4,998 research outputs found
Lasercooled RaF as a promising candidate to measure molecular parity violation
The parameter , which characterizes nuclear spin-dependent
parity violation effects within the effective molecular spin-rotational
Hamiltonian, was computed for the electronic ground state of radium fluoride
(RaF) and found to be one of the largest absolute values predicted so far.
These calculations were performed with the complex generalised Hartree-Fock
method within a two-component (quasi-relativistic) zeroth-order regular
approximation framework. Peculiarities of the molecular electronic structure of
RaF lead to highly diagonal Franck-Condon matrices between vibrational states
of the electronic ground and first excited states, which renders the molecule
in principle suitable for direct laser cooling. As a trapped gas of cold
molecules offers a superior coherence time, RaF can be considered a promising
candidate for high-precision spectroscopic experiments aimed at the search of
molecular parity-violation effects.Comment: 4.5 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables. Supplementary material can be
requested from the authors. Minor changes to version
Double resonant absorption measurement of acetylene symmetric vibrational states probed with cavity ring down spectroscopy
A novel mid-infrared/near-infrared double resonant absorption setup for
studying infrared-inactive vibrational states is presented. A strong
vibrational transition in the mid-infrared region is excited using an idler
beam from a singly resonant continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator, to
populate an intermediate vibrational state. High output power of the optical
parametric oscillator and the strength of the mid-infrared transition result in
efficient population transfer to the intermediate state, which allows measuring
secondary transitions from this state with a high signal-to-noise ratio. A
secondary, near-infrared transition from the intermediate state is probed using
cavity ring down spectroscopy, which provides high sensitivity in this
wavelength region. Due to the narrow linewidths of the excitation sources, the
rovibrational lines of the secondary transition are measured with sub-Doppler
resolution. The setup is used to access a previously unreported symmetric
vibrational state of acetylene, in the
normal mode notation. Single-photon transitions to this state from the
vibrational ground state are forbidden. Ten lines of the newly measured state
are observed and fitted with the linear least-squares method to extract the
band parameters. The vibrational term value was measured to be at 9775.0018(45)
, the rotational parameter was 1.162222 ,
and the quartic centrifugal distortion parameter was 3.998(62), where the numbers in the parenthesis are one-standard
errors in the least significant digits
Gravitational Lensing in the metric theory proposed by Sobouti
Recently, Y. Sobouti (2007) has provided a metric theory f(R) that can
account for certain dynamical anomalies observed in spiral galaxies. Mendoza &
Rosas-Guevara (2007) have shown that in this theory there is an extra-bending
as compared to standard general relativity. In the present work we have
developed in more specific detail this additional lensing effect and we have
made evaluations of the alpha parameter used in the model adjusting the theory
to observations in X-rays of 13 clusters of galaxies with gravitational lensing
(Hoekstra (2007)).Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
Bias-Free Shear Estimation using Artificial Neural Networks
Bias due to imperfect shear calibration is the biggest obstacle when
constraints on cosmological parameters are to be extracted from large area weak
lensing surveys such as Pan-STARRS-3pi, DES or future satellite missions like
Euclid. We demonstrate that bias present in existing shear measurement
pipelines (e.g. KSB) can be almost entirely removed by means of neural
networks. In this way, bias correction can depend on the properties of the
individual galaxy instead on being a single global value. We present a
procedure to train neural networks for shear estimation and apply this to
subsets of simulated GREAT08 RealNoise data. We also show that circularization
of the PSF before measuring the shear reduces the scatter related to the PSF
anisotropy correction and thus leads to improved measurements, particularly on
low and medium signal-to-noise data. Our results are competitive with the best
performers in the GREAT08 competition, especially for the medium and higher
signal-to-noise sets. Expressed in terms of the quality parameter defined by
GREAT08 we achieve a Q = 40, 140 and 1300 without and 50, 200 and 1300 with
circularization for low, medium and high signal-to-noise data sets,
respectively.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in Ap
Potential of using remote sensing techniques for global assessment of water footprint of crops
Remote sensing has long been a useful tool in global applications, since it provides physically-based, worldwide, and consistent spatial information. This paper discusses the potential of using these techniques in the research field of water management, particularly for ‘Water Footprint’ (WF) studies. The WF of a crop is defined as the volume of water consumed for its production, where green and blue WF stand for rain and irrigation water usage, respectively. In this paper evapotranspiration, precipitation, water storage, runoff and land use are identified as key variables to potentially be estimated by remote sensing and used for WF assessment. A mass water balance is proposed to calculate the volume of irrigation applied, and green and blue WF are obtained from the green and blue evapotranspiration components. The source of remote sensing data is described and a simplified example is included, which uses evapotranspiration estimates from the geostationary satellite Meteosat 9 and precipitation estimates obtained with the Climatic Prediction Center Morphing Technique (CMORPH). The combination of data in this approach brings several limitations with respect to discrepancies in spatial and temporal resolution and data availability, which are discussed in detail. This work provides new tools for global WF assessment and represents an innovative approach to global irrigation mapping, enabling the estimation of green and blue water use
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