11,303 research outputs found
Jet trails and Mach cones: The interaction of microquasars with the ISM
A sub-set of microquasars exhibit high peculiar velocity with respect to the
local standard of rest due to the kicks they receive when being born in
supernovae. The interaction between the radio plasma released by microquasar
jets from such high-velocity binaries with the ISM must lead to the production
of trails and bow shocks similar to what is observed in narrow-angle tailed
radio galaxies and pulsar wind nebulae. We present a set of numerical
simulations of this interaction that illuminate the long term dynamical
evolution and the observational properties of these microquasar bow shock
nebulae and trails. We find that this interaction always produces a structure
that consists of a bow shock, a trailing neck, and an expanding bubble. Using
our simulations to model emission, we predict that the shock surrounding the
bubble and the neck should be visible in H{\alpha} emission, the interior of
the bubble should be visible in synchrotron radio emission, and only the bow
shock is likely to be detectable in X-ray emission. We construct an analytic
model for the evolution of the neck and bubble shape and compare this model
with observations of X-ray binary SAX J1712.6-3739.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, 1 table; Accepted to Ap
Four-Point Spectral Functions and Ward Identities in Hot QED
We derive spectral representations for the different components of the
4-point function at finite temperature in the real time formalism in terms of
five real spectral densities. We explicitly calculate all these functions in
QED in the hard thermal loop approximation. The Ward identities obeyed by the
1-loop 3- and 4-point functions in real time and their spectral functions are
derived. We compare our results with those derived previously in the
imaginary-time formalism for retarded functions in hot QCD, and we discuss the
generalization of our results to non-equilibrium situations.Comment: 16 pages in Revtex with 3 figures, dense version, a typo correcte
Inverse Reinforcement Learning in Swarm Systems
Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) has become a useful tool for learning
behavioral models from demonstration data. However, IRL remains mostly
unexplored for multi-agent systems. In this paper, we show how the principle of
IRL can be extended to homogeneous large-scale problems, inspired by the
collective swarming behavior of natural systems. In particular, we make the
following contributions to the field: 1) We introduce the swarMDP framework, a
sub-class of decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes
endowed with a swarm characterization. 2) Exploiting the inherent homogeneity
of this framework, we reduce the resulting multi-agent IRL problem to a
single-agent one by proving that the agent-specific value functions in this
model coincide. 3) To solve the corresponding control problem, we propose a
novel heterogeneous learning scheme that is particularly tailored to the swarm
setting. Results on two example systems demonstrate that our framework is able
to produce meaningful local reward models from which we can replicate the
observed global system dynamics.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures; ### Version 2 ### version accepted at AAMAS 201
Parametric Feedback Resonance in Chaotic Systems
If one changes the control parameter of a chaotic system proportionally to the distance between an arbitrary point on the strange attractor and the actual trajectory, the lifetime Ď„ of the most stable unstable periodic orbit in the vicinity of this point starts to diverge with a power law. The volume in parameter space where Ď„ becomes infinite is finite and from its nonfractal boundaries one can determine directly the local Liapunov exponents. The experimental applicability of the method is demonstrated for two coupled diode resonators
Final state interactions in two-particle interferometry
We reconsider the influence of two-particle final state interactions (FSI) on
two-particle Bose-Einstein interferometry. We concentrate in particular on the
problem of particle emission at different times. Assuming chaoticity of the
source, we derive a new general expression for the symmetrized two-particle
cross section. We discuss the approximations needed to derive from the general
result the Koonin-Pratt formula. Introducing a less stringent version of the
so-called smoothness approximation we also derive a more accurate formula. It
can be implemented into classical event generators and allows to calculate FSI
corrected two-particle correlation functions via modified Bose-Einstein
"weights".Comment: 12 pages RevTeX, 2 ps-figures included, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Flow effects on the freeze-out phase-space density in heavy ion collisions
The strong longitudinal expansion of the reaction zone formed in relativistic
heavy-ion collisions is found to significantly reduce the spatially averaged
pion phase-space density, compared to naive estimates based on thermal
distributions. This has important implications for data interpretation and
leads to larger values for the extracted pion chemical potential at kinetic
freeze-out.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures included via epsfig, added discussion of different
transverse density profiles, 1 new figur
Interplay of shear and bulk viscosity in generating flow in heavy-ion collisions
We perform viscous hydrodynamic calculations in 2+1 dimensions to investigate
the influence of bulk viscosity on the viscous suppression of elliptic flow in
non-central heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. Bulk and shear viscous
effects on the evolution of radial and elliptic flow are studied with different
model assumptions for the transport coefficients. We find that the temperature
dependence of the relaxation time for the bulk viscous pressure, especially its
critical slowing down near the quark-hadron phase transition at T_c, partially
offsets effects from the strong growth of the bulk viscosity itself near T_c,
and that even small values of the specific shear viscosity eta/s of the
fireball matter can be extracted without large uncertainties from poorly
controlled bulk viscous effects.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Physical Review C. v2:
corrected typos in several entries in Table
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