680 research outputs found
The diffusion of IP telephony and vendors' commercialisation strategies
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of Information Technology. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available at the link below.The Internet telephony (IP telephony) has been presented as a technology that can replace existing fixed-line services and disrupt the telecommunications industry by offering new low-priced services. This study investigates the diffusion of IP telephony in Denmark by focusing on vendors’ commercialisation strategies. The theory of disruptive innovation is introduced to investigate vendors’ perceptions about IP telephony and explore their strategies that affect the diffusion process in the residential market. The analysis is based on interview data collected from the key market players. The study's findings suggest that IP telephony is treated as a sustaining innovation that goes beyond the typical voice transmission and enables provision of advanced services such as video telephony
Dynamically avoiding fine-tuning the cosmological constant: the "Relaxed Universe"
We demonstrate that there exists a large class of action functionals of the
scalar curvature and of the Gauss-Bonnet invariant which are able to relax
dynamically a large cosmological constant (CC), whatever it be its starting
value in the early universe. Hence, it is possible to understand, without
fine-tuning, the very small current value of the CC as compared to its
theoretically expected large value in quantum field theory and string theory.
In our framework, this relaxation appears as a pure gravitational effect, where
no ad hoc scalar fields are needed. The action involves a positive power of a
characteristic mass parameter, M, whose value can be, interestingly enough, of
the order of a typical particle physics mass of the Standard Model of the
strong and electroweak interactions or extensions thereof, including the
neutrino mass. The model universe emerging from this scenario (the "Relaxed
Universe") falls within the class of the so-called LXCDM models of the cosmic
evolution. Therefore, there is a "cosmon" entity X (represented by an effective
object, not a field), which in this case is generated by the effective
functional and is responsible for the dynamical adjustment of the cosmological
constant. This model universe successfully mimics the essential past epochs of
the standard (or "concordance") cosmological model (LCDM). Furthermore, it
provides interesting clues to the coincidence problem and it may even connect
naturally with primordial inflation.Comment: LaTeX, 63 pp, 8 figures. Extended discussion. Version accepted in
JCA
Chern-Simons like term generation in an extended model of QED under external conditions
The possibility of a Chern-Simons like term generation in an extended model
of QED, in which a Lorentz and CPT non-covariant interaction term for fermions
is present, has been investigated at finite temperature and in the presence of
a background color magnetic field. To this end, the photon polarization
operator in an external constant axial-vector field has been considered.
One-loop contributions to its antisymmetric component due to fermions in the
linear order of the axial-vector field have been obtained. Moreover, the first
nontrivial correction to the induced CS term due to the presence of a weak
constant homogeneous color magnetic field has been derived.Comment: RevTex, 10 pages with 3 figure
Reionization: Characteristic Scales, Topology and Observability
Recently the numerical simulations of the process of reionization of the
universe at z>6 have made a qualitative leap forward, reaching sufficient sizes
and dynamic range to determine the characteristic scales of this process. This
allowed making the first realistic predictions for a variety of observational
signatures. We discuss recent results from large-scale radiative transfer and
structure formation simulations on the observability of high-redshift Ly-alpha
sources. We also briefly discuss the dependence of the characteristic scales
and topology of the ionized and neutral patches on the reionization parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures (4 in color), to appear in Astronomy and Space
Science special issue "Space Astronomy: The UV window to the Universe",
proceedings of 1st NUVA Conference ``Space Astronomy: The UV window to the
Universe'' in El Escorial (Spain
Gravitational Collapse of Cylindrical Shells Made of Counter-Rotating Dust Particles
The general formulas of a non-rotating dynamic thin shell that connects two
arbitrary cylindrical regions are given using Israel's method. As an
application of them, the dynamics of a thin shell made of counter-rotating dust
particles, which emits both gravitational waves and massless particles when it
is expanding or collapsing, is studied. It is found that when the models
represent a collapsing shell, in some cases the angular momentum of the dust
particles is strong enough to halt the collapse, so that a spacetime
singularity is prevented from forming, while in other cases it is not, and a
line-like spacetime singularity is finally formed on the symmetry axis.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.
