2,616 research outputs found
Radiative charge transfer lifetime of the excited state of (NaCa)
New experiments were proposed recently to investigate the regime of cold
atomic and molecular ion-atom collision processes in a special hybrid
neutral-atom--ion trap under high vacuum conditions. The collisional cooling of
laser pre-cooled Ca ions by ultracold Na atoms is being studied. Modeling
this process requires knowledge of the radiative lifetime of the excited
singlet A state of the (NaCa) molecular system. We calculate
the rate coefficient for radiative charge transfer using a semiclassical
approach. The dipole radial matrix elements between the ground and the excited
states, and the potential curves were calculated using Complete Active Space
Self-Consistent field and M\"oller-Plesset second order perturbation theory
(CASSCF/MP2) with an extended Gaussian basis, 6-311+G(3df). The semiclassical
charge transfer rate coefficient was averaged over a thermal Maxwellian
distribution. In addition we also present elastic collision cross sections and
the spin-exchange cross section. The rate coefficient for charge transfer was
found to be cm/sec, while those for the elastic and
spin-exchange cross sections were found to be several orders of magnitude
higher ( cm/sec and cm/sec,
respectively). This confirms our assumption that the milli-Kelvin regime of
collisional cooling of calcium ions by sodium atoms is favorable with the
respect to low loss of calcium ions due to the charge transfer.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; v.2 - conceptual change
Validating Semi-Analytic Models of High-Redshift Galaxy Formation using Radiation Hydrodynamical Simulations
We use a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation calculated with Enzo and the
semi-analytic galaxy formation model (SAM) GAMMA to address the chemical
evolution of dwarf galaxies in the early universe. The long-term goal of the
project is to better understand the origin of metal-poor stars and the
formation of dwarf galaxies and the Milky Way halo by cross-validating these
theoretical approaches. We combine GAMMA with the merger tree of the most
massive galaxy found in the hydrodynamic simulation and compare the star
formation rate, the metallicity distribution function (MDF), and the
age-metallicity relationship predicted by the two approaches. We found that the
SAM can reproduce the global trends of the hydrodynamic simulation. However,
there are degeneracies between the model parameters and more constraints (e.g.,
star formation efficiency, gas flows) need to be extracted from the simulation
to isolate the correct semi-analytic solution. Stochastic processes such as
bursty star formation histories and star formation triggered by supernova
explosions cannot be reproduced by the current version of GAMMA. Non-uniform
mixing in the galaxy's interstellar medium, coming primarily from
self-enrichment by local supernovae, causes a broadening in the MDF that can be
emulated in the SAM by convolving its predicted MDF with a Gaussian function
having a standard deviation of ~0.2 dex. We found that the most massive galaxy
in the simulation retains nearby 100% of its baryonic mass within its virial
radius, which is in agreement with what is needed in GAMMA to reproduce the
global trends of the simulation.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, submitted to ApJ (version 2
An Entropy Search Portfolio for Bayesian Optimization
Bayesian optimization is a sample-efficient method for black-box global
optimization. How- ever, the performance of a Bayesian optimization method very
much depends on its exploration strategy, i.e. the choice of acquisition
function, and it is not clear a priori which choice will result in superior
performance. While portfolio methods provide an effective, principled way of
combining a collection of acquisition functions, they are often based on
measures of past performance which can be misleading. To address this issue, we
introduce the Entropy Search Portfolio (ESP): a novel approach to portfolio
construction which is motivated by information theoretic considerations. We
show that ESP outperforms existing portfolio methods on several real and
synthetic problems, including geostatistical datasets and simulated control
tasks. We not only show that ESP is able to offer performance as good as the
best, but unknown, acquisition function, but surprisingly it often gives better
performance. Finally, over a wide range of conditions we find that ESP is
robust to the inclusion of poor acquisition functions.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Dynamics of quantum Hall stripes in double-quantum-well systems
The collective modes of stripes in double layer quantum Hall systems are
computed using the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation. It is found that,
when the system possesses spontaneous interlayer coherence, there are two
gapless modes, one a phonon associated with broken translational invariance,
