The anomalous U(1) global symmetry and flavors from an SU(5) x SU(5)′' GUT in Z12−IZ_{12-I} orbifold compactification

In string compactifications, frequently there appears the anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry which belonged to E8$\times$E8 of the heterotic string. This anomalous U(1) gauge boson obtains mass at the compactification scale, just below $10^{18\,}$GeV, by absorbing one pseudoscalar (corresponding to the model-independent axion) from the second rank anti-symmetric tensor field $B_{MN}$. Below the compactification scale, there results a global symmetry U(1)$_{\rm anom}$ whose charge $Q_{\rm anom}$ is the original gauge U(1) charge. This is the most natural global symmetry, realizing the "invisible" axion. This global symmetry U(1)$_{\rm anom}$ is suitable for a flavor symmetry. In the simplest compactification model with the flipped SU(5) grand unification, we calculate all the low energy parameters in terms of the vacuum expectation values of the standard model singlets.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figur

QCD axion and quintessential axion

The axion solution of the strong CP problem is reviewed together with the other strong CP solutions. We also point out the quintessential axion(quintaxion) whose potential can be extremely flat due to the tiny ratio of the hidden sector quark mass and the intermediate hidden sector scale. The quintaxion candidates are supposed to be the string theory axions, the model independent or the model dependent axions.Comment: 15 pages. Talk presented at Castle Ringberg, June 9-14, 200

A pilot-scale fertiliser drawn forward osmosis and nanofiltration hybrid system for desalination

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The usage of fresh water for both non-potable and potable purposes will increase with the surging growth in water demand. Rapid increases in population contribute to the significant consumption of fresh water resources and massive increase in food demand. Water consumption in the agricultural sector is more than 70% of the total water usage worldwide. Water scarcity is one of the greatest issues confronting people everywhere and almost one-fifth of the world’s population lives in areas of physical water scarcity. Sustainable fresh water resources have to be created and developed to solve this water problem; however, 97.5% of the earth’s water is seawater. Nevertheless, it is an abundant and unlimited source of saline water, and the desalination of seawater or brackish groundwater for both non-potable and potable water supply is therefore increasingly being considered as one of the solutions to water scarcity. A drawback is that the significant energy consumption of current desalination technologies mostly contributes to the cost of desalination. Cost-effective desalination technology for non-potable water, particularly for irrigation use, would contribute to a significant reduction in freshwater consumption and would make more freshwater available for other potable uses. One of the most promising technologies is the forward osmosis (FO) process in which the driving force is generated by the concentration gradient, unlike the reverse osmosis (RO) process where the driving force is hydraulic pressure, which leads to significant energy consumption. In the FO process, freshwater is extracted from saline water and flows to a concentrated draw solution (DS) using a special FO membrane. However, the FO process still has issues such as the lack of a suitable DS and FO membrane, resulting in it is having limited application for drinking water supply purposes. In addition, an additional process to separate DS solutes and pure water is required which could lead to increased energy consumption. Considering the challenges of the FO process for potable water, a novel concept of fertiliser drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) has recently been introduced. In this process, a highly concentrated fertiliser solution is used as the DS to extract water from saline water sources using a semi-permeable membrane by natural osmosis. The main concept and advantages of the FDFO desalination process is that the final product water, the diluted fertiliser DS, can be used for direct fertigation and thus the separation of draw solutes is not necessary. The FDFO process requires significantly less energy because there is almost zero hydraulic pressure. However, because of a number of intrinsic process limitations with FO, the diluted fertiliser DS does not usually meet the water quality standards for direct fertigation especially when a high salt concentration of feed water is used. The final diluted DS may require dilution to several orders of magnitude before it is suitable for direct application. To reduce the concentration of the diluted DS, the nanofiltration (NF) process has been suggested as a post-treatment process to reduce fertiliser nutrient concentrations in the diluted fertiliser DS. The concept of the integrated FDFO desalination process with NF membrane has been suggested and evaluated in bench-scale experiments in earlier studies; consequently, a large-scale FDFO-NF desalination process has been fabricated and tested in this study on a pilot-scale level. The pilot-scale unit consists of three main components: microfiltration (MF) pre-treatment for FDFO desalination and NF for post reduction of nutrient concentrations. The main objective of this study is the process optimisation of the FDFO-NF unit. Specific objectives include investigating the influence of operating conditions such as cross flow rates, DS concentration, feed salinity and type of spacer on the performance of the pilot-scale unit. Two types of 8040 FO membrane modules (the corrugated spacer (CS) module and the medium spacer (MS) module) were used for the FDFO process. Ammonium sulphate (SOA) was used as the fertiliser DS, while the feed water was prepared using salts obtained from brackish groundwater in the Murray-Darling Basin. The water flux increased at higher feed flow rates caused by the increase in mass transfer coefficient across the membrane surface. In addition, the effect of feed total dissolved solids (TDS) played an important role in the flux performance in both FO modules. Furthermore, it was observed that the 8040 FO CS module (corrugated spacer) performed better than the 8040 FO MS (medium spacer) in all experiments. It is likely that this is because the corrugated spacer provides better hydrodynamic conditions within the channel for feed thereby reducing the dilutive and concentrative external concentration polarisation and ultimately enhancing the water flux. The other possibility is that the larger DS volume within the spacer, which can maintain a higher level of DS concentration, leading to a higher average water flux of modules but a lower dilution effect, was observed in the CS module. In this study, it has been indicated that the role of the spacer’s design and thickness on the spiral wound module performance is important. Fertiliser nutrient concentrations from the NF process in the final product can be significantly influenced by both the concentration and the components of the diluted DS produced by both FO modules. Investigation of FO module performance shows the significance of the optimisation of various operating parameters and the modular design of the membrane in the overall performance of the FO process. The performance of the pilot-scale NF (4040 module) process has been assessed in terms of water flux and salt rejection. A pilot-scale NF process was applied as a post-treatment for the diluted fertiliser DS produced by the FDFO desalination to reduce the concentration of fertiliser nutrient. The NF process was conducted under different operating parameters; feed flow rate and concentration and applied pressures. Nanofiltration was effective in reducing nitrogen (N) concentration in the diluted draw solution. Although other factors such as the applied pressure and cross flow rate played a role in the performance of the pilot-scale NF process, the influence of the feed concentration was more significant on the specific water flux and the nutrient rejection. The energy requirements of the FDFO-NF desalination process were initially investigated using the operating values. In this study, the total energy consumption of the process refers to the electrical energy usage of the pumps thus the pump power efficiency has been converted to the specific energy consumption (SEC). The SEC of the pilot-scale system was dependent on the operation of the FDFO desalination process because the lower diluted fertiliser refers to lower energy consumption in the NF process. The most attractive advantage of the FO process is that it leads to lower energy consumption than current desalination processes due to the natural osmosis in the FO process. Therefore, in this study, it was proved that the specific energy consumption of our FDFO-NF hybrid system for brackish water desalination was around 47% less than the NF-SWRO hybrid system for desalination

