The semileptonic form factors of B and D mesons in the Quark Confinement Model

The form factors of the weak currents, which appear in the semileptonic decays of the heavy pseudoscalar mesons, are calculated within the quark confinement model by taking into account, for the first time, the structure of heavy meson vertex and the finite quark mass contribution in the heavy quark propagators. The results are in quite good agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 12 pages LaTeX (elsart.sty) + 3 figure

Approximate Trajectories for Thermal Protection System Flight Tests Mission Design

A mission profile for advanced thermal protection system suborbital flight testing is identified. Its main goal is to achieve a constant heat flux at a specific area of the vehicle for a limited amount of time. A tool capable of exploring broad regions of the design space for these missions is developed, aiming at reducing possible design options to an extent manageable by conventional, more accurate, numeric-simulation-based methods. Based on a simplified model of the point mass dynamics, trajectories optimal for thermal protection system testing and compliant with prefixed path constraints are identified. The approximate method is validated comparing the obtained optimal trajectories with numeric-optimized standard solutions on three test cases. Then, to demonstrate the method effectiveness and flexibility, the mission design space is investigated for reasonable ranges of relevant parameters. Results show that increasing the vehicle's ballistic coefficient allows reducing the specific mechanical energy at reentry, and that the maximum admissible dynamic pressure plays a principal role in affecting the attainable testing performances. An illustrative mission design for novel ceramic thermal protection system testing is presented that minimizes in the analyzed design space the specific mechanical energy at the trajectory apoge

Validation on flight data of a closed-loop approach for GPS-based relative navigation of LEO satellites

This paper describes a carrier-phase differential GPS approach for real-time relative navigation of LEO satellites flying in formation with large separations. These applications are characterized indeed by a highly varying number of GPS satellites in common view and large ionospheric differential errors, which significantly impact relative navigation performance and robustness. To achieve high relative positioning accuracy a navigation algorithm is proposed which processes double-difference code and carrier measurements on two frequencies, to fully exploit the integer nature of the related ambiguities. Specifically, a closed-loop scheme is proposed in which fixed estimates of the baseline and integer ambiguities produced by means of a partial integer fixing step are fed back to an Extended Kalman Filter for improving the float estimate at successive time instants. The approach also benefits from the inclusion in the filter state of the differential ionospheric delay in terms of the Vertical Total Electron Content of each satellite. The navigation algorithm performance is tested on actual flight data from GRACE mission. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in managing integer unknowns in conjunction with Extended Kalman Filtering, and that centimeter-level accuracy can be achieved in real-time also with large separations. (c) 2013 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Novel closed-loop approaches for precise relative navigation of widely separated GPS receivers in LEO

This paper deals with the relative navigation of a formation of two spacecrafts separated by hundreds of kilometers based on processing dual-frequency differential carrier-phase GPS measurements. Specific requirements of the considered application are high relative positioning accuracy and real-time on board implementation. These can be conflicting requirements. Indeed, if on one hand high accuracy can be achieved by exploiting the integer nature of double-difference carrier-phase ambiguities, on the other hand the presence of large ephemeris errors and differential ionospheric delays makes the integer ambiguities determination challenging. Closed-loop schemes, which update the relative position estimates of a dynamic filter with feedback from integer ambiguities fixing algorithms, are customarily employed in these cases. This paper further elaborates such approaches, proposing novel closed loop techniques aimed at overcoming some of the limitations of traditional algorithms. They extend techniques developed for spaceborne long baseline relative positioning by making use of an on-the-fly ambiguity resolution technique especially developed for the applications of interest. Such techniques blend together ionospheric delay compensation techniques, nonlinear models of relative spacecraft dynamics, and partial integer validation techniques. The approaches are validated using flight data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. Performance is compared to that of the traditional closed-loop scheme analyzing the capability of each scheme to maximize the percentage of correctly fixed integer ambiguities as well as the relative positioning accuracy. Results show that the proposed approach substantially improves performance of the traditional approaches. More specifically, centimeter-level root-mean square relative positioning is feasible for spacecraft separations of more than 260 km, and an integer ambiguity fixing performance as high as 98% is achieved in a 1-day long dataset. Results also show that approaches exploiting ionospheric delay models are more robust and precise of approaches relying on ionospheric-delay removal techniques. © 2013 IAA

Ionospheric path delay models for spaceborne GPS receivers flying in formation with large baselines

