779 research outputs found
Determination of Dark Matter Halo Mass from Dynamics of Satellite Galaxies
We show that the mass of a dark matter halo can be inferred from the
dynamical status of its satellite galaxies. Using 9 dark-matter simulations of
halos like the Milky Way (MW), we find that the present-day substructures in
each halo follow a characteristic distribution in the phase space of orbital
binding energy and angular momentum, and that this distribution is similar from
halo to halo but has an intrinsic dependence on the halo formation history. We
construct this distribution directly from the simulations for a specific halo
and extend the result to halos of similar formation history but different
masses by scaling. The mass of an observed halo can then be estimated by
maximizing the likelihood in comparing the measured kinematic parameters of its
satellite galaxies with these distributions. We test the validity and accuracy
of this method with mock samples taken from the simulations. Using the
positions, radial velocities, and proper motions of 9 tracers and assuming
observational uncertainties comparable to those of MW satellite galaxies, we
find that the halo mass can be recovered to within 40%. The accuracy can
be improved to within 25% if 30 tracers are used. However, the dependence
of the phase-space distribution on the halo formation history sets a minimum
uncertainty of 20% that cannot be reduced by using more tracers. We
believe that this minimum uncertainty also applies to any mass determination
for a halo when the phase space information of other kinematic tracers is used.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 18 pages, 13 figure
Structural Stability of Lexical Semantic Spaces: Nouns in Chinese and French
Many studies in the neurosciences have dealt with the semantic processing of
words or categories, but few have looked into the semantic organization of the
lexicon thought as a system. The present study was designed to try to move
towards this goal, using both electrophysiological and corpus-based data, and
to compare two languages from different families: French and Mandarin Chinese.
We conducted an EEG-based semantic-decision experiment using 240 words from
eight categories (clothing, parts of a house, tools, vehicles,
fruits/vegetables, animals, body parts, and people) as the material. A
data-analysis method (correspondence analysis) commonly used in computational
linguistics was applied to the electrophysiological signals.
The present cross-language comparison indicated stability for the following
aspects of the languages' lexical semantic organizations: (1) the
living/nonliving distinction, which showed up as a main factor for both
languages; (2) greater dispersion of the living categories as compared to the
nonliving ones; (3) prototypicality of the \emph{animals} category within the
living categories, and with respect to the living/nonliving distinction; and
(4) the existence of a person-centered reference gradient. Our
electrophysiological analysis indicated stability of the networks at play in
each of these processes. Stability was also observed in the data taken from
word usage in the languages (synonyms and associated words obtained from
textual corpora).Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure
Rigid vortices in MgB2
Magnetic relaxation of high-pressure synthesized MgB bulks with different
thickness is investigated. It is found that the superconducting dia-magnetic
moment depends on time in a logarithmic way; the flux-creep activation energy
decreases linearly with the current density (as expected by Kim-Anderson
model); and the activation energy increases linearly with the thickness of
sample when it is thinner than about 1 mm. These features suggest that the
vortices in the MgB are rather rigid, and the pinning and creep can be well
described by Kim-Anderson model.Comment: Typo corrected & reference adde
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