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Intelligent transportation infrastructure deployment analysis system
Much of the work on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to date has emphasized technologies, standards/protocols, architecture, user services, core infrastructure requirements, and various other technical and institutional issues. ITS implementations in the United States and elsewhere in the world have demonstrated benefits in the areas of safety, productivity, efficiency, and environmental impact. However, quantitative benefits and satisfactory cost estimates are not available or cannot be derived for many components of the ITS, whether deployed individually or in some integrated fashion. The limitations of existing analysis and evaluation capabilities coupled with the lack of strong empirical evidence presents a major knowledge and data gap for infrastructure investment decisions involving ITS alternatives. This paper describes the over-arching issues and requirements associated with the analysis capabilities required for a systematic, faithful, and rigorous evaluation of the impacts of deploying ITS in a metropolitan area. It then describes the conceptual framework of a modeling system that will provide a preliminary analysis capability to support ITS deployment analysis and evaluation
Contribution of pulsars to the gamma-ray background and their observation with the space telescopes GLAST and AGILE
Luminosities and uxes of the expected population of galactic gamma-ray
pulsars become foreseeable if physical distributions at birth and evolutive
history are assigned. In this work we estimate the contribution of pulsar uxes
to the gamma-ray background, which has been measured by the EGRET experiment on
board of the CGRO. For pulsar luminosities we select some of the most important
gamma-ray emission models, taking into account both polar cap and outer gap
scenarios. We nd that this contribution strongly depends upon controversial
neutron star birth properties. A comparison between our simulation results and
EGRET data is presented for each model, nding an average contribution of about
10%. In addition, we perform the calculation of the number of new gamma-ray
pulsars detectable by GLAST and AGILE, showing a remarkable di erence between
the two classes of models. Finally, we suggest some improvements in the
numerical code, including more sophisticated galactic m odels and di erent
populations of pulsars like binaries, milliseconds, anomalous pulsars and
magnetars.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, to be published in the Proceedings of the 6th
International Symposium ''Frontiers of Fundamental and Computational
Physics'' (FFP6), Udine (Italy), Sep. 26-29, 200
Source population synthesis and the Galactic diffuse gamma-ray emission
Population synthesis is used to study the contribution from undetected
sources to the Galactic ridge emission measured by EGRET. Synthesized source
counts are compared with the 3rd EGRET catalogue at low and high latitudes. For
pulsar-like populations, 5-10% of the emission >100 MeV comes from sources
below the EGRET threshold. A steeper luminosity function can increase this to
20% without violating EGRET source statistics. Less luminous populations can
produce much higher values without being detected. Since the unresolved source
spectrum is different from the interstellar spectrum, it could provide an
explanation of the observed MeV and GeV excesses above the predictions, and we
give an explicit example of how this could work.Comment: Astrophysics and Space Science, in press. (Proceedings of Conference
'The multi-messenger approach to high-energy gamma-ray sources', Barcelona,
2006). Minor changes for accepted version, updated reference
Multiwavelength analysis of four millisecond pulsars
Radio timing observations of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in support of Fermi
LAT observations of the gamma-ray sky enhance the sensitivity of high-energy
pulsation searches. With contemporaneous ephemerides we have detected gamma-ray
pulsations from PSR B1937+21, the first MSP ever discovered, and B1957+20, the
first known black-widow system. The two MSPs share a number of properties: they
are energetic and distant compared to other gamma-ray MSPs, and both of them
exhibit aligned radio and gamma-ray emission peaks, indicating co-located
emission regions in the outer magnetosphere of the pulsars. However, radio
observations are also crucial for revealing MSPs in Fermi unassociated sources.
