A sensitive cloud chamber without radioactive sources

We present a sensitive diffusion cloud chamber which does not require any radioactive sources. A major difference from a commonly used chamber is use of a heat sink as its bottom plate. A result of a performance test of the chamber is given.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, iopart.cls, figures and references adde

Nonlinear Conduction by Melting of Stripe-Type Charge Order in Organic Conductors with Triangular Lattices

We theoretically discuss the mechanism for the peculiar nonlinear conduction in quasi-two-dimensional organic conductors \theta-(BEDT-TTF)2X [BEDT-TTF=bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene] through the melting of stripe-type charge order. An extended Peierls-Hubbard model attached to metallic electrodes is investigated by a nonequilibrium Green's function technique. A novel current-voltage characteristic appears in a coexistent state of stripe-type and nonstripe 3-fold charge orders, where the applied bias melts mainly the stripe-type charge order through the reduction of lattice distortion, whereas the 3-fold charge order survives. These contrastive responses of the two different charge orders are consistent with the experimental observations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

2-elementary subgroups of the space Cremona group

We give a sharp bound for orders of elementary abelian 2-groups of birational automorphisms of rationally connected threefolds

Transverse self-modulation of ultra-relativistic lepton beams in the plasma wakefield accelerator

The transverse self-modulation of ultra-relativistic, long lepton bunches in high-density plasmas is explored through full-scale particle-in-cell simulations. We demonstrate that long SLAC-type electron and positron bunches can become strongly self-modulated over centimeter distances, leading to wake excitation in the blowout regime with accelerating fields in excess of 20 GV/m. We show that particles energy variations exceeding 10 GeV can occur in meter-long plasmas. We find that the self-modulation of positively and negatively charged bunches differ when the blowout is reached. Seeding the self-modulation instability suppresses the competing hosing instability. This work reveals that a proof-of-principle experiment to test the physics of bunch self-modulation can be performed with available lepton bunches and with existing experimental apparatus and diagnostics.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Physics of Plasma

A general framework for online audio source separation

We consider the problem of online audio source separation. Existing algorithms adopt either a sliding block approach or a stochastic gradient approach, which is faster but less accurate. Also, they rely either on spatial cues or on spectral cues and cannot separate certain mixtures. In this paper, we design a general online audio source separation framework that combines both approaches and both types of cues. The model parameters are estimated in the Maximum Likelihood (ML) sense using a Generalised Expectation Maximisation (GEM) algorithm with multiplicative updates. The separation performance is evaluated as a function of the block size and the step size and compared to that of an offline algorithm.Comment: International conference on Latente Variable Analysis and Signal Separation (2012