Modelling Intermediate Age and Old Stellar Populations in the Infrared

We have investigated the spectro-photometric properties of the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars and their contribution to the integrated infrared emission in simple stellar populations (SSP). Adopting analytical relations describing the evolution of these stars in the HR diagram and empirical relations for the mass-loss rate and the wind terminal velocity, we were able to model the effects of the dusty envelope around these stars, with a minimal number of parameters. We computed isochrones at different age and initial metal content. We compare our models with existing infrared colors of M giants and Mira stars and with IRAS PSC data. Contrary to previous models, in the new isochrones the mass-loss rate, which establishes the duration of the AGB phase, also determines the spectral properties of the stars. The contribution of these stars to the integrated light of the population is thus obtained in a consistent way. We find that the emission in the mid infrared is about one order of magnitude larger when dust is taken into account in an intermediate age population, irrespective of the particular mixture adopted. The dependence of the integrated colors on the metallicity and age is discussed, with particular emphasis on the problem of age-metallicity degeneracy. We show that, contrary to the case of optical or near infrared colors, the adoption of a suitable pass-band in the mid infrared allows a fair separation of the two effects. We suggest intermediate redshift elliptical galaxies as possible targets of this method of solving the age-metallicity dilemma. The new SSP models constitute a first step in a more extended study aimed at modelling the spectral properties of the galaxies from the ultraviolet to the far infrared.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, to appear in A&

Magnetic monopole and string excitations in a two-dimensional spin ice

We study the magnetic excitations of a square lattice spin-ice recently produced in an artificial form, as an array of nanoscale magnets. Our analysis, based upon the dipolar interaction between the nanomagnetic islands, correctly reproduces the ground-state observed experimentally. In addition, we find magnetic monopole-like excitations effectively interacting by means of the usual Coulombic plus a linear confining potential, the latter being related to a string-like excitation binding the monopoles pairs, what indicates that the fractionalization of magnetic dipoles may not be so easy in two dimensions. These findings contrast this material with the three-dimensional analogue, where such monopoles experience only the Coulombic interaction. We discuss, however, two entropic effects that affect the monopole interactions: firstly, the string configurational entropy may loose the string tension and then, free magnetic monopoles should also be found in lower dimensional spin ices; secondly, in contrast to the string configurational entropy, an entropically driven Coulomb force, which increases with temperature, has the opposite effect of confining the magnetic defects.Comment: 8 pages. Accepted by Journal of Applied Physics (2009

Meson decay in the Fock-Tani Formalism

The Fock-Tani formalism is a first principle method to obtain effective interactions from microscopic Hamiltonians. Usually this formalism was applied to scattering, here we introduced it to calculate partial decay widths for mesons.Comment: Presented at HADRON05 XI. "International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy" Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 21 to 26, 200

Labyrinthine pathways towards supercycle attractors in unimodal maps

We uncover previously unknown properties of the family of periodic superstable cycles in unimodal maps characterized each by a Lyapunov exponent that diverges to minus infinity. Amongst the main novel properties are the following: i) The basins of attraction for the phases of the cycles develop fractal boundaries of increasing complexity as the period-doubling structure advances towards the transition to chaos. ii) The fractal boundaries, formed by the preimages of the repellor, display hierarchical structures organized according to exponential clusterings that manifest in the dynamics as sensitivity to the final state and transient chaos. iii) There is a functional composition renormalization group (RG) fixed-point map associated to the family of supercycles. iv) This map is given in closed form by the same kind of $q$-exponential function found for both the pitchfork and tangent bifurcation attractors. v) There is a final stage ultra-fast dynamics towards the attractor with a sensitivity to initial conditions that decreases as an exponential of an exponential of time.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure

Thermodynamic Formalism for Topological Markov Chains on Borel Standard Spaces

We develop a Thermodynamic Formalism for bounded continuous potentials defined on the sequence space $X\equiv E^{\mathbb{N}}$, where $E$ is a general Borel standard space. In particular, we introduce meaningful concepts of entropy and pressure for shifts acting on $X$ and obtain the existence of equilibrium states as additive probability measures for any bounded continuous potential. Furthermore, we establish convexity and other structural properties of the set of equilibrium states, prove a version of the Perron-Frobenius-Ruelle theorem under additional assumptions on the regularity of the potential and show that the Yosida-Hewitt decomposition of these equilibrium states do not have a purely additive part. We then apply our results to the construction of invariant measures of time-homogeneous Markov chains taking values on a general Borel standard space and obtain exponential asymptotic stability for a class of Markov operators. We also construct conformal measures for an infinite collection of interacting random paths which are associated to a potential depending on infinitely many coordinates. Under an additional differentiability hypothesis, we show how this process is related after a proper scaling limit to a certain infinite dimensional diffusion.Comment: Accepted for publication in Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems. 23 page