The Secular Bar-Mode Instability in Rapidly Rotating Stars Revisited

Uniformly rotating, homogeneous, incompressible Maclaurin spheroids that spin sufficiently rapidly are secularly unstable to nonaxisymmetric, bar-mode perturbations when viscosity is present. The intuitive explanation is that energy dissipation by viscosity can drive an unstable spheroid to a stable, triaxial configuration of lower energy - a Jacobi ellipsoid. But what about rapidly rotating compressible stars? Unlike incompressible stars, which contain no internal energy and therefore immediately liberate all the energy dissipated by viscosity, compressible stars have internal energy and can retain the dissipated energy as internal heat. Now compressible stars that rotate sufficiently rapidly and also manage to liberate this dissipated energy very quickly are known to be unstable to bar-mode perturbations, like their incompressible counterparts. But what is the situation for rapidly rotating compressible stars that have very long cooling timescales, so that all the energy dissipated by viscosity is retained as heat, whereby the total energy of the star remains constant on a secular (viscous) evolution timescale? Are such stars also unstable to the nonlinear growth of bar modes, or is the viscous heating sufficient to cause them to expand, drive down the ratio of rotational kinetic to gravitational potential energy T/|W| ~ 1/R, where R is the equatorial radius, and turn off the instability before it gets underway? If the instability still arises in such stars, at what rotation rate do they become unstable, and to what final state do they evolve? We provide answers to these questions in the context of the compressible ellipsoid model for rotating stars. The results should serve as useful guides for numerical simulations in 3+1 dimensions for rotating stars containing viscosity.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ 613, 1213-1220, 200

An associative memory for the on-line recognition and prediction of temporal sequences

This paper presents the design of an associative memory with feedback that is capable of on-line temporal sequence learning. A framework for on-line sequence learning has been proposed, and different sequence learning models have been analysed according to this framework. The network model is an associative memory with a separate store for the sequence context of a symbol. A sparse distributed memory is used to gain scalability. The context store combines the functionality of a neural layer with a shift register. The sensitivity of the machine to the sequence context is controllable, resulting in different characteristic behaviours. The model can store and predict on-line sequences of various types and length. Numerical simulations on the model have been carried out to determine its properties.Comment: Published in IJCNN 2005, Montreal, Canad

Dark energy: a quantum fossil from the inflationary Universe?

The discovery of dark energy (DE) as the physical cause for the accelerated expansion of the Universe is the most remarkable experimental finding of modern cosmology. However, it leads to insurmountable theoretical difficulties from the point of view of fundamental physics. Inflation, on the other hand, constitutes another crucial ingredient, which seems necessary to solve other cosmological conundrums and provides the primeval quantum seeds for structure formation. One may wonder if there is any deep relationship between these two paradigms. In this work, we suggest that the existence of the DE in the present Universe could be linked to the quantum field theoretical mechanism that may have triggered primordial inflation in the early Universe. This mechanism, based on quantum conformal symmetry, induces a logarithmic, asymptotically-free, running of the gravitational coupling. If this evolution persists in the present Universe, and if matter is conserved, the general covariance of Einstein's equations demands the existence of dynamical DE in the form of a running cosmological term whose variation follows a power law of the redshift.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, extended discussion. References added. Accepted in J. Phys. A: Mathematical and Theoretica

Binary Black-Hole Mergers in Magnetized Disks: Simulations in Full General Relativity

We present results from the first fully general relativistic, magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of an equal-mass black hole binary (BHBH) in a magnetized, circumbinary accretion disk. We simulate both the pre and post-decoupling phases of a BHBH-disk system and both "cooling" and "no-cooling" gas flows. Prior to decoupling, the competition between the binary tidal torques and the effective viscous torques due to MHD turbulence depletes the disk interior to the binary orbit. However, it also induces a two-stream accretion flow and mildly relativistic polar outflows from the BHs. Following decoupling, but before gas fills the low-density "hollow" surrounding the remnant, the accretion rate is reduced, while there is a prompt electromagnetic (EM) luminosity enhancement following merger due to shock heating and accretion onto the spinning BH remnant. This investigation, though preliminary, previews more detailed GRMHD simulations we plan to perform in anticipation of future, simultaneous detections of gravitational and EM radiation from a merging BHBH-disk system.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Time-reversal violating generation of static magnetic and electric fields and a problem of electric dipole moment measurement

It is shown that in the experiments for search of the EDM of an electron (atom, molecule) the T-odd magnetic moment induced by an electric field and the T-odd electric dipole moment induced by a magnetic field will be also measured. It is discussed how to distinguish these contributions.Comment: Latex, 5 pages with 1 Postscript figur

Neutrino emissivity under neutral kaon condensation

Neutrino emissivity from neutron star matter with neutral kaon condensate is considered. It is shown that a new cooling channel is opened, and what is more, all previously known channels acquire the greater emissivity reaching the level of the direct URCA cycle in normal matter.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to be published in Phys.Rev.C, revised version: the sectioning changed and more discussion adde

The significance of ACTH for the process of formation of complex heparin compounds in the blood during immobilization stress

Adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) was administered to rats at different times following adrenalectomy. Adrenocorticotropin caused a significant increase in the formation of heparin complexes even in the absence of stress factor. When ACTH secretion is blocked, immobilization stress is not accompanied by an increase in the process of complex formation. The effect of ACTH on the formation of heparin complexes was mediated through its stimulation of the adrenal cortex

Importance of cooling in triggering the collapse of hypermassive neutron stars

The inspiral and merger of a binary neutron star (NSNS) can lead to the formation of a hypermassive neutron star (HMNS). As the HMNS loses thermal pressure due to neutrino cooling and/or centrifugal support due to gravitational wave (GW) emission, and/or magnetic breaking of differential rotation it will collapse to a black hole. To assess the importance of shock-induced thermal pressure and cooling, we adopt an idealized equation of state and perform NSNS simulations in full GR through late inspiral, merger, and HMNS formation, accounting for cooling. We show that thermal pressure contributes significantly to the support of the HMNS against collapse and that thermal cooling accelerates its "delayed" collapse. Our simulations demonstrate explicitly that cooling can induce the catastrophic collapse of a hot hypermassive neutron star formed following the merger of binary neutron stars. Thus, cooling physics is important to include in NSNS merger calculations to accurately determine the lifetime of the HMNS remnant and to extract information about the NS equation of state, cooling mechanisms, bar instabilities and B-fields from the GWs emitted during the transient phase prior to BH formation.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, matches published versio