3,949 research outputs found
Centaur propellant acquisition system study
A study was performed to determine the desirability of replacing the hydrogen peroxide settling system on the Centaur D-1S with a capillary acquisition system. A comprehensive screening was performed to select the most promising capillary device fluid acquisition, thermal conditioning, and fabrication techniques. Refillable start baskets and bypass feed start tanks were selected for detailed design. Critical analysis areas were settling and refilling, start sequence development with an initially dry boost pump, and cooling the fluid delivered to the boost pump in order to provide necessary net position suction head (NPSH). Design drawings were prepared for the start basket and start tank concepts for both LO2 and LH2 tanks. System comparisons indicated that the start baskets using wicking for thermal conditioning, and thermal subcooling for boost pump NPSH, are the most desirable systems for future development
Dipole excitation and geometry of borromean nuclei
We analyze the Coulomb breakup cross sections of Li and He nuclei
using a three-body model with a density-dependent contact interaction. We show
that the concentration of the B(E1) strength near the threshold can be well
reproduced with this model. With the help of the calculated B(E1) value, we
extract the root-mean-square (rms) distance between the core nucleus and the
center of mass of two valence neutrons without resorting to the sum rule, which
may suffer from unphysical Pauli forbidden transitions. Together with the
empirical rms distance between the neutrons obtained from the matter radius
study and also from the three-body correlation study in the break-up reaction,
we convert these rms distances to the mean opening angle between the valence
neutrons from the core nucleus. We find that the obtained mean opening angles
in Li and He agree with the three-body model predictions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figure
A Simple Explanation for the X(3872) Mass Shift Observed for Decay to D^{*0} {D^0}bar
We propose a simple explanation for the increase of approximately
3 MeV/c^2 in the mass value of the X(3872) obtained from
D^{*0} {D^0}bar decay relative to that obtained from decay to J/psi pi+ pi-.
If the total width of the X(3872) is 2-3 MeV, the peak position in the
D^{*0} {D^0}bar invariant mass distribution is sensitive to the final state
orbital angular momentum because of the proximity of the X(3872) to D^{*0}
{D^0}bar threshold. We show that for total width 3 MeV and one unit of orbital
angular momentum, a mass shift ~3 MeV/c^2 is obtained; experimental mass
resolution should slightly increase this value. A consequence is that
spin-parity 2^- is favored for the X(3872).Comment: 3.5 pages, 4 eps figure
Energy Efficient Engine exhaust mixer model technology report addendum; phase 3 test program
The Phase 3 exhaust mixer test program was conducted to explore the trends established during previous Phases 1 and 2. Combinations of mixer design parameters were tested. Phase 3 testing showed that the best performance achievable within tailpipe length and diameter constraints is 2.55 percent better than an optimized separate flow base line. A reduced penetration design achieved about the same overall performance level at a substantially lower level of excess pressure loss but with a small reduction in mixing. To improve reliability of the data, the hot and cold flow thrust coefficient analysis used in Phases 1 and 2 was augmented by calculating percent mixing from traverse data. Relative change in percent mixing between configurations was determined from thrust and flow coefficient increments. The calculation procedure developed was found to be a useful tool in assessing mixer performance. Detailed flow field data were obtained to facilitate calibration of computer codes
Cryogenic zero-gravity prototype vent system
Design, fabrication, and tests of prototype cryogenic zero-gravity heat exchanger vent syste
A Single Atom as a Mirror of an Optical Cavity
By tightly focussing a laser field onto a single cold ion trapped in front of
a far-distant dielectric mirror, we could observe a quantum electrodynamic
effect whereby the ion behaves as the optical mirror of a Fabry-P\'erot cavity.
We show that the amplitude of the laser field is significantly altered due to a
modification of the electromagnetic mode structure around the atom in a novel
regime in which the laser intensity is already changed by the atom alone. e
propose a direct application of this system as a quantum memory for single
photons.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letter
Clustering by soft-constraint affinity propagation: Applications to gene-expression data
Motivation: Similarity-measure based clustering is a crucial problem
appearing throughout scientific data analysis. Recently, a powerful new
algorithm called Affinity Propagation (AP) based on message-passing techniques
was proposed by Frey and Dueck \cite{Frey07}. In AP, each cluster is identified
by a common exemplar all other data points of the same cluster refer to, and
exemplars have to refer to themselves. Albeit its proved power, AP in its
present form suffers from a number of drawbacks. The hard constraint of having
exactly one exemplar per cluster restricts AP to classes of regularly shaped
clusters, and leads to suboptimal performance, {\it e.g.}, in analyzing gene
expression data. Results: This limitation can be overcome by relaxing the AP
hard constraints. A new parameter controls the importance of the constraints
compared to the aim of maximizing the overall similarity, and allows to
interpolate between the simple case where each data point selects its closest
neighbor as an exemplar and the original AP. The resulting soft-constraint
affinity propagation (SCAP) becomes more informative, accurate and leads to
more stable clustering. Even though a new {\it a priori} free-parameter is
introduced, the overall dependence of the algorithm on external tuning is
reduced, as robustness is increased and an optimal strategy for parameter
selection emerges more naturally. SCAP is tested on biological benchmark data,
including in particular microarray data related to various cancer types. We
show that the algorithm efficiently unveils the hierarchical cluster structure
present in the data sets. Further on, it allows to extract sparse gene
expression signatures for each cluster.Comment: 11 pages, supplementary material:
http://isiosf.isi.it/~weigt/scap_supplement.pd
Low energy bounds on Poincare violation in causal set theory
In the causal set approach to quantum gravity, Poincar\'{e} symmetry is
modified by swerving in spacetime, induced by the random lattice discretization
of the space-time structure. The broken translational symmetry at short
distances is argued to lead to a residual diffusion in momentum space, whereby
a particle can acquire energy and momentum by drift along its mass shell and a
system in equilibrium can spontaneously heat up. We consider bounds on the rate
of momentum space diffusion coming from astrophysical molecular clouds, nuclear
stability and cosmological neutrino background. We find that the strongest
limits come from relic neutrinos, which we estimate to constrain the momentum
space diffusion constant by for neutrinos with
masses , improving the previously quoted bounds by
roughly 17 orders of magnitude.Comment: Additional discussion about behavior of alpha particles in nuclei
added. Version matches that accepted in PR
Extracting CKM phase from and ,
We discuss some aspects of the search for CP asymmetry in the three body B
decays, revealed through the interference among neighbor resonances in the
Dalitz plot. We propose a competitive method to extract the CKM angle
combining Dalitz plot amplitude analysis of
and untagged , . The method also obtains the
ratio and phase difference between the {\it tree} and {\it penguin}
contributions from and decays and the
CP asymmetry between and . From Monte Carlo studies of 100K
events for the neutral mesons, we show the possibility of measuring .Comment: Revised enlarged version to appear at Phys Rev
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