Role of interactions in ferrofluid thermal ratchets

Orientational fluctuations of colloidal particles with magnetic moments may be rectified with the help of external magnetic fields with suitably chosen time dependence. As a result a noise-driven rotation of particles occurs giving rise to a macroscopic torque per volume of the carrier liquid. We investigate the influence of mutual interactions between the particles on this ratchet effect by studying a model system with mean-field interactions. The stochastic dynamics may be described by a nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation for the collective orientation of the particles which we solve approximately by using the effective field method. We determine an interval for the ratio between coupling strength and noise intensity for which a self-sustained rectification of fluctuations becomes possible. The ratchet effect then operates under conditions for which it were impossible in the absence of interactions.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Detection of Pulsed X-ray Emission from XMM-Newton Observations of PSR J0538+2817

We report on the XMM-Newton observations of the 143 ms pulsar PSR J0538+2817. We present evidence for the first detections of pulsed X-rays from the source at a frequency which is consistent with the predicted radio frequency. The pulse profile is broad and asymmetric, with a pulse fraction of 18 +/- 3%. We find that the spectrum of the source is well-fit with a blackbody with T^{infty} = (2.12^{+0.04}_{-0.03}) x 10^6 K and N_{H} = 2.5 x 10^21 cm^{-2}. The radius determined from the model fit of 1.68 +/- 0.05 km suggests that the emission is from a heated polar cap. A fit to the spectrum with an atmospheric model reduces the inferred temperature and hence increases the radius of the emitting region, however the pulsar distance determined from the fit is then smaller than the dispersion distance.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ. Error in radius calculation corrected, discussion and conclusions remain unchange

Quantum Gravity Corrections for Schwarzschild Black Holes

We consider the Matrix theory proposal describing eleven-dimensional Schwarzschild black holes. We argue that the Newtonian potential between two black holes receives a genuine long range quantum gravity correction, which is finite and can be computed from the supergravity point of view. The result agrees with Matrix theory up to a numerical factor which we have not computed.Comment: 14 pages, Tex, no figure

Cumulant approach to weakly doped antiferromagnets

We present a new approach to static and dynamical properties of holes and spins in weakly doped antiferromagnets in two dimensions. The calculations are based on a recently introduced cumulant approach to ground--state properties of correlated electronic systems. The present method allows to evaluate hole and spin--wave dispersion relations by considering hole or spin excitations of the ground state. Usually, these dispersions are found from time--dependent correlation functions. To demonstrate the ability of the approach we first derive the dispersion relation for the lowest single hole excitation at half--filling. However, the main purpose of this paper is to focus on the mutual influence of mobile holes and spin waves in the weakly doped system. It is shown that low-energy spin excitations strongly admix to the ground--state. The coupling of spin waves and holes leads to a strong suppression of the staggered magnetization which can not be explained by a simple rigid--band picture for the hole quasiparticles. Also the experimentally observed doping dependence of the spin--wave excitation energies can be understood within our formalism.Comment: REVTEX, 25 pages, 7 figures (EPS), to be published in Phys. Rev.

Spectral properties, generation order parameters and luminosities for spin-powered X-ray pulsars

We show the spectral properties of 15 spin-powered X-ray pulsars, and the correlation between the average power-law photon index and spin-down rate. Generation order parameters (GOPs) based on polar-cap models are introduced to characterize the X-ray pulsars. We calculate three definitions of generation order parameters due to the different effects of magnetic and electric fields on photon absorption during cascade processes, and study the relations between the GOPs and spectral properties of X-ray pulsars. There exists a possible correlation between the photon index and GOP in our pulsar sample. Furthermore, we present a method due to the concept of GOPs to estimate the non-thermal X-ray luminosity for spin-powered pulsars. Then X-ray luminosity is calculated in the context of our polar-cap accelerator model which is well consistent with the most observed X-ray pulsar data. The ratio between X-ray luminosity estimated by our method and the pulsar's spin-down power is well consistent with the $L_{\rm X}\sim 10^{-3}L_{\rm sd}$ feature.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, revised version for the publication in Ap

Some comments about Schwarzschield black holes in Matrix theory

In the present paper we calculate the statistical partition function for any number of extended objects in Matrix theory in the one loop approximation. As an application, we calculate the statistical properties of K clusters of D0 branes and then the statistical properties of K membranes which are wound on a torus.Comment: 15 page

ASCA Detection of Pulsed X-ray Emission from PSR J0631+1036

ASCA's long look at the 288 millisecond radio pulsar, PSR J0631+1036, reveals coherent X-ray pulsation from this source for the first time. The source was first detected in the serendipitous Einstein observation and later identified as a radio pulsar. Possible pulsation in the gamma-ray band has been detected from the CGRO EGRET data (Zepka, et al. 1996). The X-ray spectrum in the ASCA band is characterized by a hard power-law type emission with a photon index of about 2.3, when fitted with a single power-law function modified with absorption. An additional blackbody component of about 0.14 keV increases the quality of the spectral fit. The observed X-ray flux is 2.1e-13 ergs/s/cm2 in the 1-10 keV band. We find that many characteristics of PSR J0631+1036 are similar to those of middle-aged gamma-ray pulsars such as PSR B1055-52, PSR B0633+17 (Geminga), and PSR B0656+14.Comment: To appear in ApJ Letter