The semileptonic form factors of B and D mesons in the Quark Confinement Model

The form factors of the weak currents, which appear in the semileptonic decays of the heavy pseudoscalar mesons, are calculated within the quark confinement model by taking into account, for the first time, the structure of heavy meson vertex and the finite quark mass contribution in the heavy quark propagators. The results are in quite good agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 12 pages LaTeX (elsart.sty) + 3 figure

A photometric search for active Main Belt asteroids

It is well known that some Main Belt asteroids show comet-like features. A representative example is the first known Main Belt comet 133P/(7968) Elst-Pizarro. If the mechanisms causing this activity are too weak to develop visually evident comae or tails, the objects stay unnoticed. We are presenting a novel way to search for active asteroids, based on looking for objects with deviations from their expected brightnesses in a database. Just by using the MPCAT-OBS Observation Archive we have found five new candidate objects that possibly show a type of comet-like activity, and the already known Main Belt comet 133P/(7968) Elst-Pizarro. Four of the new candidates, (315) Constantia, (1026) Ingrid, (3646) Aduatiques, and (24684) 1990 EU4, show brightness deviations independent of the object's heliocentric distance, while (35101) 1991 PL16 shows deviations dependent on its heliocentric distance, which could be an indication of a thermal triggered mechanism. The method could be implemented in future sky survey programmes to detect outbursts on Main Belt objects almost simultaneously with their occurrence.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A on December 20, 201

A non-planar two-loop three-point function beyond multiple polylogarithms

We consider the analytic calculation of a two-loop non-planar three-point function which contributes to the two-loop amplitudes for tt ¯ production and γγ production in gluon fusion through a massive top-quark loop. All subtopology integrals can be written in terms of multiple polylogarithms over an irrational alphabet and we employ a new method for the integration of the differential equations which does not rely on the rationalization of the latter. The top topology integrals, instead, in spite of the absence of a massive three-particle cut, cannot be evaluated in terms of multiple polylogarithms and require the introduction of integrals over complete elliptic integrals and polylogarithms. We provide one-fold integral representations for the solutions and continue them analytically to all relevant regions of the phase space in terms of real functions, extracting all imaginary parts explicitly. The numerical evaluation of our expressions becomes straightforward in this way

The two-loop helicity amplitudes for gg → V 1 V 2 → 4 leptons

We compute the two-loop massless QCD corrections to the helicity amplitudes for the production of two electroweak gauge bosons in the gluon fusion channel, gg → V 1 V 2, keeping the virtuality of the vector bosons V 1 and V 2 arbitrary and taking their decays into leptons into account. The amplitudes are expressed in terms of master integrals, whose representation has been optimised for fast and reliable numerical evaluation. We provide analytical results and a public C++ code for their numerical evaluation on HepForge at http://vvamp.hepforge.org. © 2015, The Author(s)

A non-planar two-loop three-point function beyond multiple polylogarithms

We consider the analytic calculation of a two-loop non-planar three-point function which contributes to the two-loop amplitudes for tt ¯ production and γγ production in gluon fusion through a massive top-quark loop. All subtopology integrals can be written in terms of multiple polylogarithms over an irrational alphabet and we employ a new method for the integration of the differential equations which does not rely on the rationalization of the latter. The top topology integrals, instead, in spite of the absence of a massive three-particle cut, cannot be evaluated in terms of multiple polylogarithms and require the introduction of integrals over complete elliptic integrals and polylogarithms. We provide one-fold integral representations for the solutions and continue them analytically to all relevant regions of the phase space in terms of real functions, extracting all imaginary parts explicitly. The numerical evaluation of our expressions becomes straightforward in this way

Validation on flight data of a closed-loop approach for GPS-based relative navigation of LEO satellites

This paper describes a carrier-phase differential GPS approach for real-time relative navigation of LEO satellites flying in formation with large separations. These applications are characterized indeed by a highly varying number of GPS satellites in common view and large ionospheric differential errors, which significantly impact relative navigation performance and robustness. To achieve high relative positioning accuracy a navigation algorithm is proposed which processes double-difference code and carrier measurements on two frequencies, to fully exploit the integer nature of the related ambiguities. Specifically, a closed-loop scheme is proposed in which fixed estimates of the baseline and integer ambiguities produced by means of a partial integer fixing step are fed back to an Extended Kalman Filter for improving the float estimate at successive time instants. The approach also benefits from the inclusion in the filter state of the differential ionospheric delay in terms of the Vertical Total Electron Content of each satellite. The navigation algorithm performance is tested on actual flight data from GRACE mission. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in managing integer unknowns in conjunction with Extended Kalman Filtering, and that centimeter-level accuracy can be achieved in real-time also with large separations. (c) 2013 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Novel closed-loop approaches for precise relative navigation of widely separated GPS receivers in LEO

