Process-based modelling of decadal trends in growth, survival, and smolting of wild salmon (Salmo salar) parr in a Scottish upland stream

This paper reports a new model of the freshwater stages of an anadromous fish, at the core of which is a stochastic description of the size-at-age dynamics of a growing cohort. Emigration is assumed to require the individual to exceed a threshold size at a critical time of year, thus making the distributions of survival to, and age at, smolting emergent properties of the model. The model is applied to a long-term data set on juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in the Girnock Burn, Scotland, to understand the role played by decadal temperature trends in generating changes in smolt production and age distribution. We conclude that changes in age at smolting are compatible with causation by shifts in the temperature regime. However, the large attenuation between a dramatic fall in spawner numbers and a relatively minor diminution in total smolt production does not result from the physiological effects of temperature but is rather a result of strongly density-dependent mortality between the deposition of ova and the appearance of catchable fry the following summer

Post-subduction tectonics induced by extension from a lithospheric drip

Acknowledgements S.P. acknowledges support from the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) Grant NE/R013500/1 and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 790203. We thank the TanDEM-X Science Communication Team (German Aerospace Center (DLR) e.V.) for providing TanDEM topographic data. We thank the NERC Geophysical Equipment Facility for loan 1038. Numerical simulations were undertaken on the NCI National Facility in Canberra, Australia, which is supported by the Australian Commonwealth Government. A.G. was funded by an Independent Research Fellowship from the Royal Astronomical Society.Peer reviewedPostprin

Encoded Recoupling and Decoupling: An Alternative to Quantum Error Correcting Codes, Applied to Trapped Ion Quantum Computation

A recently developed theory for eliminating decoherence and design constraints in quantum computers, ``encoded recoupling and decoupling'', is shown to be fully compatible with a promising proposal for an architecture enabling scalable ion-trap quantum computation [D. Kielpinski et al., Nature 417, 709 (2002)]. Logical qubits are encoded into pairs of ions. Logic gates are implemented using the Sorensen-Molmer (SM) scheme applied to pairs of ions at a time. The encoding offers continuous protection against collective dephasing. Decoupling pulses, that are also implemented using the SM scheme directly to the encoded qubits, are capable of further reducing various other sources of qubit decoherence, such as due to differential dephasing and due to decohered vibrational modes. The feasibility of using the relatively slow SM pulses in a decoupling scheme quenching the latter source of decoherence follows from the observed 1/f spectrum of the vibrational bath.Comment: 12 pages, no figure

Star clusters near and far; tracing star formation across cosmic time

© 2020 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00690-x.Star clusters are fundamental units of stellar feedback and unique tracers of their host galactic properties. In this review, we will first focus on their constituents, i.e.\ detailed insight into their stellar populations and their surrounding ionised, warm, neutral, and molecular gas. We, then, move beyond the Local Group to review star cluster populations at various evolutionary stages, and in diverse galactic environmental conditions accessible in the local Universe. At high redshift, where conditions for cluster formation and evolution are more extreme, we are only able to observe the integrated light of a handful of objects that we believe will become globular clusters. We therefore discuss how numerical and analytical methods, informed by the observed properties of cluster populations in the local Universe, are used to develop sophisticated simulations potentially capable of disentangling the genetic map of galaxy formation and assembly that is carried by globular cluster populations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO's second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h095%=3.47×10-25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering. © 2019 American Physical Society

Search for Tensor, Vector, and Scalar Polarizations in the Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background

The detection of gravitational waves with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo has enabled novel tests of general relativity, including direct study of the polarization of gravitational waves. While general relativity allows for only two tensor gravitational-wave polarizations, general metric theories can additionally predict two vector and two scalar polarizations. The polarization of gravitational waves is encoded in the spectral shape of the stochastic gravitational-wave background, formed by the superposition of cosmological and individually unresolved astrophysical sources. Using data recorded by Advanced LIGO during its first observing run, we search for a stochastic background of generically polarized gravitational waves. We find no evidence for a background of any polarization, and place the first direct bounds on the contributions of vector and scalar polarizations to the stochastic background. Under log-uniform priors for the energy in each polarization, we limit the energy densities of tensor, vector, and scalar modes at 95% credibility to Ω0T<5.58×10-8, Ω0V<6.35×10-8, and Ω0S<1.08×10-7 at a reference frequency f0=25 Hz. © 2018 American Physical Society