781 research outputs found
Thirty Years of Cometary Spectroscopy from McDonald Observatory
We report on the results of a spectroscopic survey of 130 comets that was
conducted at McDonald observatory from 1980 through 2008. Some of the comets
were observed on only one night, while others were observed repeatedly. For 20
of these comets, no molecules were detected. For the remaining 110 comets, some
emission from CN, OH, NH, C, C, CH, and NH molecules were
observed on at least one occasion. We converted the observed molecular column
densities to production rates using a Haser (1957) model. We defined a
restricted data set of comets that had at least 3 nights of observations. The
restricted data set consists of 59 comets. We used ratios of production rates
to study the trends in the data. We find two classes of comets: typical and
carbon-chain depleted comets. Using a very strict definition of depleted
comets, requiring C \underline{and} C to both be depleted, we find
9% of our restricted data set comets to be depleted. Using a more relaxed
definition that requires only C to be below a threshold (similar to other
researchers), we find 25% of the comets are depleted. Two-thirds of the
depleted comets are Jupiter Family comets, while one-third are Long Period
comets. 37% of the Jupiter Family comets are depleted, while 18.5% of the Long
Period comets are depleted. We compare our results with other studies and find
good agreement.Comment: Accepted for Icarus; 15 figures, 9 tables (some multi-page and in
landscape mode
Iordanskii Force and the Gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect for a Moving Vortex
I discuss the scattering of phonons by a vortex moving with respect to a
superfluid condensate. This allows us to test the compatibility of the
scattering-theory derivation of the Iordanskii force with the galilean
invariance of the underlying fluid dynamics. In order to obtain the correct
result we must retain terms in the sound-wave equation, and this
reinforces the interpretation, due to Volovik, of the Iordanskii force as an
analogue of the gravitational Bohm-Aharonov effect.Comment: 20 pages, LaTe
Instantons for Vacuum Decay at Finite Temperature in the Thin Wall Limit
In dimensions, false vacuum decay at zero temperature is dominated by
the symmetric instanton, a sphere of radius , whereas at
temperatures , the decay is dominated by a `cylindrical' (static)
symmetric instanton. We study the transition between these two regimes
in the thin wall approximation. Taking an symmetric ansatz for the
instantons, we show that for and new periodic solutions exist in a
finite temperature range in the neighborhood of . However,
these solutions have higher action than the spherical or the cylindrical one.
This suggests that there is a sudden change (a first order transition) in the
derivative of the nucleation rate at a certain temperature , when the
static instanton starts dominating. For , on the other hand, the new
solutions are dominant and they smoothly interpolate between the zero
temperature instanton and the high temperature one, so the transition is of
second order. The determinantal prefactors corresponding to the `cylindrical'
instantons are discussed, and it is pointed out that the entropic contributions
from massless excitations corresponding to deformations of the domain wall give
rise to an exponential enhancement of the nucleation rate for .Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures available upon request, DAMTP-R-94/
The Basics of Water Waves Theory for Analogue Gravity
This chapter gives an introduction to the connection between the physics of
water waves and analogue gravity. Only a basic knowledge of fluid mechanics is
assumed as a prerequisite.Comment: 36 pages. Lecture Notes for the IX SIGRAV School on "Analogue
Gravity", Como (Italy), May 201
New strings for old Veneziano amplitudes II. Group-theoretic treatment
In this part of our four parts work (e.g see Part I, hep-th/0410242) we use
the theory of polynomial invariants of finite pseudo-reflection groups in order
to reconstruct both the Veneziano and Veneziano-like (tachyon-free) amplitudes
and the generating function reproducing these amplitudes. We demonstrate that
such generating function can be recovered with help of the finite dimensional
exactly solvable N=2 supersymmetric quantum mechanical model known earlier from
works by Witten, Stone and others. Using the Lefschetz isomorphisms theorem we
replace traditional supersymmetric calculations by the group-theoretic thus
solving the Veneziano model exactly using standard methods of representation
theory. Mathematical correctness of our arguments relies on important theorems
by Shepard and Todd, Serre and Solomon proven respectively in early fifties and
sixties and documented in the monograph by Bourbaki. Based on these theorems we
explain why the developed formalism leaves all known results of conformal field
theories unchanged. We also explain why these theorems impose stringent
requirements connecting analytical properties of scattering amplitudes with
symmetries of space-time in which such amplitudes act.Comment: 57 pages J.Geom.Phys.(in press, available on line
From chemical gardens to chemobrionics
Chemical gardens in laboratory chemistries ranging from silicates to polyoxometalates, in applications ranging from corrosion products to the hydration of Portland cement, and in natural settings ranging from hydrothermal vents in the ocean depths to brinicles beneath sea ice. In many chemical-garden experiments, the structure forms as a solid seed of a soluble ionic compound dissolves in a solution containing another reactive ion. In general any alkali silicate solution can be used due to their high solubility at high pH. The cation should not precipitate with the counterion of the metal salt used as seed. A main property of seed chemical-garden experiments is that initially, when the fluid is not moving under buoyancy or osmosis, the delivery of the inner reactant is diffusion controlled. Another experimental technique that isolates one aspect of chemical-garden formation is to produce precipitation membranes between different aqueous solutions by introducing the two solutions on either side of an inert carrier matrix. Chemical gardens may be grown upon injection of solutions into a so-called Hele-Shaw cell, a quasi-two-dimensional reactor consisting in two parallel plates separated by a small gap
An Evaluation Framework and Adaptive Architecture for Automated Sentiment Detection
Analysts are often interested in how sentiment towards an organization, a product or a particular technology changes over time. Popular methods that process unstructured textual material to automatically detect sentiment based on tagged dictionaries are not capable of fulfilling this task, even when coupled with part-of-speech tagging, a standard component of most text processing toolkits that distinguishes grammatical categories such as article, noun, verb, and adverb. Small corpus size, ambiguity and subtle incremental change of tonal expressions between different versions of a document complicate sentiment detection. Parsing grammatical structures, by contrast, outperforms dictionary-based approaches in terms of reliability, but usually suffers from poor scalability due to its computational complexity. This work provides an overview of different dictionary- and machine-learning-based sentiment detection methods and evaluates them on several Web corpora. After identifying the shortcomings of these methods, the paper proposes an approach based on automatically building Tagged Linguistic Unit (TLU) databases to overcome the restrictions of dictionaries with a limited set of tagged tokens
Calibration of Super-Kamiokande Using an Electron Linac
In order to calibrate the Super-Kamiokande experiment for solar neutrino
measurements, a linear accelerator (LINAC) for electrons was installed at the
detector. LINAC data were taken at various positions in the detector volume,
tracking the detector response in the variables relevant to solar neutrino
analysis. In particular, the absolute energy scale is now known with less than
1 percent uncertainty.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures, Submitted to NIM
Measurement of radon concentrations at Super-Kamiokande
Radioactivity from radon is a major background for observing solar neutrinos
at Super-Kamiokande. In this paper, we describe the measurement of radon
concentrations at Super-Kamiokande, the method of radon reduction, and the
radon monitoring system. The measurement shows that the current low-energy
event rate between 5.0 MeV and 6.5 MeV implies a radon concentration in the
Super-Kamiokande water of less than 1.4 mBq/m.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
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