the other a pseudospin-wave associated with a broken U(1) symmetry. For large
layer separations the modes disperse weakly for wavevectors perpendicular to
the stripe orientation, indicating the system becomes akin to an array of
weakly coupled one-dimensional XY systems. At higher wavevectors the collective
modes develop a roton minimum associated with a transition out of the coherent
state with further increasing layer separation. A spin wave model of the system
is developed, and it is shown that the collective modes may be described as
those of a system with helimagnetic ordering.Comment: 16 pages including 7 postscript figure
Electron-phonon coupling in the C60 fullerene within the many-body GW approach
We study the electron-phonon coupling in the C60 fullerene within the
first-principles GW approach, focusing on the lowest unoccupied t1u three-fold
electronic state which is relevant for the superconducting transition in
electron doped fullerides. It is shown that the strength of the coupling is
significantly enhanced as compared to standard density functional theory
calculations with (semi)local functionals, with a 48% increase of the
electron-phonon potential Vep. The calculated GW value for the contribution
from the Hg modes of 93 meV comes within 4% of the most recent experimental
values. The present results call for a reinvestigation of previous density
functional based calculations of electron-phonon coupling in covalent systems
in general.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figur
Commensurate-incommensurate transitions of quantum Hall stripe states in double-quantum-well systems
In higher Landau levels (N>0) and around filling factors nu =4N+1, a
two-dimensional electron gas in a double-quantum-well system supports a stripe
groundstate in which the electron density in each well is spatially modulated.
When a parallel magnetic field is added in the plane of the wells, tunneling
between the wells acts as a spatially rotating effective Zeeman field coupled
to the ``pseudospins'' describing the well index of the electron states. For
small parallel fields, these pseudospins follow this rotation, but at larger
fields they do not, and a commensurate-incommensurate transition results.
Working in the Hartree-Fock approximation, we show that the combination of
stripes and commensuration in this system leads to a very rich phase diagram.
The parallel magnetic field is responsible for oscillations in the tunneling
matrix element that induce a complex sequence of transitions between
commensurate and incommensurate liquid or stripe states. The homogeneous and
stripe states we find can be distinguished by their collective excitations and
tunneling I-V, which we compute within the time-dependent Hartree-Fock
approximation.Comment: 23 pages including 8 eps figure
Uncertainties in Galactic Chemical Evolution Models
We use a simple one-zone galactic chemical evolution model to quantify the uncertainties generated by the input parameters in numerical predictions for a galaxy with properties similar to those of the Milky Way. We compiled several studies from the literature to gather the current constraints for our simulations regarding the typical value and uncertainty of the following seven basic parameters: the lower and upper mass limits of the stellar initial mass function (IMF), the slope of the high-mass end of the stellar IMF, the slope of the delay-time distribution function of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), the number of SNe Ia per M ⊙ formed, the total stellar mass formed, and the final mass of gas. We derived a probability distribution function to express the range of likely values for every parameter, which were then included in a Monte Carlo code to run several hundred simulations with randomly selected input parameters. This approach enables us to analyze the predicted chemical evolution of 16 elements in a statistical manner by identifying the most probable solutions, along with their 68% and 95% confidence levels. Our results show that the overall uncertainties are shaped by several input parameters that individually contribute at different metallicities, and thus at different galactic ages. The level of uncertainty then depends on the metallicity and is different from one element to another. Among the seven input parameters considered in this work, the slope of the IMF and the number of SNe Ia are currently the two main sources of uncertainty. The thicknesses of the uncertainty bands bounded by the 68% and 95% confidence levels are generally within 0.3 and 0.6 dex, respectively. When looking at the evolution of individual elements as a function of galactic age instead of metallicity, those same thicknesses range from 0.1 to 0.6 dex for the 68% confidence levels and from 0.3 to 1.0 dex for the 95% confidence levels. The uncertainty in our chemical evolution model does not include uncertainties relating to stellar yields, star formation and merger histories, and modeling assumptions
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