Gravitational Acceleration of Spinning Bodies From Lunar Laser Ranging Measurements

The Sun's relativistic gravitational gradient accelerations of Earth and Moon, dependent on the motions of the latter bodies, act upon the system's internal angular momentum. This spin-orbit force (which plays a part in determining the gravity wave signal templates for astrophysical sources) slightly accelerates the Earth-Moon system as a whole, but it more robustly perturbs that system's internal dynamics with a 5 cm, synodically oscillating range contribution which is presently measured to 4 mm precision by more than three decades of lunar laser ranging.Comment: 10 pages, PCTex32.v3.

Momentum distribution and ordering in mixtures of ultracold light and heavy fermionic atoms

The momentum distribution is one of the most important quantities which provides information about interactions in many-body systems. At the same time it is a quantity that can easily be accessed in experiments on ultracold atoms. In this paper, we consider mixtures of light and heavy fermionic atoms in an optical lattice described effectively by the Falicov-Kimball model. Using a Monte Carlo method, we study how different ordered density-wave phases can be detected by measurement of the momentum distribution of the light atoms. We also demonstrate that ordered phases can be seen in Bragg scattering experiments. Our results indicate that the main factor that determines the momentum distribution of the light atoms is the trap confinement. On the other hand, the pattern formed by the heavy atoms seen in the Bragg scattering experiments is very sensitive to the temperature and possibly can be used in low-temperature thermometry.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Three-body recombination in a three-state Fermi gas with widely tunable interactions

We investigate the stability of a three spin state mixture of ultracold fermionic $^6$Li atoms over a range of magnetic fields encompassing three Feshbach resonances. For most field values, we attribute decay of the atomic population to three-body processes involving one atom from each spin state and find that the three-body loss coefficient varies by over four orders of magnitude. We observe high stability when at least two of the three scattering lengths are small, rapid loss near the Feshbach resonances, and two unexpected resonant loss features. At our highest fields, where all pairwise scattering lengths are approaching $a_t = -2140 a_0$, we measure a three-body loss coefficient $L_3 \simeq 5\times 10^{-22} \mathrm{cm}^6/\mathrm{s}$ and a trend toward lower decay rates for higher fields indicating that future studies of color superfluidity and trion formation in a SU(3) symmetric Fermi gas may be feasible

Comparison of toughened composite laminates using NASA standard damage tolerance tests

The proposed application of composite materials to transport wing and fuselage structures prompted the search for tougher materials having improved resistance to impact damage and delamination. Several resin/graphite fiber composite materials were subjected to standard damage tolerance tests and the results were compared to ascertain which materials have superior toughness. In addition, test results from various company and NASA laboratories were compared for repeatability

Population imbalanced fermions in harmonically trapped optical lattices

The attractive Fermi-Hubbard Hamiltonian is solved via the Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism to analyze the ground state phases of population imbalanced fermion mixtures in harmonically trapped two-dimensional optical lattices. In the low density limit the superfluid order parameter modulates in the radial direction towards the trap edges to accommodate the unpaired fermions that are pushed away from the trap center with a single peak in their density. However in the high density limit while the order parameter modulates in the radial direction towards the trap center for low imbalance, it also modulates towards the trap edges with increasing imbalance until the superfluid to normal phase transition occurs beyond a critical imbalance. This leads to a single peak in the density of unpaired fermions for low and high imbalance but leads to double peaks for intermediate imbalance.Comment: 4 pages with 4 figures, accepted to appear in PR

Recall of physical activity advice was associated with higher levels of physical activity in colorectal cancer patients.

The present study tested the hypothesis that recall of receiving physical activity (PA) advice would be associated with higher levels of PA in patients with a diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC)

Encoding of low-quality DNA profiles as genotype probability matrices for improved profile comparisons, relatedness evaluation and database searches

Many DNA profiles recovered from crime scene samples are of a quality that does not allow them to be searched against, nor entered into, databases. We propose a method for the comparison of profiles arising from two DNA samples, one or both of which can have multiple donors and be affected by low DNA template or degraded DNA. We compute likelihood ratios to evaluate the hypothesis that the two samples have a common DNA donor, and hypotheses specifying the relatedness of two donors. Our method uses a probability distribution for the genotype of the donor of interest in each sample. This distribution can be obtained from a statistical model, or we can exploit the ability of trained human experts to assess genotype probabilities, thus extracting much information that would be discarded by standard interpretation rules. Our method is compatible with established methods in simple settings, but is more widely applicable and can make better use of information than many current methods for the analysis of mixed-source, low-template DNA profiles. It can accommodate uncertainty arising from relatedness instead of or in addition to uncertainty arising from noisy genotyping. We describe a computer program GPMDNA, available under an open source license, to calculate LRs using the method presented in this paper.Comment: 28 pages. Accepted for publication 2-Sep-2016 - Forensic Science International: Genetic

SDSS J142625.71+575218.3: the First Pulsating White Dwarf With A Large Detectable Magnetic Field

We report the discovery of a strong magnetic field in the unique pulsating carbon- atmosphere white dwarf SDSS J142625.71 + 575218.3. From spectra gathered at the MMT and Keck telescopes, we infer a surface field of B(s) similar or equal to 1.2 MG, based on obvious Zeeman components seen in several carbon lines. We also detect the presence of a Zeeman- splitted He I lambda 4471 line, which is an indicator of the presence of a nonnegligible amount of helium in the atmosphere of this "hot DQ" star. This is important for understanding its pulsations, as nonadabatic theory reveals that some helium must be present in the envelope mixture for pulsation modes to be excited in the range of effective temperature where the target star is found. Out of nearly 200 pulsating white dwarfs known today, this is the first example of a star with a large detectable magnetic field. We suggest that SDSS J142625.71 + 575218.3 is the white dwarf equivalent of a rapidly oscillating Ap star.NSERCNSF AST 03-07321Reardon FoundationAstronom

A Quantum Computer Architecture using Nonlocal Interactions

Several authors have described the basic requirements essential to build a scalable quantum computer. Because many physical implementation schemes for quantum computing rely on nearest neighbor interactions, there is a hidden quantum communication overhead to connect distant nodes of the computer. In this paper we propose a physical solution to this problem which, together with the key building blocks, provides a pathway to a scalable quantum architecture using nonlocal interactions. Our solution involves the concept of a quantum bus that acts as a refreshable entanglement resource to connect distant memory nodes providing an architectural concept for quantum computers analogous to the von Neumann architecture for classical computers.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Slight modifications to satisfy referee, 2 new references, modified acknowledgement. This draft to appear in PRA Rapid Communication