21,322 research outputs found
A Comment on Junction and Energy Conditions in Thin Shells
This comment contains a suggestion for a slight modification of Israel's
covariant formulation of junction conditions between two spacetimes, placing
both sides on equal footing with normals having uniquely defined orientations.
The signs of mass energy densities in thin shells at the junction depend not
only on the orientations of the normals and it is useful therefore to discuss
the sign separately. Calculations gain in clarity by not choosing the
orientations in advance. Simple examples illustrate our point and complete
previous classifications of spherical thin shells in spherically symmetric
spacetimes relevant to cosmology.Comment: (Tex file + PS file with a figure) Tex errors were correcte
Classical gravitational spin-spin interaction
I obtain an exact, axially symmetric, stationary solution of Einstein's
equations for two massless spinning particles. The term representing the
spin-spin interaction agrees with recently published approximate work. The
spin-spin force appears to be proportional to the inverse fourth power of the
coordinate distance between the particles.Comment: six pages, no figures, journal ref:accepted for Classical and Quantum
Gravit
Test and evaluate passive orbital disconnect struts (PODS 3)
The objectives of the Passive Orbital Disconnect Struts (PODS) test are to evaluate modal resonance of the PODS-III supports to obtain engineering data required for use of PODS-III on flight systems; determine possible performance improvements in large LO2/LH2 space applications. (1) Modal Vibration Tests. A modal resonance survey is performed on a set of six PODS-III struts assembled in a dewar simulator. The survey conditions simulate both launch and orbital loadings of the struts. The orbital load range spans a full to an empty tank. The frequencies surveyed cover the range consistent with Shuttle qualification requirements and the principal resonant modes of the strut system. (2) Benefit study. The benefit of using PODS-III supports on OTV and Space Station LO sub 2 and LH sub 2 reference tanks was compared to nondisconnect supports. Four LO sub 2 and LH sub 2 tanks were studied under various conditions: (1) holding the launch resonance at 35 Hz and varying the orbit resonance; (2) analyzing both full and emtpy tanks at launch; (3) varying orbit boundary temperaure; (4) varying the number of struts; (5) varying orbit times; and (6) using or not using vapor cooling
Can Track and Field’s Governing Body Ban Female Runners From Competing in the U.S. Because of High Testosterone Levels?
This article explores the applicability, if any, in the United States of a decision rendered by a private sports arbitration organization in Lausanne, Switzerland: the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The decision validated regulations of World Athletics—the private organization that governs track and field internationally—which had the effect of banning an Olympic champion, Caster Semenya of South Africa, from international competition against females because she had testosterone levels that World Athletics deemed too high. The article focuses on the fact that the CAS decision uses the law of Monaco to decide the matter. CAS specifically states that the decision may not apply in other countries like the U.S. CAS expressly leaves such decisions to the courts of the respective countries involved. The article then explores the reasoning of CAS with respect to both the U.S. law of discrimination and the law of evidence. The article concludes that the CAS decision would not stand up under either set of laws in the United States. In particular, most of the evidence relied on by CAS would not be admissible in U.S. courts because of the standards set in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), that prohibit expert testimony not in accord with generally accepted scientific standards
Sommerfeld Enhancements for Thermal Relic Dark Matter
The annihilation cross section of thermal relic dark matter determines both
its relic density and indirect detection signals. We determine how large
indirect signals may be in scenarios with Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation,
subject to the constraint that the dark matter has the correct relic density.
This work refines our previous analysis through detailed treatments of resonant
Sommerfeld enhancement and the effect of Sommerfeld enhancement on freeze out.
