PMAS: The Potsdam Multi Aperture Spectrophotometer. II. The Wide Integral Field Unit PPak

PPak is a new fiber-based Integral Field Unit (IFU), developed at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, implemented as a module into the existing PMAS spectrograph. The purpose of PPak is to provide both an extended field-of-view with a large light collecting power for each spatial element, as well as an adequate spectral resolution. The PPak system consists of a fiber bundle with 331 object, 36 sky and 15 calibration fibers. The object and sky fibers collect the light from the focal plane behind a focal reducer lens. The object fibers of PPak, each 2.7 arcseconds in diameter, provide a contiguous hexagonal field-of-view of 74 times 64 arcseconds on the sky, with a filling factor of 60%. The operational wavelength range is from 400 to 900nm. The PPak-IFU, together with the PMAS spectrograph, are intended for the study of extended, low surface brightness objects, offering an optimization of total light-collecting power and spectral resolution. This paper describes the instrument design, the assembly, integration and tests, the commissioning and operational procedures, and presents the measured performance at the telescope.Comment: 14 pages, 21 figures, accepted at PAS

Estimating Urban Households’ Willingness-to-Pay for Upland Forest Restoration in Vietnam

Increased urbanization coupled with increased reliance of urban communities on rural areas for ecosystem service provision is a challenge faced by many nations. The ability of urban households to directly support restoration efforts in surrounding rural regions represents an underappreciated funding stream for ecological restoration. This study explored the willingness of urban households to support forest restoration in Vietnam. We surveyed 211 households (HHs) in the capital city Hanoi, Vietnam. A Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) model allowed us to obtain the parameters of our model and quantify mean Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for a program of forest restoration in addition to identifying factors influencing the decision of WTP. Generally, over forty percent of the households surveyed are willing to pay for forest restoration and the mean value of WTP is 37,830 VND ($1.73) per household per month. WTP depends on endogenous and exogenous factors including level of education, income, female-to-male ratio in the household, attitude toward payment for monthly electricity consumption, and awareness of payment for environmental service. Our results suggest that urban household’s demand for forest restoration is real, and represents an untapped source of restoration funding. Policy-makers should take actions to apply charges on water bills to turn this potential into reality for restoration projects in Vietnam if the benefits from restoration outweigh the costs based on our findings

The Index of (White) Noises and their Product Systems

(See detailed abstract in the article.) We single out the correct class of spatial product systems (and the spatial endomorphism semigroups with which the product systems are associated) that allows the most far reaching analogy in their classifiaction when compared with Arveson systems. The main differences are that mere existence of a unit is not it sufficient: The unit must be CENTRAL. And the tensor product under which the index is additive is not available for product systems of Hilbert modules. It must be replaced by a new product that even for Arveson systems need not coincide with the tensor product

A high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity with a frequency-doubled green laser for precision Compton polarimetry at Jefferson Lab

A high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity with a frequency-doubled continuous wave green laser (532~nm) has been built and installed in Hall A of Jefferson Lab for high precision Compton polarimetry. The infrared (1064~nm) beam from a ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier seeded by a Nd:YAG nonplanar ring oscillator laser is frequency doubled in a single-pass periodically poled MgO:LiNbO$_{3}$ crystal. The maximum achieved green power at 5 W IR pump power is 1.74 W with a total conversion efficiency of 34.8\%. The green beam is injected into the optical resonant cavity and enhanced up to 3.7~kW with a corresponding enhancement of 3800. The polarization transfer function has been measured in order to determine the intra-cavity circular laser polarization within a measurement uncertainty of 0.7\%. The PREx experiment at Jefferson Lab used this system for the first time and achieved 1.0\% precision in polarization measurements of an electron beam with energy and current of 1.0~GeV and 50~$\mu$A.Comment: 20 pages, 22 figures, revised version of arXiv:1601.00251v1, submitted to NIM

Spin Foams and Noncommutative Geometry

We extend the formalism of embedded spin networks and spin foams to include topological data that encode the underlying three-manifold or four-manifold as a branched cover. These data are expressed as monodromies, in a way similar to the encoding of the gravitational field via holonomies. We then describe convolution algebras of spin networks and spin foams, based on the different ways in which the same topology can be realized as a branched covering via covering moves, and on possible composition operations on spin foams. We illustrate the case of the groupoid algebra of the equivalence relation determined by covering moves and a 2-semigroupoid algebra arising from a 2-category of spin foams with composition operations corresponding to a fibered product of the branched coverings and the gluing of cobordisms. The spin foam amplitudes then give rise to dynamical flows on these algebras, and the existence of low temperature equilibrium states of Gibbs form is related to questions on the existence of topological invariants of embedded graphs and embedded two-complexes with given properties. We end by sketching a possible approach to combining the spin network and spin foam formalism with matter within the framework of spectral triples in noncommutative geometry.Comment: 48 pages LaTeX, 30 PDF figure

