18,016 research outputs found
The 25 October 2010 Mentawai tsunami earthquake (M_w 7.8) and the tsunami hazard presented by shallow megathrust ruptures
The 25 October 2010 Mentawai, Indonesia earthquake (M_w 7.8) ruptured the shallow portion of the subduction zone seaward of the Mentawai islands, off-shore of Sumatra, generating 3 to 9 m tsunami run-up along southwestern coasts of the Pagai Islands that took at least 431 lives. Analyses of teleseismic P, SH and Rayleigh waves for finite-fault source rupture characteristics indicate ∼90 s rupture duration with a low rupture velocity of ∼1.5 km/s on the 10° dipping megathrust, with total slip of 2–4 m over an ∼100 km long source region. The seismic moment-scaled energy release is 1.4 × 10^(−6), lower than 2.4 × 10^(−6) found for the 17 July 2006 Java tsunami earthquake (M_w 7.8). The Mentawai event ruptured up-dip of the slip region of the 12 September 2007 Kepulauan earthquake (M_w 7.9), and together with the 4 January 1907 (M 7.6) tsunami earthquake located seaward of Simeulue Island to the northwest along the arc, demonstrates the significant tsunami generation potential for shallow megathrust ruptures in regions up-dip of great underthrusting events in Indonesia and elsewhere
Re-parameterization Invariance in Fractional Flux Periodicity
We analyze a common feature of a nontrivial fractional flux periodicity in
two-dimensional systems. We demonstrate that an addition of fractional flux can
be absorbed into re-parameterization of quantum numbers. For an exact
fractional periodicity, all the electronic states undergo the
re-parameterization, whereas for an approximate periodicity valid in a large
system, only the states near the Fermi level are involved in the
re-parameterization.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, minor changes, final version to appear in J. Phys.
Soc. Jp
Serendipitous discovery of an extended X-ray jet without a radio counterpart in a high-redshift quasar
A recent Chandra observation of the nearby galaxy cluster Abell 585 has led
to the discovery of an extended X-ray jet associated with the high-redshift
background quasar B3 0727+409, a luminous radio source at redshift z=2.5. This
is one of only few examples of high-redshift X-ray jets known to date. It has a
clear extension of about 12", corresponding to a projected length of ~100 kpc,
with a possible hot spot located 35" from the quasar. The archival high
resolution VLA maps surprisingly reveal no extended jet emission, except for
one knot about 1.4" from the quasar. The high X-ray to radio luminosity ratio
for this source appears consistent with the amplification
expected from the inverse Compton radiative model. This serendipitous discovery
may signal the existence of an entire population of similar systems with bright
X-ray and faint radio jets at high redshift, a selection bias which must be
accounted for when drawing any conclusions about the redshift evolution of jet
properties and indeed about the cosmological evolution of supermassive black
holes and active galactic nuclei in general
Sequestering CP Violation and GIM-Violation with Warped Extra Dimensions
We propose a model of spontaneous CP violation to address the strong CP
problem in warped extra dimensions that relies on sequestering flavor and CP
violation. We assume that brane-localized Higgs Yukawa interactions respect a
U(3) flavor symmetry that is broken only by bulk fermion mass and Yukawa terms.
All CP violation arises from the vev of a CP-odd scalar field localized in the
bulk. To suppress radiative corrections to theta-bar, the doublet quarks in
this model are localized on the IR brane. We calculate constraints from
flavor-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), precision electroweak measurements,
CKM unitarity, and the electric dipole moments in this model and predict
theta-bar to be at least about 10^-12.Comment: 38 page
Slip energy barriers in aluminum and implications for ductile versus brittle behavior
We conisder the brittle versus ductile behavior of aluminum in the framework
of the Peierls-model analysis of dislocation emission from a crack tip. To this
end, we perform first-principles quantum mechanical calculations for the
unstable stacking energy of aluminum along the Shockley partial
slip route. Our calculations are based on density functional theory and the
local density approximation and include full atomic and volume relaxation. We
find that in aluminum J/m. Within the Peierls-model
analysis, this value would predict a brittle solid which poses an interesting
problem since aluminum is typically considered ductile. The resolution may be
given by one of three possibilites: (a) Aluminum is indeed brittle at zero
temperature, and becomes ductile at a finite temperature due to motion of
pre-existing dislocations which relax the stress concentration at the crack
tip. (b) Dislocation emission at the crack tip is itself a thermally activated
process. (c) Aluminum is actually ductile at all temperatures and the
theoretical model employed needs to be significantly improved in order to
resolve the apparent contradiction.Comment: 4 figures (not included; send requests to [email protected]
Aqueous-phase photochemical oxidation and direct photolysis of vanillin – a model compound of methoxy phenols from biomass burning
We present here experimental results on aqueous-phase (A) photochemical
oxidation (with UV and OH radicals generated from H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> photolysis)
and (B) direct photolysis (with only UV irradiation) of a methoxy phenol,
vanillin (VL), as a model compound from biomass burning. Both on-line
aerosol mass spectrometric (AMS) characterization and off-line chemical
analyses were performed. AMS analyses of dried atomized droplets of the bulk
reacting mixtures showed that VL almost entirely evaporates during the
drying process. Large amounts of organic mass remained in the particle phase
after reactions under both conditions. Under condition (A), AMS measured
organic mass first increased rapidly and then decreased, attributable to the
formation of non-volatile products and subsequent formation of smaller and
volatile products, respectively. The oxygen-to-carbon (O : C) ratio of the
products reached 1.5 after about 80 min, but dropped substantially
thereafter. In contrast, organic mass increased slowly under condition (B).
The O : C ratio reached 1.0 after 180 min. In off-line analyses, small
oxygenates were detected under condition (A), while hydroxylated products
and dimers of VL were detected under condition (B). Particle hygroscopic
growth factor (GF) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activity of the
reacting mixtures were found to depend on both organic volume fraction and
the degree of oxygenation of organics. Results show that (1) aqueous-phase
processes can lead to the retention of a large portion of the organic mass
in the particle phase; (2) once retained, this portion of organic mass
significantly changes the hygroscopicity and CCN activity of the aerosol
particles; (3) intensive photochemical oxidation gave rise to an O : C ratio
as high as 1.5 but the ratio decreased as further oxidation led to smaller
and more volatile products; and (4) polymerization occurred with direct
photolysis, resulting in high-molecular-weight products of a yellowish
color. This study demonstrates that aqueous-phase reactions of a
methoxy phenol can lead to substantial amount of secondary organic aerosol
(SOA) formation. Given the vast amount of biomass burning input globally,
model representation of either the SOA budget or their subsequent effects
would not be adequate if the contribution of SOA formation from
aqueous-phase reactions of methoxy phenols is not considered
Explicit Zeta Functions for Bosonic and Fermionic Fields on a Noncommutative Toroidal Spacetime
Explicit formulas for the zeta functions corresponding to
bosonic () and to fermionic () quantum fields living on a
noncommutative, partially toroidal spacetime are derived. Formulas for the most
general case of the zeta function associated to a quadratic+linear+constant
form (in {\bf Z}) are obtained. They provide the analytical continuation of the
zeta functions in question to the whole complex plane, in terms of series
of Bessel functions (of fast, exponential convergence), thus being extended
Chowla-Selberg formulas. As well known, this is the most convenient expression
that can be found for the analytical continuation of a zeta function, in
particular, the residua of the poles and their finite parts are explicitly
given there. An important novelty is the fact that simple poles show up at
, as well as in other places (simple or double, depending on the number of
compactified, noncompactified, and noncommutative dimensions of the spacetime),
where they had never appeared before. This poses a challenge to the
zeta-function regularization procedure.Comment: 15 pages, no figures, LaTeX fil
- …