11,677 research outputs found
A 1.82 m^2 ring laser gyroscope for nano-rotational motion sensing
We present a fully active-controlled He-Ne ring laser gyroscope, operating in
square cavity 1.35 m in side. The apparatus is designed to provide a very low
mechanical and thermal drift of the ring cavity geometry and is conceived to be
operative in two different orientations of the laser plane, in order to detect
rotations around the vertical or the horizontal direction. Since June 2010 the
system is active inside the Virgo interferometer central area with the aim of
performing high sensitivity measurements of environmental rotational noise. So
far, continuous not attempted operation of the gyroscope has been longer than
30 days. The main characteristics of the laser, the active remote-controlled
stabilization systems and the data acquisition techniques are presented. An
off-line data processing, supported by a simple model of the sensor, is shown
to improve the effective long term stability. A rotational sensitivity at the
level of ten nanoradiants per squareroot of Hz below 1 Hz, very close to the
required specification for the improvement of the Virgo suspension control
system, is demonstrated for the configuration where the laser plane is
horizontal
Near-Infrared spectroscopy of the super star cluster in NGC1705
We study the near-infrared properties of the super star cluster NGC1750-1 in
order to constrain its spatial extent, its stellar population and its age. We
use adaptive optics assisted integral field spectroscopy with SINFONI on the
VLT. We estimate the spatial extent of the cluster and extract its K-band
spectrum from which we constrain the age of the dominant stellar population.
Our observations have an angular resolution of about 0.11", providing an upper
limit on the cluster radius of 2.85+/-0.50 pc depending on the assumed
distance. The K-band spectrum is dominated by strong CO absorption bandheads
typical of red supergiants. Its spectral type is equivalent to a K4-5I star.
Using evolutionary tracks from the Geneva and Utrecht groups, we determine an
age of 12+/-6 Myr. The large uncertainty is rooted in the large difference
between the Geneva and Utrecht tracks in the red supergiants regime. The
absence of ionized gas lines in the K-band spectrum is consistent with the
absence of O and/or Wolf-Rayet stars in the cluster, as expected for the
estimated age.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Research Note accepted in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
Spectral and Diffusive Properties of Silver-Mean Quasicrystals in 1,2, and 3 Dimensions
Spectral properties and anomalous diffusion in the silver-mean (octonacci)
quasicrystals in d=1,2,3 are investigated using numerical simulations of the
return probability C(t) and the width of the wave packet w(t) for various
values of the hopping strength v. In all dimensions we find C(t)\sim
t^{-\delta}, with results suggesting a crossover from \delta<1 to \delta=1 when
v is varied in d=2,3, which is compatible with the change of the spectral
measure from singular continuous to absolute continuous; and we find w(t)\sim
t^{\beta} with 0<\beta(v)<1 corresponding to anomalous diffusion. Results
strongly suggest that \beta(v) is independent of d. The scaling of the inverse
participation ratio suggests that states remain delocalized even for very small
hopping amplitude v. A study of the dynamics of initially localized wavepackets
in large three-dimensional quasiperiodic structures furthermore reveals that
wavepackets composed of eigenstates from an interval around the band edge
diffuse faster than those composed of eigenstates from an interval of the
band-center states: while the former diffuse anomalously, the latter appear to
diffuse slower than any power law.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl
The Anderson model of localization: a challenge for modern eigenvalue methods
We present a comparative study of the application of modern eigenvalue
algorithms to an eigenvalue problem arising in quantum physics, namely, the
computation of a few interior eigenvalues and their associated eigenvectors for
the large, sparse, real, symmetric, and indefinite matrices of the Anderson
model of localization. We compare the Lanczos algorithm in the 1987
implementation of Cullum and Willoughby with the implicitly restarted Arnoldi
method coupled with polynomial and several shift-and-invert convergence
accelerators as well as with a sparse hybrid tridiagonalization method. We
demonstrate that for our problem the Lanczos implementation is faster and more
memory efficient than the other approaches. This seemingly innocuous problem
presents a major challenge for all modern eigenvalue algorithms.Comment: 16 LaTeX pages with 3 figures include
Nonlinear projective filtering in a data stream
We introduce a modified algorithm to perform nonlinear filtering of a time
series by locally linear phase space projections. Unlike previous
implementations, the algorithm can be used not only for a posteriori processing
but includes the possibility to perform real time filtering in a data stream.
The data base that represents the phase space structure generated by the data
is updated dynamically. This also allows filtering of non-stationary signals
and dynamic parameter adjustment. We discuss exemplary applications, including
the real time extraction of the fetal electrocardiogram from abdominal
recordings.Comment: 8 page
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