29,278 research outputs found
Discovery of Extremely Large-Amplitude Quasi-Periodic Photometric Variability in WC9-Type Wolf-Rayet Binary, WR 104
We discovered that the Wolf-Rayet (WR)+OB star binary, WR 104, renowned for
its associated "dusty pinwheel nebula" recently spatially resolved with
infrared interferometry, exhibits strong quasi-periodic optical variations with
a full amplitude of 2.7 mag. Such a large-amplitude, continuous variation has
been unprecedented in a WR star. The optical quasi-period (~241 d) is in almost
perfect agreement with the interferometric period (243.5+/-3 d). The remarkable
agreement of the dominant period in optical variability with the orbital period
supports that the strongly varying dust obscuration is physically related to
the binary motion, rather than sporadic dust-forming episodes. Considering the
low orbital inclination (11+/-7 deg) and the nearly circular orbit inferred
from the interferometric observations, the strongly variable line-of-sight
extinction suggests that the highly structured extinction can be being formed
via an ejection of dust in the direction of the binary rotation axis. Another
viable explanation is that the three-dimensional structure of the shock front,
itself is the obscuring body. Depending on the geometry, the dusty shock front
near the conjunction phase of the binary can completely obscure the inner
WR-star wind and the OB star, which can explain the amplitude of optical fading
and the past observation of remarkable spectral variation.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in PASJ (Letters), using an alternative
style fil
Deep Transient Optical Fading in the WC9 Star WR 106
We discovered that the WR9-type star WR 106 (HDE 313643) underwent a deep
episodic fading in 2000. The depth of the fading (dV ~ 2.9 mag) surpassed those
of all known similar "eclipse-like" fadings in WR stars. This fading episode
was likely to be produced by a line-of-sight episodic dust formation rather
than a periodic enhancement of dust production in the WR-star wind during the
passage of the companion star though an elliptical orbit. The overall 2000
episode was composed of at least two distinct fadings. These individual fadings
seem to more support that the initial dust formation triggered a second dust
formation, or that the two independent dust formations occurred by the same
triggering mechanism rather than a stepwise dust formation. We also discuss on
phenomenological similarity of the present fading with the double fading of R
CrB observed in 1999-2000.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Astron. Astrophys. (Letters
Single carbon nanotubes as ultrasmall all-optical memories
Performance improvements are expected from integration of photonic devices
into information processing systems, and in particular, all-optical memories
provide a key functionality. Scaling down the size of memory elements is
desirable for high-density integration, and the use of nanomaterials would
allow for devices that are significantly smaller than the operation
wavelengths. Here we report on all-optical memory based on individual carbon
nanotubes, where adsorbed molecules give rise to optical bistability. By
exciting at the high-energy tail of the excitonic absorption resonance,
nanotubes can be switched between the desorbed state and the adsorbed state. We
demonstrate reversible and reproducible operation of the nanotube optical
memory, and determine the rewriting speed by measuring the molecular adsorption
and desorption times. Our results underscore the impact of molecular-scale
effects on optical properties of nanomaterials, offering new design strategies
for photonic devices that are a few orders of magnitude smaller than the
optical diffraction limit.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Soft-decision Viterbi decoding with diversity combining
Diversity combining methods for convolutional coded and soft-decision Viterbi decoded channels in mobile satellite communications systems are evaluated and it is clarified that the pre-Viterbi-decoding maximal ratio combining shows better performance than other methods in Rician fading channels by computer simulation. A novel practical technique for maximal ratio combining is proposed, in which the coefficients for weighting are derived from soft-decision demodulated signals only. The proposed diversity combining method with soft-decision Viterbi decoding requires simple hardware and shows satisfactory performance with slight degradation of 0.3 dB in Rician fading channels compared with an ideal weighting scheme. Furthermore, this diversity method is applied to trellis coded modulation and significant Pe performance improvement is achieved
Ramification theory for varieties over a local field
We define generalizations of classical invariants of wild ramification for
coverings on a variety of arbitrary dimension over a local field. For an l-adic
sheaf, we define its Swan class as a 0-cycle class supported on the wild
ramification locus. We prove a formula of Riemann-Roch type for the Swan
conductor of cohomology together with its relative version, assuming that the
local field is of mixed characteristic.
We also prove the integrality of the Swan class for curves over a local field
as a generalization of the Hasse-Arf theorem. We derive a proof of a conjecture
of Serre on the Artin character for a group action with an isolated fixed point
on a regular local ring, assuming the dimension is 2.Comment: 159 pages, some corrections are mad
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