Centaur propellant acquisition system study

A study was performed to determine the desirability of replacing the hydrogen peroxide settling system on the Centaur D-1S with a capillary acquisition system. A comprehensive screening was performed to select the most promising capillary device fluid acquisition, thermal conditioning, and fabrication techniques. Refillable start baskets and bypass feed start tanks were selected for detailed design. Critical analysis areas were settling and refilling, start sequence development with an initially dry boost pump, and cooling the fluid delivered to the boost pump in order to provide necessary net position suction head (NPSH). Design drawings were prepared for the start basket and start tank concepts for both LO2 and LH2 tanks. System comparisons indicated that the start baskets using wicking for thermal conditioning, and thermal subcooling for boost pump NPSH, are the most desirable systems for future development

Dipole excitation and geometry of borromean nuclei

We analyze the Coulomb breakup cross sections of $^{11}$Li and $^6$He nuclei using a three-body model with a density-dependent contact interaction. We show that the concentration of the B(E1) strength near the threshold can be well reproduced with this model. With the help of the calculated B(E1) value, we extract the root-mean-square (rms) distance between the core nucleus and the center of mass of two valence neutrons without resorting to the sum rule, which may suffer from unphysical Pauli forbidden transitions. Together with the empirical rms distance between the neutrons obtained from the matter radius study and also from the three-body correlation study in the break-up reaction, we convert these rms distances to the mean opening angle between the valence neutrons from the core nucleus. We find that the obtained mean opening angles in $^{11}$Li and $^6$He agree with the three-body model predictions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figure

A Simple Explanation for the X(3872) Mass Shift Observed for Decay to D^{*0} {D^0}bar

We propose a simple explanation for the increase of approximately 3 MeV/c^2 in the mass value of the X(3872) obtained from D^{*0} {D^0}bar decay relative to that obtained from decay to J/psi pi+ pi-. If the total width of the X(3872) is 2-3 MeV, the peak position in the D^{*0} {D^0}bar invariant mass distribution is sensitive to the final state orbital angular momentum because of the proximity of the X(3872) to D^{*0} {D^0}bar threshold. We show that for total width 3 MeV and one unit of orbital angular momentum, a mass shift ~3 MeV/c^2 is obtained; experimental mass resolution should slightly increase this value. A consequence is that spin-parity 2^- is favored for the X(3872).Comment: 3.5 pages, 4 eps figure

Energy Efficient Engine exhaust mixer model technology report addendum; phase 3 test program

The Phase 3 exhaust mixer test program was conducted to explore the trends established during previous Phases 1 and 2. Combinations of mixer design parameters were tested. Phase 3 testing showed that the best performance achievable within tailpipe length and diameter constraints is 2.55 percent better than an optimized separate flow base line. A reduced penetration design achieved about the same overall performance level at a substantially lower level of excess pressure loss but with a small reduction in mixing. To improve reliability of the data, the hot and cold flow thrust coefficient analysis used in Phases 1 and 2 was augmented by calculating percent mixing from traverse data. Relative change in percent mixing between configurations was determined from thrust and flow coefficient increments. The calculation procedure developed was found to be a useful tool in assessing mixer performance. Detailed flow field data were obtained to facilitate calibration of computer codes

Cryogenic zero-gravity prototype vent system

Design, fabrication, and tests of prototype cryogenic zero-gravity heat exchanger vent syste

A Single Atom as a Mirror of an Optical Cavity

By tightly focussing a laser field onto a single cold ion trapped in front of a far-distant dielectric mirror, we could observe a quantum electrodynamic effect whereby the ion behaves as the optical mirror of a Fabry-P\'erot cavity. We show that the amplitude of the laser field is significantly altered due to a modification of the electromagnetic mode structure around the atom in a novel regime in which the laser intensity is already changed by the atom alone. e propose a direct application of this system as a quantum memory for single photons.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letter

Clustering by soft-constraint affinity propagation: Applications to gene-expression data

Motivation: Similarity-measure based clustering is a crucial problem appearing throughout scientific data analysis. Recently, a powerful new algorithm called Affinity Propagation (AP) based on message-passing techniques was proposed by Frey and Dueck \cite{Frey07}. In AP, each cluster is identified by a common exemplar all other data points of the same cluster refer to, and exemplars have to refer to themselves. Albeit its proved power, AP in its present form suffers from a number of drawbacks. The hard constraint of having exactly one exemplar per cluster restricts AP to classes of regularly shaped clusters, and leads to suboptimal performance, {\it e.g.}, in analyzing gene expression data. Results: This limitation can be overcome by relaxing the AP hard constraints. A new parameter controls the importance of the constraints compared to the aim of maximizing the overall similarity, and allows to interpolate between the simple case where each data point selects its closest neighbor as an exemplar and the original AP. The resulting soft-constraint affinity propagation (SCAP) becomes more informative, accurate and leads to more stable clustering. Even though a new {\it a priori} free-parameter is introduced, the overall dependence of the algorithm on external tuning is reduced, as robustness is increased and an optimal strategy for parameter selection emerges more naturally. SCAP is tested on biological benchmark data, including in particular microarray data related to various cancer types. We show that the algorithm efficiently unveils the hierarchical cluster structure present in the data sets. Further on, it allows to extract sparse gene expression signatures for each cluster.Comment: 11 pages, supplementary material: http://isiosf.isi.it/~weigt/scap_supplement.pd

Low energy bounds on Poincare violation in causal set theory

In the causal set approach to quantum gravity, Poincar\'{e} symmetry is modified by swerving in spacetime, induced by the random lattice discretization of the space-time structure. The broken translational symmetry at short distances is argued to lead to a residual diffusion in momentum space, whereby a particle can acquire energy and momentum by drift along its mass shell and a system in equilibrium can spontaneously heat up. We consider bounds on the rate of momentum space diffusion coming from astrophysical molecular clouds, nuclear stability and cosmological neutrino background. We find that the strongest limits come from relic neutrinos, which we estimate to constrain the momentum space diffusion constant by $k < 10^{-61} {\rm GeV}^3$ for neutrinos with masses $m_\nu > 0.01 {\rm eV}$, improving the previously quoted bounds by roughly 17 orders of magnitude.Comment: Additional discussion about behavior of alpha particles in nuclei added. Version matches that accepted in PR

Extracting CKM γ\gamma phase from B±→K±π+π−B^{\pm} \to K^{\pm} \pi^+ \pi^- and B0B^0, Bˉ0→Ksπ+π−\bar B^0 \to K_s \pi^+ \pi^-

We discuss some aspects of the search for CP asymmetry in the three body B decays, revealed through the interference among neighbor resonances in the Dalitz plot. We propose a competitive method to extract the CKM $\gamma$ angle combining Dalitz plot amplitude analysis of $B^{\pm} \to K^{\pm} \pi^+ \pi^-$ and untagged $B^0$, $\bar B^0 \to K_s \pi^+ \pi^-$. The method also obtains the ratio and phase difference between the {\it tree} and {\it penguin} contributions from $B^0$ and $\bar B^0 \to K^{*\pm} \pi^{\mp}$ decays and the CP asymmetry between $B^0$ and $\bar{B^0}$. From Monte Carlo studies of 100K events for the neutral mesons, we show the possibility of measuring $\gamma$.Comment: Revised enlarged version to appear at Phys Rev