Horizontal Branch Stars: The Interplay between Observations and Theory, and Insights into the Formation of the Galaxy

We review HB stars in a broad astrophysical context, including both variable and non-variable stars. A reassessment of the Oosterhoff dichotomy is presented, which provides unprecedented detail regarding its origin and systematics. We show that the Oosterhoff dichotomy and the distribution of globular clusters (GCs) in the HB morphology-metallicity plane both exclude, with high statistical significance, the possibility that the Galactic halo may have formed from the accretion of dwarf galaxies resembling present-day Milky Way satellites such as Fornax, Sagittarius, and the LMC. A rediscussion of the second-parameter problem is presented. A technique is proposed to estimate the HB types of extragalactic GCs on the basis of integrated far-UV photometry. The relationship between the absolute V magnitude of the HB at the RR Lyrae level and metallicity, as obtained on the basis of trigonometric parallax measurements for the star RR Lyrae, is also revisited, giving a distance modulus to the LMC of (m-M)_0 = 18.44+/-0.11. RR Lyrae period change rates are studied. Finally, the conductive opacities used in evolutionary calculations of low-mass stars are investigated. [ABRIDGED]Comment: 56 pages, 22 figures. Invited review, to appear in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Plasma flow switch experiment on Procyon

This report presents the results obtained from a series of plasma flow switch experiments done on the Procyon explosive pulse power generator. These experiments involved switching into a fixed inductance dummy load and also into a dynamic implosion load. The results indicated that the switch did fairly well at switching current into the load, but the results for the implosion are more ambiguous. The results are compared to calculations and the implications for future plasma flow switch work are discussed

Electrical resistivity measurements of a dense aluminum plasma

In this paper the authors report results of experiments to measure the electrical resistivity for a dense strongly coupled aluminum plasma. These plasmas cover the density and temperature range from near solid density and room temperature to .03x solid and 40 eV. These conditions give values of {Lambda} = 5--6. The results indicate the resistivity is higher in this regime than most theories. Only the results of some density functional calculations give results consistent with the data