Development of the Universe and New Cosmology

Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of cosmological expansion are being precisely measured for the first time, and a consistent standard picture of the Universe is beginning to emerge. Recent developments in cosmology give rise the intriguing possibility that all structures in the Universe, from superclusters to planets, had a quantum-mechanical origin in its earliest moments. Furthermore, these ideas are not idle theorizing, but predictive, and subject to meaningful experimental test. We review the concordance model of the development of the Universe, as well as evidence for the observational revolution that this field is going through. This already provides us with important information on particle physics, which is inaccessible to accelerators.Comment: 9 pages; The German translation of this mini review can be uploaded from http://www.cc.ethz.ch/bulletin/ New references are added with respective minor changes of tex

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of the Morphological and Land use Characteristics of the Buffalo River Watershed

The Buffalo River was established by Congress iQ. 1972 as the first National River in the United States. The Buffalo River, which originates in the higher elevations of the Boston Mountains in Newton County, is one of the few remaining free-flowing streams in Arkansas. It is considered to be one of Arkansas\u27 greatest natural treasures, and thus, there is strong interest in protecting it from anthropogenic influences. An initial characterization of the soil taxonomic units, watershed boundaries, topography and physiographic units in the Buffalo River Watershed was presented by Scott and Smith (1994). The spatial distribution of the geologic units in the watershed was presented by Hofer et al. (1995)

New obstructions to symplectic embeddings

In this paper we establish new restrictions on symplectic embeddings of certain convex domains into symplectic vector spaces. These restrictions are stronger than those implied by the Ekeland-Hofer capacities. By refining an embedding technique due to Guth, we also show that they are sharp.Comment: 80 pages, 3 figures, v2: improved exposition and minor corrections, v3: Final version, expanded and improved exposition and minor corrections. The final publication is available at link.springer.co

Spatial Distribution of the Surface Geology and 1992 Land Use of the Buffalo River Watershed

The Buffalo River was established by Congress in 1972 as the first National River in the United States and is one of the few remaining free-flowing streams in Arkansas . The Buffalo River flows through the three major physiographic provinces of northern Arkansas, originating in the higher elevations of the Boston Mountains, and flowing generally northeastward to cut through the Springfield and Salem Plateaus. It drops from approximately 2000 feet in the headwaters to around 500 feet above sea level at its confluence with the White River in Marion County. The Buffalo River is considered to be one of Arkansas\u27 greatest natural treasures; thus there is strong interest in protecting it from undue anthropogenic influences. A general description of the area within the Buffalo River Watershed was given by Smith (1967)

Charge Determination of High Energy Electrons and Nuclei by Synchrotron Radiation with AMS

We investigate the possibilities to identify the charge of TeV electrons and PeV nuclei using their synchrotron radiation in the earth's magnetic field. Characteristics of synchrotron radiation photons are evaluated and methods of detection are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Global surfaces of section in the planar restricted 3-body problem

The restricted planar three-body problem has a rich history, yet many unanswered questions still remain. In the present paper we prove the existence of a global surface of section near the smaller body in a new range of energies and mass ratios for which the Hill's region still has three connected components. The approach relies on recent global methods in symplectic geometry and contrasts sharply with the perturbative methods used until now.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Compactness results in Symplectic Field Theory

This is one in a series of papers devoted to the foundations of Symplectic Field Theory sketched in [Y Eliashberg, A Givental and H Hofer, Introduction to Symplectic Field Theory, Geom. Funct. Anal. Special Volume, Part II (2000) 560--673]. We prove compactness results for moduli spaces of holomorphic curves arising in Symplectic Field Theory. The theorems generalize Gromov's compactness theorem in [M Gromov, Pseudo-holomorphic curves in symplectic manifolds, Invent. Math. 82 (1985) 307--347] as well as compactness theorems in Floer homology theory, [A Floer, The unregularized gradient flow of the symplectic action, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 41 (1988) 775--813 and Morse theory for Lagrangian intersections, J. Diff. Geom. 28 (1988) 513--547], and in contact geometry, [H Hofer, Pseudo-holomorphic curves and Weinstein conjecture in dimension three, Invent. Math. 114 (1993) 307--347 and H Hofer, K Wysocki and E Zehnder, Foliations of the Tight Three Sphere, Annals of Mathematics, 157 (2003) 125--255].Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol7/paper25.abs.htm

Algebraic Torsion in Contact Manifolds

We extract a nonnegative integer-valued invariant, which we call the "order of algebraic torsion", from the Symplectic Field Theory of a closed contact manifold, and show that its finiteness gives obstructions to the existence of symplectic fillings and exact symplectic cobordisms. A contact manifold has algebraic torsion of order zero if and only if it is algebraically overtwisted (i.e. has trivial contact homology), and any contact 3-manifold with positive Giroux torsion has algebraic torsion of order one (though the converse is not true). We also construct examples for each nonnegative k of contact 3-manifolds that have algebraic torsion of order k but not k - 1, and derive consequences for contact surgeries on such manifolds. The appendix by Michael Hutchings gives an alternative proof of our cobordism obstructions in dimension three using a refinement of the contact invariant in Embedded Contact Homology.Comment: 53 pages, 4 figures, with an appendix by Michael Hutchings; v.3 is a final update to agree with the published paper, and also corrects a minor error that appeared in the published version of the appendi