73 research outputs found
Trends in Elasticity and Electronic Structure of Transition-Metal Nitrides and Carbides from First Principles
The elastic properties of the -structured transition-metal nitrides and
their carbide counterparts are studied using the {\it ab initio\} density
functional perturbation theory. The linear response results of elastic
constants are in excellent agreement with those obtained from numerical
derivative methods, and are also consistent with measured data. We find the
following trends: (1) Bulk moduli and tetragonal shear moduli
, increase and lattice constants decrease
rightward or downward on the Periodic Table for the metal component or if C is
replaced by N; (2) The inequality holds for
; (3) depends strongly on the number of valence electrons per
unit cell (). From the fitted curve of as a function of , we
can predict that MoN is unstable in structure, and transition-metal
carbonitrides ( ZrCN) and di-transition-metal carbides
( HfTaC) have maximum at .Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PRL. 2 typos in ref. 15 were
correcte
The Puzzle of the Flyby Anomaly
Close planetary flybys are frequently employed as a technique to place
spacecraft on extreme solar system trajectories that would otherwise require
much larger booster vehicles or may not even be feasible when relying solely on
chemical propulsion. The theoretical description of the flybys, referred to as
gravity assists, is well established. However, there seems to be a lack of
understanding of the physical processes occurring during these dynamical
events. Radio-metric tracking data received from a number of spacecraft that
experienced an Earth gravity assist indicate the presence of an unexpected
energy change that happened during the flyby and cannot be explained by the
standard methods of modern astrodynamics. This puzzling behavior of several
spacecraft has become known as the flyby anomaly. We present the summary of the
recent anomalous observations and discuss possible ways to resolve this puzzle.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication by Space Science Review
Accelerating relativistic reference frames in Minkowski space-time
We study accelerating relativistic reference frames in Minkowski space-time
under the harmonic gauge. It is well-known that the harmonic gauge imposes
constraints on the components of the metric tensor and also on the functional
form of admissible coordinate transformations. These two sets of constraints
are equivalent and represent the dual nature of the harmonic gauge. We explore
this duality and show that the harmonic gauge allows presenting an accelerated
metric in an elegant form that depends only on two harmonic potentials. It also
allows reconstruction of the spatial structure of the post-Galilean coordinate
transformation functions relating inertial and accelerating frames. The
remaining temporal dependence of these functions together with corresponding
equations of motion are determined from dynamical conditions, obtained by
constructing the relativistic proper reference frame of an accelerated test
particle. In this frame, the effect of external forces acting on the observer
is balanced by the fictitious frame-reaction force that is needed to keep the
test particle at rest with respect to the frame, conserving its relativistic
linear momentum. We find that this approach is sufficient to determine all the
terms of the coordinate transformation. The same method is then used to develop
the inverse transformations. The resulting post-Galilean coordinate
transformations extend the Poincar\'e group on the case of accelerating
observers. We present and discuss the resulting coordinate transformations,
relativistic equations of motion, and the structure of the metric tensors
corresponding to the relativistic reference frames involved.Comment: revtex4, 21 page
Independent analysis of the orbits of Pioneer 10 and 11
Independently developed orbit determination software is used to analyze the
orbits of Pioneer 10 and 11 using Doppler data. The analysis takes into account
the gravitational fields of the Sun and planets using the latest JPL
ephemerides, accurate station locations, signal propagation delays (e.g., the
Shapiro delay, atmospheric effects), the spacecrafts' spin, and maneuvers. New
to this analysis is the ability to utilize telemetry data for spin, maneuvers,
and other on-board systematic effects. Using data that was analyzed in prior
JPL studies, the anomalous acceleration of the two spacecraft is confirmed. We
are also able to put limits on any secondary acceleration (i.e., jerk) terms.