In a search for radio pulsations at the position of such unassociated sources,
the Nan\c{c}ay Radio Telescope discovered two MSPs, PSRs J2017+0603 and
J2302+4442, increasing the sample of known Galactic disk MSPs. Subsequent radio
timing observations led to the detection of gamma-ray pulsations from these two
MSPs as well. We describe multiwavelength timing and spectral analysis of these
four pulsars, and the modeling of their gamma-ray light curves in the context
of theoretical models.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the Pulsar 2010
Conference, Italy, 10 - 15 October 201
Force-free magnetosphere of an aligned rotator with differential rotation of open magnetic field lines
Here we briefly report on results of self-consistent numerical modeling of a
differentially rotating force-free magnetosphere of an aligned rotator. We show
that differential rotation of the open field line zone is significant for
adjusting of the global structure of the magnetosphere to the current density
flowing through the polar cap cascades. We argue that for most pulsars
stationary cascades in the polar cap can not support stationary force-free
configurations of the magnetosphere.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Presented at the conference "Isolated Neutron
Stars: from the Interior to the Surface", London, April 24-28, 2006; to
appear in Astrophysics and Space Science. Significantly revised version, a
mistake found by ourselfs in the numerical code was corrected, all presented
results are obtained with the correct version of the cod
Structure of pair winds from compact objects with application to emission from bare strange stars
We present the results of numerical simulations of stationary, spherically
outflowing, electron-positron pair winds, with total luminosities in the range
10^{34}- 10^{42} ergs/s. In the concrete example described here, the wind
injection source is a hot, bare, strange star, predicted to be a powerful
source of electron-positron pairs created by the Coulomb barrier at the quark
surface. We find that photons dominate in the emerging emission, and the
emerging photon spectrum is rather hard and differs substantially from the
thermal spectrum expected from a neutron star with the same luminosity. This
might help distinguish the putative bare strange stars from neutron stars.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, added references, to appear in the
proceedings of the conference "Isolated Neutron Stars: from the Surface to
the Interior", London, UK, 24-28 April 200
Matter-induced vertices for photon splitting in a weakly magnetized plasma
We evaluate the three-photon vertex functions at order and in a
weak constant magnetic field at finite temperature and density with on shell
external lines. Their application to the study of the photon splitting process
leads to consider high energy photons whose dispersion relations are not
changed significantly by the plasma effects. The absorption coefficient is
computed and compared with the perturbative vacuum result. For the values of
temperature and density of some astrophysical objects with a weak magnetic
field, the matter effects are negligible.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in PR
Adjustment of the electric current in pulsar magnetospheres and origin of subpulse modulation
The subpulse modulation of pulsar radio emission goes to prove that the
plasma flow in the open field line tube breaks into isolated narrow streams. I
propose a model which attributes formation of streams to the process of the
electric current adjustment in the magnetosphere. A mismatch between the
magnetospheric current distribution and the current injected by the polar cap
accelerator gives rise to reverse plasma flows in the magnetosphere. The
reverse flow shields the electric field in the polar gap and thus shuts up the
plasma production process. I assume that a circulating system of streams is
formed such that the upward streams are produced in narrow gaps separated by
downward streams. The electric drift is small in this model because the
potential drop in narrow gaps is small. The gaps have to drift because by the
time a downward stream reaches the star surface and shields the electric field,
the corresponding gap has to shift. The transverse size of the streams is
determined by the condition that the potential drop in the gaps is sufficient
for the pair production. This yields the radius of the stream roughly 10% of
the polar cap radius, which makes it possible to fit in the observed
morphological features such as the "carousel" with 10-20 subbeams and the
system of the core - two nested cone beams.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur
Nonlinear electrodynamics and CMB polarization
Recently WMAP and BOOMERanG experiments have set stringent constraints on the
polarization angle of photons propagating in an expanding universe: . The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave
Background radiation (CMB) is reviewed in the context of nonlinear
electrodynamics (NLED). We compute the polarization angle of photons
propagating in a cosmological background with planar symmetry. For this
purpose, we use the Pagels-Tomboulis (PT) Lagrangian density describing NLED,
which has the form , where , and the parameter featuring the
non-Maxwellian character of the PT nonlinear description of the electromagnetic
interaction. After looking at the polarization components in the plane
orthogonal to the ()-direction of propagation of the CMB photons, the
polarization angle is defined in terms of the eccentricity of the universe, a
geometrical property whose evolution on cosmic time (from the last scattering
surface to the present) is constrained by the strength of magnetic fields over
extragalactic distances.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, minor changes, references adde
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