GPS relative navigation filters could benefit notably from an accurate modeling of the ionospheric delays, especially over large baselines (>100 km) where double difference delays can be higher than several carrier wavelengths. This paper analyzes the capability of ionospheric path delay models proposed for spaceborne GPS receivers in predicting both zero-difference and double difference ionospheric delays. We specifically refer to relatively simple ionospheric models, which are suitable for real-time filtering schemes. Specifically, two ionospheric delay models are evaluated, one assuming an isotropic electron density and the other considering the effect on the electron density of the Sun aspect angle. The prediction capability of these models is investigated by comparing predicted ionospheric delays with measured ones on real flight data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, in which two satellites fly separated of more than 200 km. Results demonstrate that both models exhibit a correlation in the excess of 80% between predicted and measured double-difference ionospheric delays. Despite its higher simplicity, the isotropic model performs better than the model including the Sun effect, being able to predict double differenced delays with accuracy smaller than the carrier wavelength in most cases. The model is thus fit for supporting integer ambiguity fixing in real-time filters for relative navigation over large baselines. Concerning zero-difference ionospheric delays, results demonstrate that delays predicted by the isotropic model are highly correlated (around 90%) with those estimated using GPS measurements. However, the difference between predicted and measured delays has a root mean square error in the excess of 30 cm. Thus, the zero-difference ionospheric delays model is not likely to be an alternative to methods exploiting carrier-phase observables for cancelling out the ionosphere contribution in single-frequency absolute navigation filters

Simultaneous bistability of qubit and resonator in circuit quantum electrodynamics

We explore the joint activated dynamics exhibited by two quantum degrees of freedom: a cavity mode oscillator which is strongly coupled to a superconducting qubit in the strongly coherently driven dispersive regime. Dynamical simulations and complementary measurements show a range of parameters where both the cavity and the qubit exhibit sudden simultaneous switching between two metastable states. This manifests in ensemble averaged amplitudes of both the cavity and qubit exhibiting a partial coherent cancellation. Transmission measurements of driven microwave cavities coupled to transmon qubits show detailed features which agree with the theory in the regime of simultaneous switching

Robustness Analysis for Terminal Phases of Re-entry Flight

Advancements in the current practices used in robustness analysis for FCS design refinement by introducing a method that takes into account nonlinear effects of multiple uncertainties over the whole trajectory, to be used before robustness is finally assessed with MC analysis has been reported. Current practice in FCS robustness analysis for this kind of application mainly relies on the theory of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. The method delivers feedback on the causes of requirement violation and adopts robustness criteria directly linked to the original mission or system requirements, such as those employed in MC analyses. The nonlinear robustness criterion proposed in the present work is based on the practical stability and/or finite time stability concepts. The practical stability property improves the accuracy in robustness evaluation with respect to frozen-time approaches, thus reducing the risk of discovering additional effects during robustness verification with Monte Carlo techniques

Repetitive low-frequency stimulation reduces epileptiform synchronization in limbic neuronal networks.

Deep-brain electrical or transcranial magnetic stimulation may represent a therapeutic tool for controlling seizures in patients presenting with epileptic disorders resistant to antiepileptic drugs. In keeping with this clinical evidence, we have reported that repetitive electrical stimuli delivered at approximately 1 Hz in mouse hippocampus-entorhinal cortex (EC) slices depress the EC ability to generate ictal activity induced by the application of 4-aminopyridine (4AP) or Mg2+-free medium (Barbarosie, M., Avoli, M., 1997. CA3-driven hippocampal–entorhinal loop controls rather than sustains in vitro limbic seizures. J. Neurosci. 17, 9308–9314.). Here, we confirmed a similar control mechanism in rat brain slices analyzed with field potential recordings during 4AP (50 μM) treatment. In addition, we used intrinsic optical signal (IOS) recordings to quantify the intensity and spatial characteristics of this inhibitory influence. IOSs reflect the changes in light transmittance throughout the entire extent of the slice, and are thus reliable markers of limbic network epileptiform synchronization. First, we found that in the presence of 4AP, the IOS increases, induced by a train of electrical stimuli (10 Hz for 1 s) or by recurrent, single-shock stimulation delivered at 0.05 Hz in the deep EC layers, are reduced in intensity and area size by low-frequency (1 Hz), repetitive stimulation of the subiculum; these effects were observed in all limbic areas contained in the slice. Second, by testing the effects induced by repetitive subicular stimulation at 0.2–10 Hz, we identified maximal efficacy when repetitive stimuli are delivered at 1 Hz. Finally, we discovered that similar, but slightly less pronounced, inhibitory effects occur when repetitive stimuli at 1 Hz are delivered in the EC, suggesting that the reduction of IOSs seen during repetitive stimulation is pathway dependent as well as activity dependent. Thus, the activation of limbic networks at low frequency reduces the intensity and spatial extent of the IOS changes that accompany ictal synchronization in an in vitro slice preparation. This conclusion supports the view that repetitive stimulation may represent a potential therapeutic tool for controlling seizures in patients with pharmacoresistant epileptic disorders

Innovative airplane ground handling system for green operations

The aim of this work is to develop a new concept of taxiing, in order to reduce the pollution in terms of noise and gas emission and to introduce a higher level of safety during ground operations. In the area close to the airport gates, the airplane ground handlings are currently performed through the airplane engines, which have the task of providing the trust necessary to move the airplane to the runway. Pollutant emissions and the noise level near the gates, however, could be drastically reduced by introducing an innovative autonomous tractor called CHAT (Clean Hydrogen Autonomous Tractor), developed from the standard pushback tractor. The ground operations could be basically modified by extending the time in which the airplane engines are idle and the airplane is towed by the tractors powered by renewable energy