10,865 research outputs found
Stellar Population Challenge: analysis of M67 with the VO
In this poster we present the analysis of the CMD of M67 (proposed in the
Stellar Population Challenge) performed with VO applications. We found that,
although the VO environment is still not ready to perform a complete analysis,
its use provides highly useful additional information for the analysis. Thanks
to the current VO framework, we are able to identify stars in the provided CMD
that are not suitable for isochrone fitting. Additionally, we can complete our
knowledge of this cluster extending the analysis to IR colors, which were not
provided in the original data but that are available thanks to the VO. On the
negative side, we find it difficult to access theoretical data from VO
applications, so, currently, it is not possible to perform completely the
analysis of the cluster inside the VO framework. However it is expected that
the situation will improve in a near future.Comment: Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies, Proceedings of
IAU Symposium #241. Edited by A. Vazdekis and R. F. Peletier. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 173-17
An Experimental Study of Airfoil Icing Characteristics
A full scale general aviation wing with a NACA 63 sub 2 A415 airfoil section was tested to determine icing characteristics for representative rime and glaze icing conditions. Measurements were made of ice accretion shapes and resultant wing section drag coefficient levels. It was found that the NACA 63 sub 2 A415 wing section was less sensitive to rime and glaze icing encounters for climb conditions
Precovery of near-Earth asteroids by a citizen-science project of the Spanish Virtual Observatory
This article describes a citizen-science project conducted by the Spanish
Virtual Observatory (SVO) to improve the orbits of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs)
using data from astronomical archives. The list of NEAs maintained at the Minor
Planet Center (MPC) is checked daily to identify new objects or changes in the
orbital parameters of already catalogued objects. Using NEODyS we compute the
position and magnitude of these objects at the observing epochs of the 938 046
images comprising the Eigth Data Release of the Sloan Digitised Sky Survey
(SDSS). If the object lies within the image boundaries and the magnitude is
brighter than the limiting magnitude, then the associated image is visually
inspected by the project's collaborators (the citizens) to confirm or discard
the presence of the NEA. If confirmed, accurate coordinates and, sometimes,
magnitudes are submitted to the MPC. Using this methodology, 3,226 registered
users have made during the first fifteen months of the project more than
167,000 measurements which have improved the orbital elements of 551 NEAs (6%
of the total number of this type of asteroids). Even more remarkable is the
fact that these results have been obtained at zero cost to telescope time as
NEAs were serendipitously observed while the survey was being carried out. This
demonstrates the enormous scientific potential hidden in astronomical archives.
The great reception of the project as well as the results obtained makes it a
valuable and reliable tool for improving the orbital parameters of near-Earth
asteroids.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Accepted in Astron. Nach
Finite sampling effects on generalized fluctuation-dissipation relations for steady states
We study the effects of the finite number of experimental data on the
computation of a generalized fluctuation-dissipation relation around a
nonequilibrium steady state of a Brownian particle in a toroidal optical trap.
We show that the finite sampling has two different effects, which can give rise
to a poor estimate of the linear response function. The first concerns the
accessibility of the generalized fluctuation-dissipation relation due to the
finite number of actual perturbations imposed to the control parameter. The
second concerns the propagation of the error made at the initial sampling of
the external perturbation of the system. This can be highly enhanced by
introducing an estimator which corrects the error of the initial sampled
condition. When these two effects are taken into account in the data analysis,
the generalized fluctuation-dissipation relation is verified experimentally
Entangled coherent states and squeezing in N trapped ions
We consider a resonant bichromatic excitation of N trapped ions that
generates displacement and squeezing in their collective motion conditioned to
their ionic internal state, producing eventually Scrhodinger cat states and
entangled squeezing. Furthermore, we study the case of tetrachromatic
illumination or producing the so called entangled coherent states in two
motional normal modes.Comment: 4 Revtex pages, no figures. To appear in Proceedings of "Mysteries,
Puzzles and Paradoxes in Quantum Mechanics", Garda Lake, Italy (2001
Field squeeze operators in optical cavities with atomic ensembles
We propose a method of generating unitarily single and two-mode field
squeezing in an optical cavity with an atomic cloud. Through a suitable laser
system, we are able to engineer a squeeze field operator decoupled from the
atomic degrees of freedom, yielding a large squeeze parameter that is scaled up
by the number of atoms, and realizing degenerate and non-degenerate parametric
amplification. By means of the input-output theory we show that ideal squeezed
states and perfect squeezing could be approached at the output. The scheme is
robust to decoherence processes.Comment: Four pages and one figure. Accepted in Physical Review Letter
Fluctons
From the perspective of topological field theory we explore the physics
beyond instantons. We propose the fluctons as nonperturbative topological
fluctuations of vacuum, from which the self-dual domain of instantons is
attained as a particular case. Invoking the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, we
determine the dimension of the corresponding flucton moduli space, which gives
the number of degrees of freedom of the fluctons. An important consequence of
these results is that the topological phases of vacuum in non-Abelian gauge
theories are not necessarily associated with self-dual fields, but only with
smooth fields. Fluctons in different scenarios are considered, the basic
aspects of the quantum mechanical amplitude for fluctons are discussed, and the
case of gravity is discussed briefly
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