628 research outputs found
Relative drifts and temperature anisotropies of protons and particles in the expanding solar wind -- 2.5D hybrid simulations
We perform 2.5D hybrid simulations to investigate the origin and evolution of
relative drift speeds between protons and particles in the
collisionless turbulent low- solar wind plasma. We study the generation
of differential streaming by wave-particle interactions and absorption of
turbulent wave spectra. Next we focus on the role of the relative drifts for
the turbulent heating and acceleration of ions in the collisionless fast solar
wind streams. The energy source is given by an initial broad-band spectrum of
parallel propagating Alfv\'en-cyclotron waves, which co-exists with the plasma
and is self-consistently coupled to the perpendicular ion bulk velocities. We
include the effect of a gradual solar wind expansion, which cools and
decelerates the minor ions. This paper for the first time considers the
combined effect of self-consistently initialized dispersive turbulent
Alfv\'enic spectra with differentially streaming protons and particles
in the expanding solar wind outflows within a 2.5D hybrid simulation study. In
the non-expanding wind, we find a threshold value of the differential streaming
, for which the relative drift speed remains
nearly steady. For ions, streaming below the threshold value, the waves act to
increase the magnitude of the relative drift speed. Ions, which stream faster
than the threshold value become subject to nonlinear streaming instability and
as the system evolves their bulk velocities decrease. We find that the solar
wind expansion strongly affects the relative drift speeds and significantly
slows down both ion species for all values of the relative drift speeds
considered in this study.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, submitted to A&
Semi-transparent Boundary Conditions in the Worldline Formalism
The interaction of a quantum field with a background containing a Dirac delta
function with support on a surface of codimension 1 represents a particular
kind of matching conditions on that surface for the field. In this article we
show that the worldline formalism can be applied to this model. We obtain the
asymptotic expansion of the heat-kernel corresponding to a scalar field on
in the presence of an arbitrary regular potential and
subject to this kind of matching conditions on a flat surface. We also consider
two such surfaces and compute their Casimir attraction due to the vacuum
fluctuations of a massive scalar field weakly coupled to the corresponding
Dirac deltas.Comment: 12 page
Boundaries in the Moyal plane
We study the oscillations of a scalar field on a noncommutative disc
implementing the boundary as the limit case of an interaction with an
appropriately chosen confining background. The space of quantum fluctuations of
the field is finite dimensional and displays the rotational and parity symmetry
of the disc. We perform a numerical evaluation of the (finite) Casimir energy
and obtain similar results as for the fuzzy sphere and torus.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. Replaced by published versio
The pygmy dipole strength, the neutron radius of Pb and the symmetry energy
The accurate characterization of the nuclear symmetry energy and its density
dependence is one of the outstanding open problems in nuclear physics. A
promising nuclear observable in order to constrain the density dependence of
the symmetry energy at saturation is the neutron skin thickness of medium and
heavy nuclei. Recently, a low-energy peak in the isovector dipole response of
neutron-rich nuclei has been discovered that may be correlated with the neutron
skin thickness. The existence of this correlation is currently under debate due
to our limited experimental knowledge on the microscopic structure of such a
peak. We present a detailed analysis of Skyrme Hartree-Fock (HF) plus random
phase approximation (RPA) predictions for the dipole response in several
neutron-rich nuclei and try to elucidate whether models of common use in
nuclear physics confirm or dismiss its possible connection with the neutron
skin thickness. Finally, we briefly present theoretical results for parity
violating electron scattering on Pb at the conditions of the PREx
experiment and discuss the implications for the neutron skin thickness of
Pb and the slope of the symmetry energy.Comment: Contribution to the 2nd Iberian Nuclear Astrophysics Meeting on
Compact Stars proceeding
Proteins influencing foam formation in wine and beer: the role of yeast
This review focuses on the role of proteins in the production and maintenance of foam in both sparkling winesand beer. The quality of the foam in beer but especially in sparkling wines depends, among other factors, on the presence ofmannoproteins released from the yeast cell walls during autolysis. These proteins are hydrophobic, highly glycosylated, andtheir molecular masses range from 10 to 200 kDa- characteristics that allow mannoproteins to surround and thus stabilizethe gas bubbles of the foam. Both the production and stabilization of foam also depend on other proteins. In wine, theseinclude grape-derived proteins such as vacuolar invertase; in beer, barley-derived proteins, such as LTP1, protein Z, andhordein-derived polypeptides, are even more important in this respect than mannoproteins
Nuclear Pairing: Surface or Bulk ?
We analyse how the spatial localisation properties of pairing correlations
are changing in a major neutron shell of heavy nuclei. It is shown that the
radial distribution of the pairing density depends strongly on whether the
chemical potential is close to a low or a high angular momentum level and has
very little sensitivity to whether the pairing force acts in the surface or in
the bulk. The averaged pairing density over one major shell is however rather
flat, practically independent of the pairing force. Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov
calculations for the isotopic chain Sn are presented for
demonstration purposes.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
Generic Finite Size Enhancement of Pairing in Mesoscopic Fermi Systems
The finite size dependent enhancement of pairing in mesoscopic Fermi systems
is studied under the assumption that the BCS approach is valid and that the two
body force is size independent. Different systems are investigated such as
superconducting metallic grains and films as well atomic nuclei. It is shown
that the finite size enhancement of pairing in these systems is in part due to
the presence of a surface which accounts quite well for the data of nuclei and
explains a good fraction of the enhancement in Al grains.Comment: Updated version 17/02/0
A new disruption vector (pDHO) to obtain heterothallic strains from both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces pastorianus
Yeasts are responsible for several traits in fermented beverages, including wine and beer, and their genetic manipulation is often necessary to improve the quality of the fermentation product. Improvement of wild-type strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces pastorianus is difficult due to their homothallic character and variable ploidy level. Homothallism is determined by the HO gene in S. cerevisiae and the Sc-HO gene in S. pastorianus. In this work, we describe the construction of an HO disruption vector (pDHO) containing an HO disruption cassette and discuss its use in generating heterothallic yeast strains from homothallic Saccharomyces species
- …