Strange quarks and lattice QCD

The last few years have seen a dramatic improvement in our knowledge of the strange form factors of the nucleon. With regard to the vector from factors the level of agreement between theory and experiment gives us considerable confidence in our ability to calculate with non-perturbative QCD. The calculation of the strange scalar form factor has moved significantly in the last two years, with the application of new techniques which yield values considerably smaller than believed for the past 20 years. These new values turn out to have important consequences for the detection of neutralinos, a favourite dark matter candidate. Finally, very recent lattice studies have resurrected interest in the famed H-dibaryon, with modern chiral extrapolation of lattice data suggesting that it may be only slightly unbound. We review some of the major sources of uncertainty in that chiral extrapolation.Comment: Invited talk at the Asia-Pacific few Body Conference, Seoul Kore

Extensions of C*-dynamical systems to systems with complete transfer operators

Starting from an arbitrary endomorphism $\alpha$ of a unital C*-algebra $A$ we construct a bigger C*-algebra $B$ and extend $\alpha$ onto $B$ in such a way that the extended endomorphism $\alpha$ has a unital kernel and a hereditary range, i.e. there exists a unique non-degenerate transfer operator for $(B,\alpha)$, called the complete transfer operator. The pair $(B,\alpha)$ is universal with respect to a suitable notion of a covariant representation and depends on a choice of an ideal in $A$. The construction enables a natural definition of the crossed product for arbitrary $\alpha$.Comment: Compressed and submitted version, 9 page

On the geometry of quantum indistinguishability

An algebraic approach to the study of quantum mechanics on configuration spaces with a finite fundamental group is presented. It uses, in an essential way, the Gelfand-Naimark and Serre-Swan equivalences and thus allows one to represent geometric properties of such systems in algebraic terms. As an application, the problem of quantum indistinguishability is reformulated in the light of the proposed approach. Previous attempts aiming at a proof of the spin-statistics theorem in non-relativistic quantum mechanics are explicitly recast in the global language inherent to the presented techniques. This leads to a critical discussion of single-valuedness of wave functions for systems of indistinguishable particles. Potential applications of the methods presented in this paper to problems related to quantization, geometric phases and phase transitions in spin systems are proposed.Comment: 24 page

Weak charge form factor and radius of 208Pb through parity violation in electron scattering

We use distorted wave electron scattering calculations to extract the weak charge form factor F_W(q), the weak charge radius R_W, and the point neutron radius R_n, of 208Pb from the PREX parity violating asymmetry measurement. The form factor is the Fourier transform of the weak charge density at the average momentum transfer q=0.475 fm$^{-1}$. We find F_W(q) =0.204 \pm 0.028 (exp) \pm 0.001 (model). We use the Helm model to infer the weak radius from F_W(q). We find R_W= 5.826 \pm 0.181 (exp) \pm 0.027 (model) fm. Here the exp error includes PREX statistical and systematic errors, while the model error describes the uncertainty in R_W from uncertainties in the surface thickness \sigma of the weak charge density. The weak radius is larger than the charge radius, implying a "weak charge skin" where the surface region is relatively enriched in weak charges compared to (electromagnetic) charges. We extract the point neutron radius R_n=5.751 \pm 0.175 (exp) \pm 0.026 (model) \pm 0.005 (strange) fm$, from R_W. Here there is only a very small error (strange) from possible strange quark contributions. We find R_n to be slightly smaller than R_W because of the nucleon's size. Finally, we find a neutron skin thickness of R_n-R_p=0.302\pm 0.175 (exp) \pm 0.026 (model) \pm 0.005 (strange) fm, where R_p is the point proton radius.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, published in Phys Rev. C. Only one change in this version: we have added one author, also to metadat

Diagonalizing operators over continuous fields of C*-algebras

It is well known that in the commutative case, i.e. for $A=C(X)$ being a commutative C*-algebra, compact selfadjoint operators acting on the Hilbert C*-module $H_A$ (= continuous families of such operators $K(x)$, $x\in X$) can be diagonalized if we pass to a bigger W*-algebra $L^\infty(X)={\bf A} \supset A$ which can be obtained from $A$ by completing it with respect to the weak topology. Unlike the "eigenvectors", which have coordinates from $\bf A$, the "eigenvalues" are continuous, i.e. lie in the C*-algebra $A$. We discuss here the non-commutative analog of this well-known fact. Here the "eigenvalues" are defined not uniquely but in some cases they can also be taken from the initial C*-algebra instead of the bigger W*-algebra. We prove here that such is the case for some continuous fields of real rank zero C*-algebras over a one-dimensional manifold and give an example of a C*-algebra $A$ for which the "eigenvalues" cannot be chosen from $A$, i.e. are discontinuous. The main point of the proof is connected with a problem on almost commuting operators. We prove that for some C*-algebras if $h\in A$ is a selfadjoint, $u\in A$ is a unitary and if the norm of their commutant $[u,h]$ is small enough then one can connect $u$ with the unity by a path $u(t)$ so that the norm of $[u(t),h]$ would be also small along this path.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX 2.09, no figure