16,960 research outputs found
Observational evidence for the shrinking of bright maser spots
The nature of maser emission means that the apparent angular size of an
individual maser spot is determined by the amplification process as well as by
the instrinsic size of the emitting cloud. Highly sensitive MERLIN radio
interferometry images spatially and spectrally resolve water maser clouds
around evolved stars. We measured the properties of clouds around the red
supergiant S Per and the AGB stars IK Tau, RT Vir, U Her and U Ori, to test
maser beaming theory. Spherical clouds are expected to produce an inverse
relationship between maser intensity and apparent size, which would not be seen
from cylindrical or slab-like regions. We analysed the maser properties, in
order to estimate the saturation state, and investigated the variation of
observed spot size with intensity and across the spectral line profiles.
Circumstellar masers emanate from discrete clouds from about one to 20 AU in
diameter depending on the star. Most of the maser features have negative
excitation temperatures close to zero and modest optical depths, showing that
they are mainly unsaturated. Around S Per and (at most epochs) RT Vir and IK
Tau, the maser component size shrinks with increasing intensity. In contrast,
the masers around U Ori and U Her tend to increase in size, with a larger
scatter. The water masers from S Per, RT Vir and IK Tau are mainly beamed into
spots with an observed angular size much smaller than the emitting clouds and
smallest of all at the line peaks. This suggests that the masers are
amplification-bounded, emanating from approximately spherical clouds. Many of
the masers around U Her and U Ori have apparent sizes which are more similar to
the emitting clouds and have less or no dependence on intensity, suggesting
that these masers are matter-bounded. This is consistent with an origin in
flattened clouds and these two stars have shown other behaviour indicating the
presence of shocks.Comment: 17 pages, 26 figure files, accepted by A&A 2010 Oct 2
Models of self-peptide sampling by developing T cells identify candidate mechanisms of thymic selection
Conventional and regulatory T cells develop in the thymus where they are exposed to samples of self-peptide MHC (pMHC) ligands. This probabilistic process selects for cells within a range of responsiveness that allows the detection of foreign antigen without excessive responses to self. Regulatory T cells are thought to lie at the higher end of the spectrum of acceptable self-reactivity and play a crucial role in the control of autoimmunity and tolerance to innocuous antigens. While many studies have elucidated key elements influencing lineage commitment, we still lack a full understanding of how thymocytes integrate signals obtained by sampling self-peptides to make fate decisions. To address this problem, we apply stochastic models of signal integration by T cells to data from a study quantifying the development of the two lineages using controllable levels of agonist peptide in the thymus. We find two models are able to explain the observations; one in which T cells continually re-assess fate decisions on the basis of multiple summed proximal signals from TCR-pMHC interactions; and another in which TCR sensitivity is modulated over time, such that contact with the same pMHC ligand may lead to divergent outcomes at different stages of development. Neither model requires that T and T are differentially susceptible to deletion or that the two lineages need qualitatively different signals for development, as have been proposed. We find additional support for the variable-sensitivity model, which is able to explain apparently paradoxical observations regarding the effect of partial and strong agonists on T and T development
On some aspects of the noise propagation from supersonic aircraft
The noise problem associated with an aircraft flying at supersonic speeds is shown to depend primarily on the shock wave pattern formed by the aircraft. The noise intensity received by a ground observer from a supersonic aircraft flying at high as well as low altitudes, is shown to be high although it is of a transient nature. Continues
Quasiparticle relaxation in optically excited high-Q superconducting resonators
The quasiparticle relaxation time in superconducting films has been measured
as a function of temperature using the response of the complex conductivity to
photon flux. For tantalum and aluminium, chosen for their difference in
electron-phonon coupling strength, we find that at high temperatures the
relaxation time increases with decreasing temperature, as expected for
electron-phonon interaction. At low temperatures we find in both
superconducting materials a saturation of the relaxation time, suggesting the
presence of a second relaxation channel not due to electron-phonon interaction.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Performance of Hybrid NbTiN-Al Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors as Direct Detectors for Sub-millimeter Astronomy
In the next decades millimeter and sub-mm astronomy requires large format
imaging arrays and broad-band spectrometers to complement the high spatial and
spectral resolution of the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array. The
desired sensors for these instruments should have a background limited
sensitivity and a high optical efficiency and enable arrays thousands of pixels
in size. Hybrid microwave kinetic inductance detectors consisting of NbTiN and
Al have shown to satisfy these requirements. We present the second generation
hybrid NbTiN-Al MKIDs, which are photon noise limited in both phase and
amplitude readout for loading levels fW. Thanks to the
increased responsivity, the photon noise level achieved in phase allows us to
simultaneously read out approximately 8000 pixels using state-of-the-art
electronics. In addition, the choice of superconducting materials and the use
of a Si lens in combination with a planar antenna gives these resonators the
flexibility to operate within the frequency range THz. Given
these specifications, hybrid NbTiN-Al MKIDs will enable astronomically usable
kilopixel arrays for sub-mm imaging and moderate resolution spectroscopy.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and
Instrumentation 2014: Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors
and Instrumentation for Astronomy VI
Photon noise limited radiation detection with lens-antenna coupled Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors
Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) have shown great potential for
sub-mm instrumentation because of the high scalability of the technology. Here
we demonstrate for the first time in the sub-mm band (0.1...2 mm) a photon
noise limited performance of a small antenna coupled MKID detector array and we
describe the relation between photon noise and MKID intrinsic
generation-recombination noise. Additionally we use the observed photon noise
to measure the optical efficiency of detectors to be 0.8+-0.2.Comment: The following article has been submitted to AP
Number fluctuations of sparse quasiparticles in a superconductor
We have directly measured quasiparticle number fluctuations in a thin film
superconducting Al resonator in thermal equilibrium. The spectrum of these
fluctuations provides a measure of both the density and the lifetime of the
quasiparticles. We observe that the quasiparticle density decreases
exponentially with decreasing temperature, as theoretically predicted, but
saturates below 160 mK to 25-55 per cubic micron. We show that this saturation
is consistent with the measured saturation in the quasiparticle lifetime, which
also explains similar observations in qubit decoherence times
- …