The microgravity environment of the D1 mission

Some characteristic features and results of D1 microgravity measurements are discussed as performed in the Material Science Double Rack (MSDR) and the Materials Science Double Rack for Experiment Modules and Apparatus (MEDEA). Starting with a brief review of the main potential disturbances, the payload aspects of interest to the analysis and the accelerometer measuring systems are described. The microgravity data are analyzed with respect to selected mission events such as thruster firings for attitude control, operations of Spacelab experiment facilities, vestibular experiments and crew activities. The origins are divided into orbit, vehicle, and experiment induced perturbations. It has been found that the microgravity-environment is dictated mainly by payload-induced perturbations. To reduce the microgravity-level, the design of some experiment facilities has to be improved by minimizing the number of moving parts, decoupling of disturbing units from experiment facilities, by taking damping measures, etc. In addition, strongly disturbing experiments and very sensitive investigations should be performed in separate mission phases

Observations of red-giant variable stars by Aboriginal Australians

Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine two Aboriginal oral traditions from South Australia that describe the periodic changing brightness in three pulsating, red-giant variable stars: Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), and Antares (Alpha Scorpii). The Australian Aboriginal accounts stand as the only known descriptions of pulsating variable stars in any Indigenous oral tradition in the world. Researchers examining these oral traditions over the last century, including anthropologists and astronomers, missed the description of these stars as being variable in nature as the ethnographic record contained several misidentifications of stars and celestial objects. Arguably, ethnographers working on Indigenous Knowledge Systems should have academic training in both the natural and social sciences.Comment: The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2018

Scaling of the spin stiffness in random spin-1/2 chains : Crossover from pure-metallic behaviour to random singlet-localized regime

In this paper we study the localization transition induced by the disorder in random antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chains. The results of numerical large scale computations are presented for the XX model using its free fermions representation. The scaling behavior of the spin stiffness is investigated for various disorder strengths. The disorder dependence of the localization length is studied and a comparison between numerical results and bosonization arguments is presented. A non trivial connection between localization effects and the crossover from the pure XX fixed point to the infinite randomness fixed point is pointed out.Comment: Published version, 7 pages, 6 figure

Monolithic Directly-Modulated Multi-Wavelength- Channel GaInAsP/InP Micro-Ring Laser Array

Two directly-modulated GaInAsP/InP micro-rings with different radii vertically-coupled on a common bus are assessed for both independent and simultaneous operation. A device area <0.12mm^2 per microring allows the generation of 2λx1Gb/s WDM signals with 6nm wavelength separation. These show successful transmission over 25km of single-mode-fibre with < 0.2dB power penalty

Disorder Induced Quantum Phase Transition in Random-Exchange Spin-1/2 Chains

We investigate the effect of quenched bond-disorder on the anisotropic spin-1/2 (XXZ) chain as a model for disorder induced quantum phase transitions. We find non-universal behavior of the average correlation functions for weak disorder, followed by a quantum phase transition into a strongly disordered phase with only short-range xy-correlations. We find no evidence for the universal strong-disorder fixed point predicted by the real-space renormalization group, suggesting a qualitatively different view of the relationship between quantum fluctuations and disorder.Comment: 4 pages, 4 postscript figures, needs RevTeX

Energy Conservation and Saturation in Small-x Evolution

Important corrections to BFKL evolution are obtained from non-leading contributions and from non-linear effects due to unitarisation or saturation. It has been difficult to estimate the relative importance of these effects, as NLO effects are most easily accounted for in momentum space while unitarisation and saturation are easier in transverse coordinate space. An essential component of the NLO contributions is due to energy conservation effects, and in this paper we present a model for implementing such effects together with saturation in Mueller's dipole evolution formalism. We find that energy conservation severely dampens the small-x rise of the gluon density and, as a consequence, the onset of saturation is delayed. Using a simple model for the proton we obtain a reasonable qualitative description of the x-dependence of F2 at low Q^2 as measured at HERA even without saturation effects. We also give qualitative descriptions of the energy dependence of the cross section for gamma*-gamma* and gamma*-nucleus scattering

Report of the QCD Working Group

The activities of the QCD working group concentrated on improving the understanding and Monte Carlo simulation of multi-jet final states due to hard QCD processes at LEP, i.e. quark-antiquark plus multi-gluon and/or secondary quark production, with particular emphasis on four-jet final states and b-quark mass effects. Specific topics covered are: relevant developments in the main event generators PYTHIA, HERWIG and ARIADNE; the new multi-jet generator APACIC++; description and tuning of inclusive (all-flavour) jet rates; quark mass effects in the three- and four-jet rates; mass, higher-order and hadronization effects in four-jet angular and shape distributions; b-quark fragmentation and gluon splitting into b-quarks.Comment: 95 pages, 48 figures, contribution to Proceedings of the LEP2 Monte Carlo Workshop. References for NLO 4-jet matrix elements adde

Can a frustrated spin-cluster model describe the low-temperature physics of NaV_2O_5 ?

Recent experimental evidence suggest the existence of three distinct V-valence states (V^{+4}, V^{+4.5} and V^{+5}) in the low-temperature phase of NaV_2O_5 in apparent discrepancy with the observed spin-gap. We investigate a novel spin cluster model, consisting of weakly coupled, frustrated four-spin clusters aligned along the crystallographic b-axis that was recently proposed to reconcile these experimental observations. We have studied the phase diagram and the magnon dispersion relation of this model using DMRG, exact diagonalization and a novel cluster-operator theory. We find a spin-gap for all parameter values and two distinct phases, a cluster phase and a Haldane phase. We evaluate the size of the gap and the magnon dispersion and find no parameter regime which would reproduce the experimental results. We conclude that this model is inappropriate for the low-temperature regime of NaV_2O_5