77,833 research outputs found
Stochastic group selection model for the evolution of altruism
We study numerically and analytically a stochastic group selection model in
which a population of asexually reproducing individuals, each of which can be
either altruist or non-altruist, is subdivided into reproductively isolated
groups (demes) of size . The cost associated with being altruistic is
modelled by assigning the fitness , with , to the
altruists and the fitness 1 to the non-altruists. In the case that the
altruistic disadvantage is not too large, we show that the finite
fluctuations are small and practically do not alter the deterministic results
obtained for . However, for large these fluctuations
greatly increase the instability of the altruistic demes to mutations. These
results may be relevant to the dynamics of parasite-host systems and, in
particular, to explain the importance of mutation in the evolution of parasite
virulence.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
Meson decay in the Fock-Tani Formalism
The Fock-Tani formalism is a first principle method to obtain effective
interactions from microscopic Hamiltonians. Usually this formalism was applied
to scattering, here we introduced it to calculate partial decay widths for
mesons.Comment: Presented at HADRON05 XI. "International Conference on Hadron
Spectroscopy" Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 21 to 26, 200
Time-dependent Robin boundary conditions in the dynamical Casimir effect
Motivated by experiments in which moving boundaries are simulated by
time-dependent properties of static systems, we discuss the model of a massless
scalar field submitted to a time-dependent Robin boundary condition (BC) at a
static mirror in 1+1 dimensions. Using a perturbative approach, we compute the
spectral distribution of the created particles and the total particle creation
rate, considering a thermal state as the initial field state.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. To appear in proceedings of Conference on
Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Condition
Fisher matrix forecasts for astrophysical tests of the stability of the fine-structure constant
We use Fisher Matrix analysis techniques to forecast the cosmological impact
of astrophysical tests of the stability of the fine-structure constant to be
carried out by the forthcoming ESPRESSO spectrograph at the VLT (due for
commissioning in late 2017), as well by the planned high-resolution
spectrograph (currently in Phase A) for the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Assuming a fiducial model without variations, we show that ESPRESSO
can improve current bounds on the E\"{o}tv\"{o}s parameter---which quantifies
Weak Equivalence Principle violations---by up to two orders of magnitude,
leading to stronger bounds than those expected from the ongoing tests with the
MICROSCOPE satellite, while constraints from the E-ELT should be competitive
with those of the proposed STEP satellite. Should an variation be
detected, these measurements will further constrain cosmological parameters,
being particularly sensitive to the dynamics of dark energy.Comment: Phys. Lett. B (in press
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