On Gravitational Waves in Spacetimes with a Nonvanishing Cosmological Constant

We study the effect of a cosmological constant $\Lambda$ on the propagation and detection of gravitational waves. To this purpose we investigate the linearised Einstein's equations with terms up to linear order in $\Lambda$ in a de Sitter and an anti-de Sitter background spacetime. In this framework the cosmological term does not induce changes in the polarization states of the waves, whereas the amplitude gets modified with terms depending on $\Lambda$. Moreover, if a source emits a periodic waveform, its periodicity as measured by a distant observer gets modified. These effects are, however, extremely tiny and thus well below the detectability by some twenty orders of magnitude within present gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO or future planned ones such as LISA.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Terahertz Diagnostic for the Advanced Photon Source Particle Accumulator Ring

Terahertz Diagnostic for the Advanced Photon Source Particle Accumulator Rin

High resolution quantitative and functional MRI indicate lower myelination of thin and thick stripes in human secondary visual cortex

The characterization of cortical myelination is essential for the study of structure-function relationships in the human brain. However, knowledge about cortical myelination is largely based on post mortem histology, which generally renders direct comparison to function impossible. The repeating pattern of pale-thin-pale-thick stripes of cytochrome oxidase (CO) activity in the primate secondary visual cortex (V2) is a prominent columnar system which is known to be differentiable by myelin content as well. However, depending on the applied histological method, higher myelination in both thin/thick and pale stripes were found, respectively. We used quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI) in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at ultra-high field strength (7T) to localize and study myelination of stripes in several humans at sub-millimeter resolution in vivo. Thin and thick stripes were functionally localized by exploiting their sensitivity to color and binocular disparity, respectively. Resulting functional activation maps showed robust stripe patterns in V2 which enabled further comparison of quantitative relaxation parameters between stripe types. Thereby, we found lower longitudinal relaxation rates (R1) of thin and thick stripes compared to surrounding gray matter in the order of 1-2%, indicating higher myelination of pale stripes. No differences for effective transverse relaxation rates (R2*) were found. The study demonstrates the feasibility to investigate structure-function relationships in living humans within one cortical area at the level of columnar systems using qMRI

Reliable 3D mapping of ocular dominance columns in humans using GE-EPI fMRI at 7 T

Since the discovery of the BOLD effect, detection of ocular dominance columns (ODCs) in primary visual cortex (V1) served as a benchmark for high-precision functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Menon et al., 1997; Dechent and Frahm 2000; Cheng et al., 2001; Yacoub et al., 2007). Although gradient-echo (GE) echo-planar imaging (EPI) is often used at lower field strengths, the applicability for high-resolution fMRI at higher field strengths is still under debate because of its inherent sensitivity to large draining veins (Polimeni et al., 2010). To counteract the loss of specificity, it was recently suggested to only sample far away from the pial surface when using GE-EPI (Nasr et al., 2016; Polimeni et al., 2017). Here, we assessed whether differential ocular dominance responses can be resolved using GE-EPI with different isotropic resolutions (0.8 mm and 1.0 mm) and how the corresponding BOLD signal is distributed across the cortex

High-Brightness Beams from a Light Source Injector: The Advanced Photon Source Low-Energy Undulator Test Line Linac

The use of existing linacs, and in particular light source injectors, for free-electron laser (FEL) experiments is becoming more common due to the desire to test FELs at ever shorter wavelengths. The high-brightness, high-current beams required by high-gain FELs impose technical specifications that most existing linacs were not designed to meet. Moreover, the need for specialized diagnostics, especially shot-to-shot data acquisition, demands substantial modification and upgrade of conventional linacs. Improvements have been made to the Advanced Photon Source (APS) injector linac in order to produce and characterize high-brightness beams. Specifically, effort has been directed at generating beams suitable for use in the low-energy undulator test line (LEUTL) FEL in support of fourth-generation light source research. The enhancements to the linac technical and diagnostic capabilities that allowed for self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) operation of the FEL at 530 nm are described. Recent results, including details on technical systems improvements and electron beam measurement techniques, will be discussed. The linac is capable of accelerating beams to over 650 MeV. The nominal FEL beam parameters used are as follows: 217 MeV energy; 0.1-0.2% rms energy spread; 4-8 um normalized rms emittance; 80-120 A peak current from a 0.2-0.7 nC charge at a 2-7 ps FWHM bunch

Continuous image distortion by astrophysical thick lenses

Image distortion due to weak gravitational lensing is examined using a non-perturbative method of integrating the geodesic deviation and optical scalar equations along the null geodesics connecting the observer to a distant source. The method we develop continuously changes the shape of the pencil of rays from the source to the observer with no reference to lens planes in astrophysically relevant scenarios. We compare the projected area and the ratio of semi-major to semi-minor axes of the observed elliptical image shape for circular sources from the continuous, thick-lens method with the commonly assumed thin-lens approximation. We find that for truncated singular isothermal sphere and NFW models of realistic galaxy clusters, the commonly used thin-lens approximation is accurate to better than 1 part in 10^4 in predicting the image area and axes ratios. For asymmetric thick lenses consisting of two massive clusters separated along the line of sight in redshift up to \Delta z = 0.2, we find that modeling the image distortion as two clusters in a single lens plane does not produce relative errors in image area or axes ratio more than 0.5%Comment: accepted to GR

Development of a murine infection model with Leishmania killicki, responsible for cutaneous Leishmaniosis in Algeria : application in pharmacology

In Algeria, Leishmania infantum, Leishmania major, and Leishmania killicki (Leishmania tropica) are responsible for cutaneous leishmaniosis. We established a murine model of L. killicki infection to investigate its infective capacity, some immunophysiopathological aspects, and its suitability for pharmacological purposes. Following the injection of L. major or L. killicki metacyclic promastigotes in the ear dermis of BALB/c mice, the course of infection was followed. The infection with L. killicki caused slower lesion formation than with L. major. The presence of L. killicki or L. major DNA and parasites was detected in the ear dermis and in lymph nodes, spleen, and liver. Lesions induced by L. killicki were nonulcerative in their aspect, whereas those caused by L. major were highly ulcerative and necrotic, which matches well with the lesion phenotype reported in humans for L. killicki and L. major, respectively. The treatment of L. killicki lesions by injection of Glucantime (R) significantly reduced the lesion thickness and parasite burden. Ear dermal injection of BALB/c mice constitutes a model to study lesions physiopathology caused by L. killicki and presents interest for in vivo screening of new compounds against this pathogen, emerging in Algeria