43,949 research outputs found
Neutrino emission from a GRB afterglow shock during an inner supernova shock breakout
The observations of a nearby low-luminosity gamma-ray burst (GRB) 060218
associated with supernova SN 2006aj may imply an interesting astronomical
picture where a supernova shock breakout locates behind a relativistic GRB jet.
Based on this picture, we study neutrino emission for early afterglows of GRB
060218-like GRBs, where neutrinos are expected to be produced from photopion
interactions in a GRB blast wave that propagates into a dense wind.
Relativistic protons for the interactions are accelerated by an external shock,
while target photons are basically provided by the incoming thermal emission
from the shock breakout and its inverse-Compton scattered component. Because of
a high estimated event rate of low-luminosity GRBs, we would have more
opportunities to detect afterglow neutrinos from a single nearby GRB event of
this type by IceCube. Such a possible detection could provide evidence for the
picture described above.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Universality and correlations in individuals wandering through an online extremist space
The 'out of the blue' nature of recent terror attacks and the diversity of
apparent motives, highlight the importance of understanding the online
trajectories that individuals follow prior to developing high levels of
extremist support. Here we show that the physics of stochastic walks, with and
without temporal correlation, provides a unifying description of these online
trajectories. Our unique dataset comprising all users of a global social media
site, reveals universal characteristics in individuals' online lifetimes. Our
accompanying theory generates analytical and numerical solutions that describe
the characteristics shown by individuals that go on to develop high levels of
extremist support, and those that do not. The existence of these temporal and
also many-body correlations suggests that existing physics machinery can be
used to quantify and perhaps mitigate the risk of future events
The principle of least action and the geometric basis of D-branes
We analyze thoroughly the boundary conditions allowed in classical non-linear
sigma models and derive from first principle the corresponding geometric
objects, i.e. D-branes. In addition to giving classical D-branes an intrinsic
and geometric foundation, D-branes in nontrivial H flux and D-branes embedded
within D-branes are precisely defined. A well known topological condition on
D-branes is replaced
Probing the Intergalactic Medium with Fast Radio Bursts
The recently discovered fast radio bursts (FRBs), presumably of
extra-galactic origin, have the potential to become a powerful probe of the
intergalactic medium (IGM). We point out a few such potential applications. We
provide expressions for the dispersion measure and rotation measure as a
function of redshift, and we discuss the sensitivity of these measures to the
HeII reionization and the IGM magnetic field. Finally we calculate the
microlensing effect from an isolate, extragalctic stellar-mass compact object
on the FRB spectrum. The time delays between the two lensing images will induce
constructive and destructive interference, leaving a specific imprint on the
spectra of FRBs. With a high all-sky rate, a large statistical sample of FRBs
is expected to make these applications feasible.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; Typos for the variable x in Eq.6 corrected;
Published in ApJ; Originally the Appendix E of arXiv:1402.4766; Separated
from the main paper upon the referee's reques
Detection of Geometric Phases in Flux Qubits with Coherent Pulses
We propose a experimentally feasible scheme to demonstrate the geometric
phase in flux qubits by means of detuning coherent microwave pulse techniques.
Through measuring the probability of the persistent current state in flux
qubits, one can detect the Berry phase that is acquired with system's
Hamiltonian adiabatical circular evolution in the parameter space. Furthermore,
we show that one should choose an appropriate amplitude of pulses in an
experiment to obtain high readout resolution when detuning frequency of pulses
is fixed and controlled phase shift gates can be implemented based on the
geometric phases by inductance coupling two flux qubits.Comment: 4pages,3figure
New Approach on the General Shape Equation of Axisymmetric Vesicles
The general Helfrich shape equation determined by minimizing the curvature
free energy describes the equilibrium shapes of the axisymmetric lipid bilayer
vesicles in different conditions. It is a non-linear differential equation with
variable coefficients. In this letter, by analyzing the unique property of the
solution, we change this shape equation into a system of the two differential
equations. One of them is a linear differential equation. This equation system
contains all of the known rigorous solutions of the general shape equation. And
the more general constraint conditions are found for the solution of the
general shape equation.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex, submit to Mod. Phys. Lett.
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