This paper deals with the relative navigation of a formation of two spacecrafts separated by hundreds of kilometers based on processing dual-frequency differential carrier-phase GPS measurements. Specific requirements of the considered application are high relative positioning accuracy and real-time on board implementation. These can be conflicting requirements. Indeed, if on one hand high accuracy can be achieved by exploiting the integer nature of double-difference carrier-phase ambiguities, on the other hand the presence of large ephemeris errors and differential ionospheric delays makes the integer ambiguities determination challenging. Closed-loop schemes, which update the relative position estimates of a dynamic filter with feedback from integer ambiguities fixing algorithms, are customarily employed in these cases. This paper further elaborates such approaches, proposing novel closed loop techniques aimed at overcoming some of the limitations of traditional algorithms. They extend techniques developed for spaceborne long baseline relative positioning by making use of an on-the-fly ambiguity resolution technique especially developed for the applications of interest. Such techniques blend together ionospheric delay compensation techniques, nonlinear models of relative spacecraft dynamics, and partial integer validation techniques. The approaches are validated using flight data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. Performance is compared to that of the traditional closed-loop scheme analyzing the capability of each scheme to maximize the percentage of correctly fixed integer ambiguities as well as the relative positioning accuracy. Results show that the proposed approach substantially improves performance of the traditional approaches. More specifically, centimeter-level root-mean square relative positioning is feasible for spacecraft separations of more than 260 km, and an integer ambiguity fixing performance as high as 98% is achieved in a 1-day long dataset. Results also show that approaches exploiting ionospheric delay models are more robust and precise of approaches relying on ionospheric-delay removal techniques. © 2013 IAA

Ionospheric path delay models for spaceborne GPS receivers flying in formation with large baselines

GPS relative navigation filters could benefit notably from an accurate modeling of the ionospheric delays, especially over large baselines (>100 km) where double difference delays can be higher than several carrier wavelengths. This paper analyzes the capability of ionospheric path delay models proposed for spaceborne GPS receivers in predicting both zero-difference and double difference ionospheric delays. We specifically refer to relatively simple ionospheric models, which are suitable for real-time filtering schemes. Specifically, two ionospheric delay models are evaluated, one assuming an isotropic electron density and the other considering the effect on the electron density of the Sun aspect angle. The prediction capability of these models is investigated by comparing predicted ionospheric delays with measured ones on real flight data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, in which two satellites fly separated of more than 200 km. Results demonstrate that both models exhibit a correlation in the excess of 80% between predicted and measured double-difference ionospheric delays. Despite its higher simplicity, the isotropic model performs better than the model including the Sun effect, being able to predict double differenced delays with accuracy smaller than the carrier wavelength in most cases. The model is thus fit for supporting integer ambiguity fixing in real-time filters for relative navigation over large baselines. Concerning zero-difference ionospheric delays, results demonstrate that delays predicted by the isotropic model are highly correlated (around 90%) with those estimated using GPS measurements. However, the difference between predicted and measured delays has a root mean square error in the excess of 30 cm. Thus, the zero-difference ionospheric delays model is not likely to be an alternative to methods exploiting carrier-phase observables for cancelling out the ionosphere contribution in single-frequency absolute navigation filters

Real-time relative positioning of spacecraft over long baselines

This paper deals with the problem of real-time onboard relative positioning of low Earth orbit spacecraft over long baselines using the Global Positioning System. Large inter-satellite separations, up to hundreds of kilometers, are of interest to multistatic and bistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar applications, in which highly accurate relative positioning may be required in spite of the long baseline. To compute the baseline with high accuracy the integer nature of dual-frequency, double-difference carrier-phase ambiguities can be exploited. However, the large inter-satellite separation complicates the integer ambiguities determination task due to the presence of significant differential ionospheric delays and broadcast ephemeris errors. To overcome this problem, an original approach is proposed, combining an extended Kalman filter with an integer least square estimator in a closed-loop scheme, capable of fast on-the-fly integer ambiguities resolution. These integer solutions are then used to compute the relative positions with a single-epoch kinematic least square algorithm that processes ionospheric-free combinations of de-biased carrier-phase measurements. Approach performance and robustness are assessed by using the flight data of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission. Results show that the baseline can be computed in real-time with decimeter-level accuracy in different operating conditions