Two temperature viscous accretion flows around rotating black holes: Description of under-fed systems to ultra-luminous X-ray sources
We discuss two temperature accretion disk flows around rotating black holes.
As we know that to explain observed hard X-rays the choice of Keplerian angular
momentum profile is not unique, we consider the sub-Keplerian regime of the
disk. Without any strict knowledge of the magnetic field structure, we assume
the cooling mechanism is dominated by bremsstrahlung process. We show that in a
range of Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter 0.2\gsim\alpha\gsim0.0005, flow
behavior varies widely, particularly by means of the size of disk, efficiency
of cooling and corresponding temperatures of ions and electrons. We also show
that the disk around a rotating black hole is hotter compared to that around a
Schwarzschild black hole, rendering a larger difference between ion and
electron temperatures in the former case. With all the theoretical solutions in
hand, finally we reproduce the observed luminosities () of two extreme cases
-- the under-fed AGNs and quasars (e.g. Sgr ) with L\gsim 10^{33}
erg/sec to ultra-luminous X-ray sources with erg/sec, at
different combinations of mass accretion rate, ratio of specific heats,
Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter and Kerr parameter, and conclude that Sgr
may be an intermediate spinning black hole.Comment: 21 pages including 5 figures; few typos corrected; to appear in New
Astronom
On -vectors satisfying the Kruskal-Katona inequalities
We present examples of flag homology spheres whose -vectors satisfy
the Kruskal-Katona inequalities. This includes several families of well-studied
simplicial complexes, including Coxeter complexes and the simplicial complexes
dual to the associahedron and to the cyclohedron. In these cases, we construct
explicit simplicial complexes whose -vectors are the -vectors in
question. In another direction, we show that if a flag -sphere has at
most vertices its -vector satisfies the Kruskal-Katona
inequalities. We conjecture that if is a flag homology sphere then
satisfies the Kruskal-Katona inequalities. This conjecture is
a significant refinement of Gal's conjecture, which asserts that such
-vectors are nonnegative.Comment: 18 pages; Our main result and conjectures have been strengthened.
Also we now have explicit constructions of simplicial complexes whose
-vectors are the -vectors in questio
Observing the First Stars and Black Holes
The high sensitivity of JWST will open a new window on the end of the
cosmological dark ages. Small stellar clusters, with a stellar mass of several
10^6 M_sun, and low-mass black holes (BHs), with a mass of several 10^5 M_sun
should be directly detectable out to redshift z=10, and individual supernovae
(SNe) and gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglows are bright enough to be visible
beyond this redshift. Dense primordial gas, in the process of collapsing from
large scales to form protogalaxies, may also be possible to image through
diffuse recombination line emission, possibly even before stars or BHs are
formed. In this article, I discuss the key physical processes that are expected
to have determined the sizes of the first star-clusters and black holes, and
the prospect of studying these objects by direct detections with JWST and with
other instruments. The direct light emitted by the very first stellar clusters
and intermediate-mass black holes at z>10 will likely fall below JWST's
detection threshold. However, JWST could reveal a decline at the faint-end of
the high-redshift luminosity function, and thereby shed light on radiative and
other feedback effects that operate at these early epochs. JWST will also have
the sensitivity to detect individual SNe from beyond z=10. In a dedicated
survey lasting for several weeks, thousands of SNe could be detected at z>6,
with a redshift distribution extending to the formation of the very first stars
at z>15. Using these SNe as tracers may be the only method to map out the
earliest stages of the cosmic star-formation history. Finally, we point out
that studying the earliest objects at high redshift will also offer a new
window on the primordial power spectrum, on 100 times smaller scales than
probed by current large-scale structure data.Comment: Invited contribution to "Astrophysics in the Next Decade: JWST and
Concurrent Facilities", Astrophysics & Space Science Library, Eds. H.
Thronson, A. Tielens, M. Stiavelli, Springer: Dordrecht (2008
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