suggested control scheme
paves the way for many applications involving molecular focusing, guiding, and
trapping by inhomogeneous fields
Tunable graphene-based polarizer
It is shown that an attenuated total reflection structure containing a
graphene layer can operate as a tunable polarizer of the electromagnetic
radiation. The polarization angle is controlled by adjusting the voltage
applied to graphene via external gate. The mechanism is based on the resonant
coupling of polarized electromagnetic waves to the surface
plasmon-polaritons in graphene. The presented calculations show that, at
resonance, the reflected wave is almost 100% polarized.Comment: submitted to the Applied Physics Letter
The "Unromantic Pictures" of Quantum Theory
I am concerned with two views of quantum mechanics that John S. Bell called
``unromantic'': spontaneous wave function collapse and Bohmian mechanics. I
discuss some of their merits and report about recent progress concerning
extensions to quantum field theory and relativity. In the last section, I
speculate about an extension of Bohmian mechanics to quantum gravity.Comment: 37 pages LaTeX, no figures; written for special volume of J. Phys. A
in honor of G.C. Ghirard
Quasispecies evolution in general mean-field landscapes
I consider a class of fitness landscapes, in which the fitness is a function
of a finite number of phenotypic "traits", which are themselves linear
functions of the genotype. I show that the stationary trait distribution in
such a landscape can be explicitly evaluated in a suitably defined
"thermodynamic limit", which is a combination of infinite-genome and strong
selection limits. These considerations can be applied in particular to identify
relevant features of the evolution of promoter binding sites, in spite of the
shortness of the corresponding sequences.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Europhysics Letters style (included) Finite-size
scaling analysis sketched. To appear in Europhysics Letter
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DSMC Modeling Of Gasdynamics, Radiation And Fine Particulates In Ionian Volcanic Jets
Aerospace Engineerin
Extreme ultraviolet emission from non-relativistic electrons penetrating a multilayer nanostructure
The spectral and angular distributions from parametric X-radiation (PXR) from non-relativistic electrons penetrating a multilayer nanostructure are calculated while accounting for contributions of ordinary and diffracted transition radiationyesBelgorod State Universit
Scaling of the electron dissipation range of solar wind turbulence
Electron scale solar wind turbulence has attracted great interest in recent
years. Clear evidences have been given from the Cluster data that turbulence is
not fully dissipated near the proton scale but continues cascading down to the
electron scales. However, the scaling of the energy spectra as well as the
nature of the plasma modes involved at those small scales are still not fully
determined. Here we survey 10 years of the Cluster search-coil magnetometer
(SCM) waveforms measured in the solar wind and perform a statistical study of
the magnetic energy spectra in the frequency range []Hz. We show that a
large fraction of the spectra exhibit clear breakpoints near the electon
gyroscale , followed by steeper power-law like spectra. We show that
the scaling below the electron breakpoint cannot be determined unambiguously
due to instrumental limitations that will be discussed in detail. We compare
our results to recent ones reported in other studies and discuss their
implication on the physical mechanisms and the theoretical modeling of energy
dissipation in the SW.Comment: 10 pages, submitte
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