774 research outputs found
The Cosmic Background Imager
Design and performance details are given for the Cosmic Background Imager
(CBI), an interferometer array that is measuring the power spectrum of
fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) for multipoles
in the range 400 < l < 3500. The CBI is located at an altitude of 5000 m in the
Atacama Desert in northern Chile. It is a planar synthesis array with 13 0.9-m
diameter antennas on a 6-m diameter tracking platform. Each antenna has a
cooled, low-noise receiver operating in the 26-36 GHz band. Signals are
cross-correlated in an analog filterbank correlator with ten 1 GHz bands. This
allows spectral index measurements which can be used to distinguish CMBR
signals from diffuse galactic foregrounds. A 1.2 kHz 180-deg phase switching
scheme is used to reject cross-talk and low-frequency pick-up in the signal
processing system. The CBI has a 3-axis mount which allows the tracking
platform to be rotated about the optical axis, providing improved (u,v)
coverage and a powerful discriminant against false signals generated in the
receiving electronics. Rotating the tracking platform also permits polarization
measurements when some of the antennas are configured for the orthogonal
polarization.Comment: 14 pages. Accepted for publication in PASP. See also
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/CBI
The rarity of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes
We report on the first search for Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) from altitudes where they are thought to be produced. The Airborne Detector for Energetic Lightning Emissions (ADELE), an array of gamma-ray detectors, was flown near the tops of Florida thunderstorms in August/September 2009. The plane passed within 10 km horizontal distance of 1213 lightning discharges and only once detected a TGF. If these discharges had produced TGFs of the same intensity as those seen from space, every one should have been seen by ADELE. Separate and significant nondetections are established for intracloud lightning, negative cloud-to-ground lightning, and narrow bipolar events. We conclude that TGFs are not a primary triggering mechanism for lightning. We estimate the TGF-to-flash ratio to be on the order of 10^(−2) to 10^(−3) and show that TGF intensities cannot follow the well-known power-law distribution seen in earthquakes and solar flares, due to our limits on the presence of faint events
Positron clouds within thunderstorms
We report the observation of two isolated clouds of positrons inside an
active thunderstorm. These observations were made by the Airborne Detector for
Energetic Lightning Emissions (ADELE), an array of six gamma-ray detectors,
which flew on a Gulfstream V jet aircraft through the top of an active
thunderstorm in August 2009. ADELE recorded two 511 keV gamma-ray count rate
enhancements, 35 seconds apart, each lasting approximately 0.2 seconds. The
enhancements, which were about a factor of 12 above background, were both
accompanied by electrical activity as measured by a flat-plate antenna on the
underside of the aircraft. The energy spectra were consistent with a source
mostly composed of positron annihilation gamma rays, with a prominent 511 keV
line clearly visible in the data. Model fits to the data suggest that the
aircraft was briefly immersed in clouds of positrons, more than a kilometer
across. It is not clear how the positron clouds were created within the
thunderstorm, but it is possible they were caused by the presence of the
aircraft in the electrified environment.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Journal of Plasma Physic
Towards endowing collaborative robots with fast learning for minimizing tutors’ demonstrations: what and when to do?
