111,154 research outputs found
Modelling Intermediate Age and Old Stellar Populations in the Infrared
We have investigated the spectro-photometric properties of the Asymptotic
Giant Branch (AGB) stars and their contribution to the integrated infrared
emission in simple stellar populations (SSP). Adopting analytical relations
describing the evolution of these stars in the HR diagram and empirical
relations for the mass-loss rate and the wind terminal velocity, we were able
to model the effects of the dusty envelope around these stars, with a minimal
number of parameters. We computed isochrones at different age and initial metal
content. We compare our models with existing infrared colors of M giants and
Mira stars and with IRAS PSC data. Contrary to previous models, in the new
isochrones the mass-loss rate, which establishes the duration of the AGB phase,
also determines the spectral properties of the stars. The contribution of these
stars to the integrated light of the population is thus obtained in a
consistent way. We find that the emission in the mid infrared is about one
order of magnitude larger when dust is taken into account in an intermediate
age population, irrespective of the particular mixture adopted. The dependence
of the integrated colors on the metallicity and age is discussed, with
particular emphasis on the problem of age-metallicity degeneracy. We show that,
contrary to the case of optical or near infrared colors, the adoption of a
suitable pass-band in the mid infrared allows a fair separation of the two
effects. We suggest intermediate redshift elliptical galaxies as possible
targets of this method of solving the age-metallicity dilemma. The new SSP
models constitute a first step in a more extended study aimed at modelling the
spectral properties of the galaxies from the ultraviolet to the far infrared.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, to appear in A&
Magnetic monopole and string excitations in a two-dimensional spin ice
We study the magnetic excitations of a square lattice spin-ice recently
produced in an artificial form, as an array of nanoscale magnets. Our analysis,
based upon the dipolar interaction between the nanomagnetic islands, correctly
reproduces the ground-state observed experimentally. In addition, we find
magnetic monopole-like excitations effectively interacting by means of the
usual Coulombic plus a linear confining potential, the latter being related to
a string-like excitation binding the monopoles pairs, what indicates that the
fractionalization of magnetic dipoles may not be so easy in two dimensions.
These findings contrast this material with the three-dimensional analogue,
where such monopoles experience only the Coulombic interaction. We discuss,
however, two entropic effects that affect the monopole interactions: firstly,
the string configurational entropy may loose the string tension and then, free
magnetic monopoles should also be found in lower dimensional spin ices;
secondly, in contrast to the string configurational entropy, an entropically
driven Coulomb force, which increases with temperature, has the opposite effect
of confining the magnetic defects.Comment: 8 pages. Accepted by Journal of Applied Physics (2009
Meson decay in the Fock-Tani Formalism
The Fock-Tani formalism is a first principle method to obtain effective
interactions from microscopic Hamiltonians. Usually this formalism was applied
to scattering, here we introduced it to calculate partial decay widths for
mesons.Comment: Presented at HADRON05 XI. "International Conference on Hadron
Spectroscopy" Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 21 to 26, 200
Labyrinthine pathways towards supercycle attractors in unimodal maps
We uncover previously unknown properties of the family of periodic
superstable cycles in unimodal maps characterized each by a Lyapunov exponent
that diverges to minus infinity. Amongst the main novel properties are the
following: i) The basins of attraction for the phases of the cycles develop
fractal boundaries of increasing complexity as the period-doubling structure
advances towards the transition to chaos. ii) The fractal boundaries, formed by
the preimages of the repellor, display hierarchical structures organized
according to exponential clusterings that manifest in the dynamics as
sensitivity to the final state and transient chaos. iii) There is a functional
composition renormalization group (RG) fixed-point map associated to the family
of supercycles. iv) This map is given in closed form by the same kind of
-exponential function found for both the pitchfork and tangent bifurcation
attractors. v) There is a final stage ultra-fast dynamics towards the attractor
with a sensitivity to initial conditions that decreases as an exponential of an
exponential of time.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure
Thermodynamic Formalism for Topological Markov Chains on Borel Standard Spaces
We develop a Thermodynamic Formalism for bounded continuous potentials
defined on the sequence space , where is a general
Borel standard space. In particular, we introduce meaningful concepts of
entropy and pressure for shifts acting on and obtain the existence of
equilibrium states as additive probability measures for any bounded continuous
potential. Furthermore, we establish convexity and other structural properties
of the set of equilibrium states, prove a version of the
Perron-Frobenius-Ruelle theorem under additional assumptions on the regularity
of the potential and show that the Yosida-Hewitt decomposition of these
equilibrium states do not have a purely additive part.
We then apply our results to the construction of invariant measures of
time-homogeneous Markov chains taking values on a general Borel standard space
and obtain exponential asymptotic stability for a class of Markov operators. We
also construct conformal measures for an infinite collection of interacting
random paths which are associated to a potential depending on infinitely many
coordinates. Under an additional differentiability hypothesis, we show how this
process is related after a proper scaling limit to a certain infinite
dimensional diffusion.Comment: Accepted for publication in Discrete and Continuous Dynamical
Systems. 23 page
A coordinate-dependent superspace deformation from string theory
Starting from a type II superstring model defined on in
a linear graviphoton background, we derive a coordinate dependent -deformed
, superspace. The chiral fermionic coordinates
satisfy a Clifford algebra, while the other coordinate algebra remains
unchanged. We find a linear relation between the graviphoton field strength and
the deformation parameter. The null coordinate dependence of the graviphoton
background allows to extend the results to all orders in .Comment: 14 pages, reference added, accepted for publication in JHE
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