Drought effects on large fire activity in Canadian and Alaskan forests

Fire is the dominant disturbance in forest ecosystems across Canada and Alaska, and has important implications for forest ecosystems, terrestrial carbon dioxide emissions and the forestry industry. Large fire activity had increased in Canadian and Alaskan forests during the last four decades of the 20th century. Here we combined the Palmer Drought Severity Index and historical large fire databases to demonstrate that Canada and Alaska forest regions experienced summer drying over this time period, and drought during the fire season significantly affected forest fire activity in these regions. Climatic warming, positive geopotential height anomalies and ocean circulation patterns were spatially and temporally convolved in causing drought conditions, which in turn enhanced fuel flammability and thereby indirectly affected fire activity. Future fire regimes will likely depend on drought patterns under global climate change scenarios

Holographic coherent states from random tensor networks

Random tensor networks provide useful models that incorporate various important features of holographic duality. A tensor network is usually defined for a fixed graph geometry specified by the connection of tensors. In this paper, we generalize the random tensor network approach to allow quantum superposition of different spatial geometries. We set up a framework in which all possible bulk spatial geometries, characterized by weighted adjacent matrices of all possible graphs, are mapped to the boundary Hilbert space and form an overcomplete basis of the boundary. We name such an overcomplete basis as holographic coherent states. A generic boundary state can be expanded on this basis, which describes the state as a superposition of different spatial geometries in the bulk. We discuss how to define distinct classical geometries and small fluctuations around them. We show that small fluctuations around classical geometries define "code subspaces" which are mapped to the boundary Hilbert space isometrically with quantum error correction properties. In addition, we also show that the overlap between different geometries is suppressed exponentially as a function of the geometrical difference between the two geometries. The geometrical difference is measured in an area law fashion, which is a manifestation of the holographic nature of the states considered.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures. An error corrected on page 14. Reference update

Projective non-Abelian Statistics of Dislocation Defects in a Z_N Rotor Model

Non-Abelian statistics is a phenomenon of topologically protected non-Abelian Berry phases as we exchange quasiparticle excitations. In this paper, we construct a Z_N rotor model that realizes a self-dual Z_N Abelian gauge theory. We find that lattice dislocation defects in the model produce topologically protected degeneracy. Even though dislocations are not quasiparticle excitations, they resemble non-Abelian anyons with quantum dimension sqrt(N). Exchanging dislocations can produces topologically protected projective non-Abelian Berry phases. The dislocations, as projective non-Abelian anyons can be viewed as a generalization of the Majorana zero modes.Comment: 4 pages + refs, 4 figures. RevTeX