1,589 research outputs found
Strong CP Violation in External Magnetic Fields
We study the response of the QCD vacuum to an external magnetic field, in the
presence of strong CP violation. Using chiral perturbation theory and large N_c
expansion, we show that the external field would polarize quantum fluctuations
and induce an electric dipole moment of the vacuum, along the direction of the
magnetic field. We estimate the magnitude of this effect in different physical
scenarios. In particular, we find that the polarization induced by the magnetic
field of a magnetar could accelerate electric charges up to energies of the
order \theta 10^3 TeV. We also suggest a connection with the possible existence
of "hot-spots" on the surface of neutron stars.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. Major revision. Phenomenological analysis extende
Monetary policy as a source of uncertainty
This paper proposes a model in which control variations induce an increase in the uncertainty of the system. The aim of our paper is to provide a stochastic theoretical model that can be used to explain under which uncertainty conditions monetary policy rules should be less or more aggressive, or, simply, applied or not.
Heap Reference Analysis Using Access Graphs
Despite significant progress in the theory and practice of program analysis,
analysing properties of heap data has not reached the same level of maturity as
the analysis of static and stack data. The spatial and temporal structure of
stack and static data is well understood while that of heap data seems
arbitrary and is unbounded. We devise bounded representations which summarize
properties of the heap data. This summarization is based on the structure of
the program which manipulates the heap. The resulting summary representations
are certain kinds of graphs called access graphs. The boundedness of these
representations and the monotonicity of the operations to manipulate them make
it possible to compute them through data flow analysis.
An important application which benefits from heap reference analysis is
garbage collection, where currently liveness is conservatively approximated by
reachability from program variables. As a consequence, current garbage
collectors leave a lot of garbage uncollected, a fact which has been confirmed
by several empirical studies. We propose the first ever end-to-end static
analysis to distinguish live objects from reachable objects. We use this
information to make dead objects unreachable by modifying the program. This
application is interesting because it requires discovering data flow
information representing complex semantics. In particular, we discover four
properties of heap data: liveness, aliasing, availability, and anticipability.
Together, they cover all combinations of directions of analysis (i.e. forward
and backward) and confluence of information (i.e. union and intersection). Our
analysis can also be used for plugging memory leaks in C/C++ languages.Comment: Accepted for printing by ACM TOPLAS. This version incorporates
referees' comment
The enormous outer Galaxy HII region CTB 102
We present new radio recombination line observations of the previously
unstudied HII region CTB 102. Line parameters are extracted and physical
parameters describing the gas are calculated. We estimate the distance to CTB
102 to be 4.3 kpc. Through comparisons with HI and 1.42 GHz radio continuum
data, we estimate the size of CTB 102 to be 100-130 pc, making it one of the
largest HII regions known, comparable to the W4 complex. A stellar wind blown
bubble model is presented as the best explanation for the observed morphology,
size and velocities.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication by The Astrophysical
Journa
Fronts and interfaces in bistable extended mappings
We study the interfaces' time evolution in one-dimensional bistable extended
dynamical systems with discrete time. The dynamics is governed by the
competition between a local piece-wise affine bistable mapping and any
couplings given by the convolution with a function of bounded variation. We
prove the existence of travelling wave interfaces, namely fronts, and the
uniqueness of the corresponding selected velocity and shape. This selected
velocity is shown to be the propagating velocity for any interface, to depend
continuously on the couplings and to increase with the symmetry parameter of
the local nonlinearity. We apply the results to several examples including
discrete and continuous couplings, and the planar fronts' dynamics in
multi-dimensional Coupled Map Lattices. We eventually emphasize on the
extension to other kinds of fronts and to a more general class of bistable
extended mappings for which the couplings are allowed to be nonlinear and the
local map to be smooth.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Nonlinearit
Challenges for creating magnetic fields by cosmic defects
We analyse the possibility that topological defects can act as a source of
magnetic fields through the Harrison mechanism in the radiation era. We give a
detailed relativistic derivation of the Harrison mechanism at first order in
cosmological perturbations, and show that it is only efficient for temperatures
above T ~ 0.2 keV. Our main result is that the vector metric perturbations
generated by the defects cannot induce vorticity in the matter fluids at linear
order, thereby excluding the production of currents and magnetic fields. We
show that anisotropic stress in the matter fluids is required to source
vorticity and magnetic fields. Our analysis is relevant for any mechanism
whereby vorticity is meant to be transferred purely by gravitational
interactions, and thus would also apply to dark matter or neutrinos.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; minor corrections and additions; accepted for
publication in Physical Review
Temperature dependence of polarization relaxation in semiconductor quantum dots
The decay time of the linear polarization degree of the luminescence in
strongly confined semiconductor quantum dots with asymmetrical shape is
calculated in the frame of second-order quasielastic interaction between
quantum dot charge carriers and LO phonons. The phonon bottleneck does not
prevent significantly the relaxation processes and the calculated decay times
can be of the order of a few tens picoseconds at temperature K,
consistent with recent experiments by Paillard et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett.
{\bf86}, 1634 (2001)].Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Nonequilibrium Electron Interactions in Metal Films
Ultrafast relaxation dynamics of an athermal electron distribution is
investigated in silver films using a femtosecond pump-probe technique with 18
fs pulses in off-resonant conditions. The results yield evidence for an
increase with time of the electron-gas energy loss rate to the lattice and of
the free electron damping during the early stages of the electron-gas
thermalization. These effects are attributed to transient alterations of the
electron average scattering processes due to the athermal nature of the
electron gas, in agreement with numerical simulations
Effect of Primordial Magnetic Field on Seeds for Large Scale Structure
Magnetic field plays a very important role in many astronomical phenomena at
various scales of the universe. It is no exception in the early universe.
Since the energy density, pressure, and tension of the primordial magnetic
field affect gravitational collapses of plasma, the formation of seeds for
large scale structures should be influenced by them. Here we numerically
investigate the effects of stochastic primordial magnetic field on the seeds of
large scale structures in the universe in detail. We found that the amplitude
ratio between the density spectra with and without PMF ( at
Mpc) lies between 75% and 130% at present for the range of PMF
strengths 0.5 nG nG, depending on the spectral index of PMF
and the correlation between the matter density and the PMF distributions.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRD 23 Jan 2006, Revised 02 Oct
2006, accepted for publication in PR
- …