The tools that were developed will be used in the upcoming analysis of recently
recovered Pioneer 10 and 11 Doppler data files.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in IJMP
Methods for identifying high-redshift galaxy cluster candidates
Recent theories linked long gamma ray bursts (GRBs) to galaxies with rapid star formation or starburst; thus, we expect that long GRBs (LGRBs) are more frequent in midcluster galaxies where mergers and tidal interactions between gas-rich galaxies are more likely to occur. Yet there is no galaxy cluster known to be associated with LGRBs. We demonstrate that, based on deep, single-band Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam observations, we may provide constraints on photometric redshifts of groups of galaxies. We compare three methods: cosmological approach, pseudoinverse matrix, and random forests to estimate galaxy and quasar redshifts. Comparing our results to spectroscopic redshifts of Sloan Digital Sky Survey's-detected extragalactic sources, random forests may provide the highest accuracy with as low as 17 percentage error. This is a powerful method to find clusters to place GRB host galaxies in their local environment
The Study of the Pioneer Anomaly: New Data and Objectives for New Investigation
Radiometric tracking data from Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft has consistently
indicated the presence of a small, anomalous, Doppler frequency drift,
uniformly changing with a rate of ~6 x 10^{-9} Hz/s; the drift can be
interpreted as a constant sunward acceleration of each particular spacecraft of
a_P = (8.74 \pm 1.33) x 10^{-10} m/s^2. This signal is known as the Pioneer
anomaly; the nature of this anomaly remains unexplained. We discuss the efforts
to retrieve the entire data sets of the Pioneer 10/11 radiometric Doppler data.
We also report on the recently recovered telemetry files that may be used to
reconstruct the engineering history of both spacecraft using original project
documentation and newly developed software tools. We discuss possible ways to
further investigate the discovered effect using these telemetry files in
conjunction with the analysis of the much extended Doppler data. We present the
main objectives of new upcoming study of the Pioneer anomaly, namely i)
analysis of the early data that could yield the direction of the anomaly, ii)
analysis of planetary encounters, that should tell more about the onset of the
anomaly, iii) analysis of the entire dataset, to better determine the anomaly's
temporal behavior, iv) comparative analysis of individual anomalous
accelerations for the two Pioneers, v) the detailed study of on-board
systematics, and vi) development of a thermal-electric-dynamical model using
on-board telemetry. The outlined strategy may allow for a higher accuracy
solution for a_P and, possibly, will lead to an unambiguous determination of
the origin of the Pioneer anomaly.Comment: 43 pages, 40 figures, 3 tables, minor changes before publicatio
Galactic foreground of gamma-ray bursts from AKARI Far-Infrared Surveyor
We demonstrate the use of the AKARI FIS All-Sky Survey maps in the study of extragalactic objects. A quick but reliable estimate of the Galactic foreground is essential for extragalactic research in general. We explored the galactic foreground and calculated hydrogen column densities using AKARI FIS and other recent all-sky survey data, and compared our results to former estimates. Our AKARI-FIS-based foreground values were then used toward gamma-ray burst (GRB) sources as input for X-ray afterglow spectrum fitting. From those fits the intrinsic column densities at the GRB sources were derived. The high-angular-resolution AKARI-FIS-based Galactic foreground hydrogen column densities are statistically very similar, but for most of the tested directions somewhat lower than previous estimates based on low-resolution data. This is due to the low filling factor of high-density enhancements in all galactic latitudes. Accordingly, our AKARI-FIS-based new intrinsic hydrogen column densities are usually higher or similar compared to the values calculated based, e.g., on the low-resolution Leiden/Argentine/Bonn survey data and listed in the Leicester database. The variation, however, is typically smaller than the error of the estimate from the fits of the X-ray afterglow spectra. There are a number of directions where the improvement of the foreground estimates resulted in an overestimate of magnitude or higher increment of the derived intrinsic hydrogen column densities. We concluded that most of the GRBs with formerly extremely low intrinsic hydrogen column densities are in fact normal, but we confirmed that GRB050233 is indeed a non- enveloped long GRB
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