58,320 research outputs found
Asteroseismology and Magnetic Cycles
Small cyclic variations in the frequencies of acoustic modes are expected to
be a common phenomenon in solar-like pulsators, as a result of stellar magnetic
activity cycles. The frequency variations observed throughout the solar and
stellar cycles contain information about structural changes that take place
inside the stars as well as about variations in magnetic field structure and
intensity. The task of inferring and disentangling that information is,
however, not a trivial one. In the sun and solar-like pulsators, the direct
effect of the magnetic field on the oscillations might be significantly
important in regions of strong magnetic field (such as solar- / stellar-spots),
where the Lorentz force can be comparable to the gas-pressure gradient. Our aim
is to determine the sun- / stellar-spots effect on the oscillation frequencies
and attempt to understand if this effect contributes strongly to the frequency
changes observed along the magnetic cycle. The total contribution of the spots
to the frequency shifts results from a combination of direct and indirect
effects of the magnetic field on the oscillations. In this first work we
considered only the indirect effect associated with changes in the
stratification within the starspot. Based on the solution of the wave equation
and the variational principle we estimated the impact of these stratification
changes on the oscillation frequencies of global modes in the sun and found
that the induced frequency shifts are about two orders of magnitude smaller
than the frequency shifts observed over the solar cycle.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, ESF Conference: The Modern Era of Helio- and
Asteroseismology, to be published on 3 December 2012 at Astronomische
Nachrichten 333, No. 10, 1032-103
Measuring von Neumann entanglement entropies without wave functions
We present a method to measure the von Neumann entanglement entropy of ground
states of quantum many-body systems which does not require access to the system
wave function. The technique is based on a direct thermodynamic study of
entanglement Hamiltonians, whose functional form is available from field
theoretical insights. The method is applicable to classical simulations such as
quantum Monte Carlo methods, and to experiments that allow for thermodynamic
measurements such as the density of states, accessible via quantum quenches. We
benchmark our technique on critical quantum spin chains, and apply it to
several two-dimensional quantum magnets, where we are able to unambiguously
determine the onset of area law in the entanglement entropy, the number of
Goldstone bosons, and to check a recent conjecture on geometric entanglement
contribution at critical points described by strongly coupled field theories
Probing the Cosmological Principle in the counts of radio galaxies at different frequencies
According to the Cosmological Principle, the matter distribution on very
large scales should have a kinematic dipole that is aligned with that of the
CMB. We determine the dipole anisotropy in the number counts of two all-sky
surveys of radio galaxies. For the first time, this analysis is presented for
the TGSS survey, allowing us to check consistency of the radio dipole at low
and high frequencies by comparing the results with the well-known NVSS survey.
We match the flux thresholds of the catalogues, with flux limits chosen to
minimise systematics, and adopt a strict masking scheme. We find dipole
directions that are in good agreement with each other and with the CMB dipole.
In order to compare the amplitude of the dipoles with theoretical predictions,
we produce sets of lognormal realisations. Our realisations include the
theoretical kinematic dipole, galaxy clustering, Poisson noise, simulated
redshift distributions which fit the NVSS and TGSS source counts, and errors in
flux calibration. The measured dipole for NVSS is times larger than
predicted by the mock data. For TGSS, the dipole is almost times
larger than predicted, even after checking for completeness and taking account
of errors in source fluxes and in flux calibration. Further work is required to
understand the nature of the systematics that are the likely cause of the
anomalously large TGSS dipole amplitude.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables; Significant improvements. Version
accepted by JCA
The role of pressure anisotropy in the turbulent intracluster medium
In low-density plasma environments, such as the intracluster medium (ICM),
the Larmour frequency is much larger than the ion-ion collision frequency. In
such a case, the thermal pressure becomes anisotropic with respect to the
magnetic field orientation and the evolution of the turbulent gas is more
correctly described by a kinetic approach. A possible description of these
collisionless scenarios is given by the so-called kinetic magnetohydrodynamic
(KMHD) formalism, in which particles freely stream along the field lines, while
moving with the field lines in the perpendicular direction. In this way a
fluid-like behavior in the perpendicular plane is restored. In this work, we
study fast growing magnetic fluctuations in the smallest scales which operate
in the collisionless plasma that fills the ICM. In particular, we focus on the
impact of a particular evolution of the pressure anisotropy and its
implications for the turbulent dynamics of observables under the conditions
prevailing in the ICM. We present results from numerical simulations and
compare the results which those obtained using an MHD formalism.Comment: 7 pages, 14 figures, Journal of Physics: Conference Serie
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