Sommerfeld enhancements raise many interesting issues in the freeze out
calculation, and we find that the cutoff of resonant enhancement, the
equilibration of force carriers, the temperature of kinetic decoupling, and the
efficiency of self-interactions for preserving thermal velocity distributions
all play a role. These effects may have striking consequences; for example, for
resonantly-enhanced Sommerfeld annihilation, dark matter freezes out but may
then chemically recouple, implying highly suppressed indirect signals, in
contrast to naive expectations. In the minimal scenario with standard
astrophysical assumptions, and tuning all parameters to maximize the signal, we
find that, for force-carrier mass m_phi = 250 MeV and dark matter masses m_X =
0.1, 0.3, and 1 TeV, the maximal Sommerfeld enhancement factors are S_eff = 7,
30, and 90, respectively. Such boosts are too small to explain both the PAMELA
and Fermi excesses. Non-minimal models may require smaller boosts, but the
bounds on S_eff could also be more stringent, and dedicated freeze out analyses
are required. For concreteness, we focus on 4 mu final states, but we also
discuss 4 e and other modes, deviations from standard astrophysical assumptions
and non-minimal particle physics models, and we outline the steps required to
determine if such considerations may lead to a self-consistent explanation of
the PAMELA or Fermi excesses.Comment: 31 pages, published versio
Differences in biotic interactions across range edges have only minor effects on plant performance
Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136275/1/jec12675.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136275/2/jec12675_am.pd
Conserved Charges in Einstein Gauss-Bonnet theory
Using Noether's identities, we define a superpotential with respect to a
background for the Einstein Gauss-Bonnet theory of gravity. As an example, we
show that its associated conserved charge yields the mass-energy of a
D-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet black hole in an anti-de Sitter spacetime.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, references added, typos corrected, version to appear
in Class. Quant. Gra
Collisional decay of a strongly driven Bose-Einstein condensate
We study the collisional decay of a strongly driven Bose-Einstein condensate
oscillating between two momentum modes. The resulting products of the decay are
found to strongly deviate from the usual s-wave halo. Using a stochastically
seeded classical field method we simulate the collisional manifold. These
results are also explained by a model of colliding Bloch states.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Axion cosmology, lattice QCD and the dilute instanton gas
Axions are one of the most attractive dark matter candidates. The evolution
of their number density in the early universe can be determined by calculating
the topological susceptibility of QCD as a function of the
temperature. Lattice QCD provides an ab initio technique to carry out such a
calculation. A full result needs two ingredients: physical quark masses and a
controlled continuum extrapolation from non-vanishing to zero lattice spacings.
We determine in the quenched framework (infinitely large quark
masses) and extrapolate its values to the continuum limit. The results are
compared with the prediction of the dilute instanton gas approximation (DIGA).
A nice agreement is found for the temperature dependence, whereas the overall
normalization of the DIGA result still differs from the non-perturbative
continuum extrapolated lattice results by a factor of order ten. We discuss the
consequences of our findings for the prediction of the amount of axion dark
matter.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
Open orbifold Gromov-Witten invariants of [C^3/Z_n]: localization and mirror symmetry
We develop a mathematical framework for the computation of open orbifold
Gromov-Witten invariants of [C^3/Z_n], and provide extensive checks with
predictions from open string mirror symmetry. To this aim we set up a
computation of open string invariants in the spirit of Katz-Liu, defining them
by localization. The orbifold is viewed as an open chart of a global quotient
of the resolved conifold, and the Lagrangian as the fixed locus of an
appropriate anti-holomorphic involution. We consider two main applications of
the formalism. After warming up with the simpler example of [C^3/Z_3], where we
verify physical predictions of Bouchard, Klemm, Marino and Pasquetti, the main
object of our study is the richer case of [C^3/Z_4], where two different
choices are allowed for the Lagrangian. For one choice, we make numerical
checks to confirm the B-model predictions; for the other, we prove a mirror
theorem for orbifold disc invariants, match a large number of annulus
invariants, and give mirror symmetry predictions for open string invariants of
genus \leq 2.Comment: 44 pages + appendices; v2: exposition improved, misprints corrected,
version to appear on Selecta Mathematica; v3: last minute mistake found and
fixed for the symmetric brane setup of [C^3/Z_4]; in pres
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