Programming by demonstration allows non-experts in robot programming to train the robots in an intuitive manner. However, this learning paradigm requires multiple demonstrations of the same task, which can be time-consuming and annoying for the human tutor. To overcome this limitation, we propose a fast learning system – based on neural dynamics – that permits collaborative robots to memorize sequential information from single task demonstrations by a human-tutor. Important, the learning system allows not only to memorize long sequences of sub-goals in a task but also the time interval between them. We implement this learning system in Sawyer (a collaborative robot from Rethink Robotics) and test it in a construction task, where the robot observes several human-tutors with different preferences on the sequential order to perform the task and different behavioral time scales. After learning, memory recall (of what and when to do a sub-task) allows the robot to instruct inexperienced human workers, in a particular human-centered task scenario.POFC - Programa Operacional Temático Factores de Competitividade(POCI-01-0247-FEDER-024541
Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer for the Keck Telescope
The Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer is designed for use at the Cassegrain focus of the Keck 10-m telescope. It provides the capability of acquiring low resolution (R equals 1000 to 5000) digital spectra, as well as 6 X 8 arc-minute moderately high spatial resolution (4.65 pixels/arc-second) direct images. Spectroscopy can be carried out with single slits which are 3 arc-minutes long. In addition punched multi-slits can also be employed which allow for the acquisition of at least forty spectra simultaneously. Since the instrument is designed to be as efficient as possible, it is a double spectrograph, with a dichroic splitting the blue and red light into separate optical paths after the collimator. Only the red side has been constructed thus far. With a 2048 by 2048 thinned Tektronix CCD as the detector the total efficiency of the red side at the peak of the grating blaze is predicted to be nearly 40%. Results of the commissioning observing runs will be described
The Keck Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer
The Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) for the Cassegrain focus of the Keck 10-m telescope on Mauna Kea is described. It has an imaging mode so it can also be used for taking direct images. The field of view in both spectrographic and imaging modes is 6 by 7.8 arcmin. It can be used with both conventional slits and custom-punched slit masks. The optical quality of the spectrograph is good enough to take full advantage of the excellent imaging properties of the telescope itself. The detector is a cooled back-illuminated Tektronics Inc. 2048 X 2048 CCD which gives a sampling rate of 4.685 pixels per arcsec. In the spectrographic mode the spectrograph has a maximum efficiency at the peak of the grating blaze of 32%-34% for the two lowest resolution gratings and 28% for the 1200 g mm^(-1) grating. This efficiency includes the detector but not the telescope or the atmosphere
Mass equidistribution of Hilbert modular eigenforms
Let F be a totally real number field, and let f traverse a sequence of
non-dihedral holomorphic eigencuspforms on GL(2)/F of weight (k_1,...,k_n),
trivial central character and full level. We show that the mass of f
equidistributes on the Hilbert modular variety as max(k_1,...,k_n) tends to
infinity.
Our result answers affirmatively a natural analogue of a conjecture of
Rudnick and Sarnak (1994). Our proof generalizes the argument of
Holowinsky-Soundararajan (2008) who established the case F = Q. The essential
difficulty in doing so is to adapt Holowinsky's bounds for the Weyl periods of
the equidistribution problem in terms of manageable shifted convolution sums of
Fourier coefficients to the case of a number field with nontrivial unit group.Comment: 40 pages; typos corrected, nearly accepted for
Simulating Turbulence Using the Astrophysical Discontinuous Galerkin Code TENET
In astrophysics, the two main methods traditionally in use for solving the
Euler equations of ideal fluid dynamics are smoothed particle hydrodynamics and
finite volume discretization on a stationary mesh. However, the goal to
efficiently make use of future exascale machines with their ever higher degree
of parallel concurrency motivates the search for more efficient and more
accurate techniques for computing hydrodynamics. Discontinuous Galerkin (DG)
methods represent a promising class of methods in this regard, as they can be
straightforwardly extended to arbitrarily high order while requiring only small
stencils. Especially for applications involving comparatively smooth problems,
higher-order approaches promise significant gains in computational speed for
reaching a desired target accuracy. Here, we introduce our new astrophysical DG
code TENET designed for applications in cosmology, and discuss our first
results for 3D simulations of subsonic turbulence. We show that our new DG
implementation provides accurate results for subsonic turbulence, at
considerably reduced computational cost compared with traditional finite volume
methods. In particular, we find that DG needs about 1.8 times fewer degrees of
freedom to achieve the same accuracy and at the same time is more than 1.5
times faster, confirming its substantial promise for astrophysical
applications.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the SPPEXA
symposium, Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering (LNCSE),
Springe
Marker-free cell discrimination by holographic optical tweezers
We introduce a method for marker-free cell discrimination based on optical tweezers. Cancerous, non-cancerous, and drug-treated cells could be distinguished by measuring the trapping forces using holographic optical tweezers. We present trapping force measurements on different cell lines: normal pre-B lymphocyte cells (BaF3; "normal cells"), their Bcr-Abl transformed counterparts (BaF3-p185; "cancer cells") as a model for chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and Imatinib treated BaF3-p185 cells. The results are compared with reference measurements obtained by a commercial flow cytometry system
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