9,509 research outputs found
Spontaneous Fluxon Formation in Annular Josephson Tunnel Junctions
It has been argued by Zurek and Kibble that the likelihood of producing
defects in a continuous phase transition depends in a characteristic way on the
quench rate. In this paper we discuss our experiment for measuring the
Zurek-Kibble scaling exponent sigma for the production of fluxons in annular
symmetric Josephson Tunnel Junctions. The predicted exponent is sigma = 0.25,
and we find sigma = 0.27 +/- 0.05. Further, there is agreement with the ZK
prediction for the overall normalisation
Detection of a population gradient in the Sagittarius Stream
We present a quantitative comparison between the Horizontal Branch morphology
in the core of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Sgr) and in a wide
field sampling a portion of its tidal stream (Sgr Stream), located tens of kpc
away from the center of the parent galaxy. We find that the Blue Horizontal
Branch (BHB) stars in that part of the Stream are five times more abundant than
in the Sgr core, relative to Red Clump stars. The difference in the ratio of
BHB to RC stars between the two fields is significant at the 4.8 sigma level.
This indicates that the old and metal-poor population of Sgr was preferentially
stripped from the galaxy in past peri-Galactic passages with respect to the
intermediate-age metal rich population that presently dominates the bound core
of Sgr, probably due to a strong radial gradient that was settled within the
galaxy before its disruption. The technique adopted in the present study allows
to trace population gradients along the whole extension of the Stream.Comment: 4 pages, 3 .ps figures (fig. 1 at low resolution); Accepted for
publication by A&A Letter
An Analytical Approach to Inhomogeneous Structure Formation
We develop an analytical formalism that is suitable for studying
inhomogeneous structure formation, by studying the joint statistics of dark
matter halos forming at two points. Extending the Bond et al. (1991) derivation
of the mass function of virialized halos, based on excursion sets, we derive an
approximate analytical expression for the ``bivariate'' mass function of halos
forming at two redshifts and separated by a fixed comoving Lagrangian distance.
Our approach also leads to a self-consistent expression for the nonlinear
biasing and correlation function of halos, generalizing a number of previous
results including those by Kaiser (1984) and Mo & White (1996). We compare our
approximate solutions to exact numerical results within the excursion-set
framework and find them to be consistent to within 2% over a wide range of
parameters. Our formalism can be used to study various feedback effects during
galaxy formation analytically, as well as to simply construct observable
quantities dependent on the spatial distribution of objects. A code that
implements our method is publicly available at
http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~evan/GeminiComment: 41 Pages, 11 figures, published in ApJ, 571, 585. Reference added,
Figure 2 axis relabele
A quantitative investigation of the effect of a close-fitting superconducting shield on the coil-factor of a solenoid
Superconducting shields are commonly used to suppress external magnetic
interference. We show, that an error of almost an order of magnitude can occur
in the coil-factor in realistic configurations of the solenoid and the shield.
The reason is that the coil-factor is determined by not only the geometry of
the solenoid, but also the nearby magnetic environment. This has important
consequences for many cryogenic experiments involving magnetic fields such as
the determination of the parameters of Josephson junctions, as well as other
superconducting devices. It is proposed to solve the problem by inserting a
thin sheet of high-permeability material, and the result numerically tested.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, submitted to AP
Gaussianity revisited: Exploring the Kibble-Zurek mechanism with superconducting rings
In this paper we use spontaneous flux production in annular superconductors
to shed light on the Kibble-Zurek scenario. In particular, we examine the
effects of finite size and external fields, neither of which is directly
amenable to the KZ analysis. Supported by 1D and 3D simulations, the properties
of a superconducting ring are seen to be well represented by analytic Gaussian
approximations which encode the KZ scales indirectly. Experimental results for
annuli in the presence of external fields corroborate these findings.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures; submitted to J. Phys: Condens. Matter for the
special issue 'Condensed Matter Analogues of Cosmology'; v2: considerably
reduced length, incorporation of experimental details into main text,
discussion improved, references added, version accepted for publicatio
A time series analysis of wages in deregulated industries: A study of motor carriage and rail
Using time series techniques, we contrast the impact of deregulation in trucking and rail labor markets. During regulation both labor markets were characterized by wages considerab y higher than manufacturing wages. In fact, trucking and rail wages had a stable, deterministic relationship prior to deregulation. After deregulation, however, the mean trucking wages fell considerably, approaching manufacturing wages, while rail wages remained relatively constant. We also find that deregulation’s negative impact on trucking wages was nondiscrete and occurred primarily between 1980 and 1984.deregulation, trucking, rail
Spontaneous Fluxoid Formation in Superconducting Loops
We report on the first experimental verification of the Zurek-Kibble scenario
in an isolated superconducting ring over a wide parameter range. The
probability of creating a single flux quantum spontaneously during the fast
normal-superconducting phase transition of a wide Nb loop clearly follows an
allometric dependence on the quenching time , as one would expect if
the transition took place as fast as causality permits. However, the observed
Zurek-Kibble scaling exponent is two times larger than
anticipated for large loops. Assuming Gaussian winding number densities we show
that this doubling is well-founded for small annuli.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett
Kinetics of photoinduced matter transport driven by intensity and polarization in thin films containing azobenzene
We investigate the kinetics of photoinduced deformation phenomena in azobenzene-containing thin solid films. We show that a light intensity pattern and a light polarization pattern produce two distinct material transport processes whose direction and kinetics can be independently controlled. The kinetics of the intensity-driven deformation scales with the incoming light power while the kinetics of the polarization-driven mass transport scales with the amplitude of the electromagnetic field pattern. We conclude that these two processes are fully independent one from the other and originate from two different microscopic mechanisms
The Hierarchical Origins of Observed Galaxy Morphology
Galaxies grow primarily via accretion-driven star formation in discs and
merger-driven growth of bulges. These processes are implicit in semi-analytical
models of galaxy formation, with bulge growth in particular relating directly
to the hierarchical build-up of halos and their galaxies. In this paper, we
consider several implementations of two semi-analytical models. Focusing on
implementations in which bulges are formed during mergers only, we examine the
fractions of elliptical galaxies and both passive and star-forming disk
galaxies as functions of stellar and halo mass, for central and satellite
systems. This is compared to an observational cross-matched SDSS+RC3 z ~ 0
sample of galaxies with accurate visual morphological classifications and
M_{stellar} > 10^10.5 M_{sol}. The models qualitatively reproduce the observed
increase of elliptical fraction with stellar mass, and with halo mass for
central galaxies, supporting the idea that observed ellipticals form during
major mergers. However, the overall elliptical fraction produced by the models
is much too high compared with the z ~ 0 data. Since the "passive" -- i.e.
non-star-forming -- fractions are approximately reproduced, and since the
fraction which are star-forming disc galaxies is also reproduced, the problem
is that the models overproduce ellipticals at the expense of passive S0 and
spiral galaxies. Bulge-growth implementations (tuned to reproduce simulations)
which allow the survival of residual discs in major mergers still destroy too
much of the disc. Increasing the lifetime of satellites, or allowing
significant disc regrowth around merger remnants, merely increases the fraction
of star-forming disc galaxies. Instead, it seems necessary to reduce the mass
ratios of merging galaxies, so that most mergers produce modest bulge growth in
disc-galaxy remnants instead of ellipticals. [Abridged]Comment: latex, 20 pages, 13 figures. Accepted by Monthly Notices. Source
package includes full version of Table 1 from paper (file
sdssrc3_table_for_paper.tab
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