Studies of extra-solar Oort Clouds and the Kuiper disk

In 1991 we detected extended 1.1 mm emission around Fomalhaut (alpha PsA) at distances in order of magnitude beyond previous detections. This emission is plausibly related to the presence of an extended comet cloud, like our Oort Cloud, and may therefore represent indirect evidence for the formation of a planetary system at Fomalhaut. We propose now to extend this work to create a map of the angular and spatial extent of this emission. Fomalhaut is the only known main-sequence, submm-resolved IR excess source besides beta Pic

Dynamics of fingering convection II: The formation of thermohaline staircases

Regions of the ocean's thermocline unstable to salt fingering are often observed to host thermohaline staircases, stacks of deep well-mixed convective layers separated by thin stably-stratified interfaces. Decades after their discovery, however, their origin remains controversial. In this paper we use 3D direct numerical simulations to shed light on the problem. We study the evolution of an analogous double-diffusive system, starting from an initial statistically homogeneous fingering state and find that it spontaneously transforms into a layered state. By analysing our results in the light of the mean-field theory developed in Paper I, a clear picture of the sequence of events resulting in the staircase formation emerges. A collective instability of homogeneous fingering convection first excites a field of gravity waves, with a well-defined vertical wavelength. However, the waves saturate early through regular but localized breaking events, and are not directly responsible for the formation of the staircase. Meanwhile, slower-growing, horizontally invariant but vertically quasi-periodic gamma-modes are also excited and grow according to the gamma-instability mechanism. Our results suggest that the nonlinear interaction between these various mean-field modes of instability leads to the selection of one particular gamma-mode as the staircase progenitor. Upon reaching a critical amplitude, this progenitor overturns into a fully-formed staircase. We conclude by extending the results of our simulations to real oceanic parameter values, and find that the progenitor gamma-mode is expected to grow on a timescale of a few hours, and leads to the formation of a thermohaline staircase in about one day with an initial spacing of the order of one to two metres.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, associated mpeg file at http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~stellma/movie_small.mp4, submitted to JF

Chiral order and fluctuations in multi-flavour QCD

Multi-flavour (N_f>=3) Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) may exhibit instabilities due to vacuum fluctuations of sea q-bar q pairs. Keeping the fluctuations small would require a very precise fine-tuning of the low-energy constants L_4 and L_6 to L_4[crit](M_rho) = - 0.51 * 10^(-3), and L_6[crit](M_rho) = - 0.26 * 10^(-3). A small deviation from these critical values -- like the one suggested by the phenomenology of OZI-rule violation in the scalar channel -- is amplified by huge numerical factors inducing large effects of vacuum fluctuations. This would lead in particular to a strong N_f-dependence of chiral symmetry breaking and a suppression of multi-flavour chiral order parameters. A simple resummation is shown to cure the instability of N_f>=3 ChPT, but it modifies the standard expressions of some O(p^2) and O(p^4) low-energy parameters in terms of observables. On the other hand, for r=m_s/m > 15, the two-flavour condensate is not suppressed, due to the contribution induced by massive vacuum s-bar s pairs. Thanks to the latter, the standard two-flavour ChPT is protected from multi-flavour instabilities and could provide a well-defined expansion scheme in powers of non-strange quark masses.Comment: Published versio

Studies of extra-solar OORT clouds and the Kuiper disk

This is the second report for NAGW-3023, Studies of Extra-Solar Oort Clouds and the Kuiper Disk. We are conducting research designed to enhance our understanding of the evolution and detectability of comet clouds and disks. This area holds promise for also improving our understanding of outer solar system formation, the bombardment history of the planets, the transport of volatiles and organics from the outer solar system to the inner planets, and the ultimate fate of comet clouds around the Sun and other stars. According to 'standard' theory, both the Kuiper Disk and Oort Cloud are (at least in part) natural products of the planetary accumulation stage of solar system formation. One expects such assemblages to be a common attribute of other solar systems. Therefore, searches for comet disks and clouds orbiting other stars offer a new method for infering the presence of planetary systems. Our three-year effort consists of two major efforts: (1) observational work to predict and search for the signatures of Oort Clouds and comet disks around other stars; and (2) modelling studies of the formation and evolution of the Kuiper Disk (KD) and similar assemblages that may reside around other stars, including Beta Pic. These efforts are referred to as Task 1 and 2, respectively

Leading For The Bottom Line: A View Of Leadership In A Bottom-Line Context

This paper sets out to establish and describe a new approach to leadership called Bottom Line Leadership. The essence of Bottom Line Leadership is that a leader’s most critical responsibility is to clearly identify, communicate and gain buy-in for the ultimate bottom-line objective of the organization he/she leads, subject to constraints imposed by the market and by the organization itself. In comparison to other leadership models that focus on the general attributes or behaviors characterizing effective leaders, Bottom Line Leadership emphasizes the link between an organization’s purpose and a leader’s behavior. The philosophy that serves as the foundation for this article stipulates that employees, in any type of organization, need to be crystal clear about the purpose and bottom-line objective of the organization they work for. Having this clarity of objective enables employees to not only understand the importance of an organization’s strategy and mission; it also allows them to make sound decisions in support of the organization’s goals. We believe that it is essential that leaders in organizations instill this clarity of purpose and help create the conditions that allow people to channel their energies into the appropriate activities. What results from our leadership and management research is a “virtuous circle” model coupled with a checklist that prescribes precisely what Bottom-Line Leaders do. To arrive at our model of Bottom-Line Leadership, we review the teachings of some of the most popular leadership and management thought leaders. We conclude that effective leadership actually encompasses both traditional leadership attributes (create / inspire / influence) and traditional management capabilities (deploy / control / execute). In short, what we find is that Bottom-Line Leaders instill clarity of purpose in their organization, gain commitment to the ultimate bottom-line objective, and engage employees in these efforts. They do this by deploying methods of communication, inspiration and motivation that constantly maintain a connection to, and are aligned with, the ultimate bottom-line objective the organization is striving to achieve. They also work tirelessly to ensure that employees are in a position to make decisions and take actions in manners supporting the bottom-line objective. In our view, leaders are those who do the right things right and get their people to do likewise

Noncommutative BTZ Black Hole and Discrete Time

We search for all Poisson brackets for the BTZ black hole which are consistent with the geometry of the commutative solution and are of lowest order in the embedding coordinates. For arbitrary values for the angular momentum we obtain two two-parameter families of contact structures. We obtain the symplectic leaves, which characterize the irreducible representations of the noncommutative theory. The requirement that they be invariant under the action of the isometry group restricts to $R\times S^1$ symplectic leaves, where $R$ is associated with the Schwarzschild time. Quantization may then lead to a discrete spectrum for the time operator.Comment: 10 page