309 research outputs found
Constitutional Analogies in the International Legal System
This Article explores issues at the frontier of international law and constitutional law. It considers five key structural and systemic challenges that the international legal system now faces: (1) decentralization and disaggregation; (2) normative and institutional hierarchies; (3) compliance and enforcement; (4) exit and escape; and (5) democracy and legitimacy. Each of these issues raises questions of governance, institutional design, and allocation of authority paralleling the questions that domestic legal systems have answered in constitutional terms. For each of these issues, I survey the international legal landscape and consider the salience of potential analogies to domestic constitutions, drawing upon and extending the writings of international legal scholars and international relations theorists. I also offer some preliminary thoughts about why some treaties and institutions, but not others, more readily lend themselves to analysis in constitutional terms. And I distinguish those legal and political issues that may generate useful insights for scholars studying the growing intersections of international and constitutional law from other areas that may be more resistant to constitutional analogies
On the static length of relaxation and the origin of dynamic heterogeneity in fragile glass-forming liquids
The most puzzling aspect of the glass transition observed in laboratory is an
apparent decoupling of dynamics from structure. In this paper we recount the
implication of various theories of glass transition for the static correlation
length in an attempt to reconcile the dynamic and static lengths associate with
the glass problem. We argue that a more recent characterization of the static
relaxation length based on the bond ordering scenario, as the typical length
over which the energy fluctuations are correlated, is more consistent with, and
indeed in perfect agreement with the typical linear size of the dynamically
heterogeneous domains observed in deeply supercooled liquids. The correlated
relaxation of bonds in terms of energy is therefore identified as the physical
origin of the observed dynamic heterogeneity.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur
A Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor Search for Electromagnetic Signals Coincident with Gravitational-Wave Candidates in Advanced LIGO\u27s First Observing Run
We present a search for prompt gamma-ray counterparts to compact binary coalescence gravitational wave (GW) candidates from Advanced LIGO\u27s first observing run (O1). As demonstrated by the multimessenger observations of GW170817/GRB 170817A, electromagnetic and GW observations provide complementary information about the astrophysical source, and in the case of weaker candidates, may strengthen the case for an astrophysical origin. Here we investigate low-significance GW candidates from the O1 compact binary coalescence searches using the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM), leveraging its all sky and broad energy coverage. Candidates are ranked and compared to background to measure the significance. Those with false alarm rates (FARs) of less than 10-55 Hz (about one per day, yielding a total of 81 candidates) are used as the search sample for gamma-ray follow-up. No GW candidates were found to be coincident with gamma-ray transients independently identified by blind searches of the GBM data. In addition, GW candidate event times were followed up by a separate targeted search of GBM data. Among the resulting GBM events, the two with the lowest FARs were the gamma-ray transient GW150914-GBM presented in Connaughton et al. and a solar flare in chance coincidence with a GW candidate
Biot-Savart-like law in electrostatics
The Biot-Savart law is a well-known and powerful theoretical tool used to
calculate magnetic fields due to currents in magnetostatics. We extend the
range of applicability and the formal structure of the Biot-Savart law to
electrostatics by deriving a Biot-Savart-like law suitable for calculating
electric fields. We show that, under certain circumstances, the traditional
Dirichlet problem can be mapped onto a much simpler Biot-Savart-like problem.
We find an integral expression for the electric field due to an arbitrarily
shaped, planar region kept at a fixed electric potential, in an otherwise
grounded plane. As a by-product we present a very simple formula to compute the
field produced in the plane defined by such a region. We illustrate the
usefulness of our approach by calculating the electric field produced by planar
regions of a few nontrivial shapes.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, RevTex, accepted for publication in the European
Journal of Physic
Branonium
We study the bound states of brane/antibrane systems by examining the motion
of a probe antibrane moving in the background fields of N source branes. The
classical system resembles the point-particle central force problem, and the
orbits can be solved by quadrature. Generically the antibrane has orbits which
are not closed on themselves. An important special case occurs for some
Dp-branes moving in three transverse dimensions, in which case the orbits may
be obtained in closed form, giving the standard conic sections but with a
nonstandard time evolution along the orbit. Somewhat surprisingly, in this case
the resulting elliptical orbits are exact solutions, and do not simply apply in
the limit of asymptotically-large separation or non-relativistic velocities.
The orbits eventually decay through the radiation of massless modes into the
bulk and onto the branes, and we estimate this decay time. Applications of
these orbits to cosmology are discussed in a companion paper.Comment: 34 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, uses JHEP
Multi-Center non-BPS Black Holes - the Solution
We construct multi-center, non-supersymmetric four-dimensional solutions
describing a rotating anti-D6-D2 black hole and an arbitrary number of D4-D2-D0
black holes in a line. These solutions correspond to an arbitrary number of
extremal non-BPS black rings in a Taub-NUT space with a rotating three-charge
black hole in the middle. The positions of the centers are determined by
solving a set of "bubble" or "integrability" equations that contain cubic
polynomials of the inter-center distance, and that allow scaling solutions even
when the total four-dimensional angular momentum of the scaling centers is
non-zero.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe
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