Hybridization and Decay of Magnetic Excitations in two-dimensional Triangular Lattice Antiferromagnets

Elementary quasiparticles in solids such as phonons and magnons occasionally have nontrivial interactions between them, as well as among themselves. As a result, their energy eigenvalues are renormalized, the quasiparticles spontaneously decay into a multi-particle continuum state, or they are hybridized with each other when their energies are close. As discussed in this review, such anomalous features can appear dominantly in quantum magnets but are not, a priori, negligible for magnetic systems with larger spin values and noncollinear magnetic structures. We review the unconventional magnetic excitations in two-dimensional triangular lattice antiferromagnets and discuss their implications on related issues.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Some Inequalities in 2-inner Product Spaces

In this paper we extend some results on the refinement of Cauchy-Buniakowski-Schwarz's inequality and Aćzel's inequality in inner product spaces to 2-inner product spaces

Catching the Right Wave: Evaluating Wave Energy Resources and Potential Compatibility with Existing Marine and Coastal Uses

Many hope that ocean waves will be a source for clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy, yet wave energy conversion facilities may affect marine ecosystems through a variety of mechanisms, including competition with other human uses. We developed a decision-support tool to assist siting wave energy facilities, which allows the user to balance the need for profitability of the facilities with the need to minimize conflicts with other ocean uses. Our wave energy model quantifies harvestable wave energy and evaluates the net present value (NPV) of a wave energy facility based on a capital investment analysis. The model has a flexible framework and can be easily applied to wave energy projects at local, regional, and global scales. We applied the model and compatibility analysis on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada to provide information for ongoing marine spatial planning, including potential wave energy projects. In particular, we conducted a spatial overlap analysis with a variety of existing uses and ecological characteristics, and a quantitative compatibility analysis with commercial fisheries data. We found that wave power and harvestable wave energy gradually increase offshore as wave conditions intensify. However, areas with high economic potential for wave energy facilities were closer to cable landing points because of the cost of bringing energy ashore and thus in nearshore areas that support a number of different human uses. We show that the maximum combined economic benefit from wave energy and other uses is likely to be realized if wave energy facilities are sited in areas that maximize wave energy NPV and minimize conflict with existing ocean uses. Our tools will help decision-makers explore alternative locations for wave energy facilities by mapping expected wave energy NPV and helping to identify sites that provide maximal returns yet avoid spatial competition with existing ocean uses

On Some Grüss Type Inequality in 2-Inner Product Spaces and Applications

In this paper, we shall give a generalization of the Grüss type inequality and obtain some applications of the Grüss type inequality in terms of 2-inner product spaces

Hybrid integration methods for on-chip quantum photonics

The goal of integrated quantum photonics is to combine components for the generation, manipulation, and detection of nonclassical light in a phase-stable and efficient platform. Solid-state quantum emitters have recently reached outstanding performance as single-photon sources. In parallel, photonic integrated circuits have been advanced to the point that thousands of components can be controlled on a chip with high efficiency and phase stability. Consequently, researchers are now beginning to combine these leading quantum emitters and photonic integrated circuit platforms to realize the best properties of each technology. In this paper, we review recent advances in integrated quantum photonics based on such hybrid systems. Although hybrid integration solves many limitations of individual platforms, it also introduces new challenges that arise from interfacing different materials. We review various issues in solid-state quantum emitters and photonic integrated circuits, the hybrid integration techniques that bridge these two systems, and methods for chip-based manipulation of photons and emitters. Finally, we discuss the remaining challenges and future prospects of on-chip quantum photonics with integrated quantum emitters. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreemen