4,031 research outputs found
WIMP Dark Matter and the QCD Equation of State
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) of mass m freeze out at a
temperature T_f ~ m/25, i.e. in the range 400 MeV -- 40 GeV for a particle in
the typical mass range 10 -- 1000 GeV. The WIMP relic density, which depends on
the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom at T_f, may be measured
to better than 1% by Planck, warranting comparable theoretical precision.
Recent theoretical and experimental advances in the understanding of high
temperature QCD show that the quark gluon plasma departs significantly from
ideal behaviour up to temperatures of several GeV, necessitating an improvement
of the cosmological equation of state over those currently used. We discuss how
this increases the relic density by approximately 1.5 -- 3.5% in benchmark
mSUGRA models, with an uncertainly in the QCD corrections of 0.5 -- 1 %. We
point out what further work is required to achieve a theoretical accuracy
comparable with the expected observational precision, and speculate that the
effective number of degrees of freedom at T_f may become measurable in the
foreseeable future.Comment: 4pp, 2figs. More info including Matlab scripts used to generate
equation of state curves at
http://www.pact.cpes.sussex.ac.uk/arXiv/hep-ph/0501232
Tunneling spectroscopy studies of aluminum oxide tunnel barrier layers
We report scanning tunneling microscopy and ballistic electron emission
microscopy studies of the electronic states of the uncovered and
chemisorbed-oxygen covered surface of AlOx tunnel barrier layers. These states
change when chemisorbed oxygen ions are moved into the oxide by either flood
gun electron bombardment or by thermal annealing. The former, if sufficiently
energetic, results in locally well defined conduction band onsets at ~1 V,
while the latter results in a progressively higher local conduction band onset,
exceeding 2.3 V for 500 and 600 C thermal anneals
Extrapolation of Galactic Dust Emission at 100 Microns to CMBR Frequencies Using FIRAS
We present predicted full-sky maps of submillimeter and microwave emission
from the diffuse interstellar dust in the Galaxy. These maps are extrapolated
from the 100 micron emission and 100/240 micron flux ratio maps that Schlegel,
Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998; SFD98) generated from IRAS and COBE/DIRBE data.
Results are presented for a number of physically plausible emissivity models.
We find that no power law emissivity function fits the FIRAS data from 200 -
2100 GHz. In this paper we provide a formalism for a multi-component model for
the dust emission. A two-component model with a mixture of silicate and
carbon-dominated grains (motivated by Pollack et al., 1994}) provides a fit to
an accuracy of about 15% to all the FIRAS data over the entire high-latitude
sky. Small systematic differences are found between the atomic and molecular
phases of the ISM.
Our predictions for the thermal (vibrational) emission from Galactic dust at
\nu < 3000 GHz are available for general use. These full-sky predictions can be
made at the DIRBE resolution of 40' or at the higher resolution of 6.1 arcmin
from the SFD98 DIRBE-corrected IRAS maps.Comment: 48 pages, AAS LaTeX, 6 figures, ApJ (accepted). Data described in the
text, as well as 4 additional figures, are available at
http://astro.berkeley.edu/dus
A Low Noise Thermometer Readout for Ruthenium Oxide Resistors
The thermometer and thermal control system, for the Absolute Radiometer for
Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE) experiment, is
described, including the design, testing, and results from the first flight of
ARCADE. The noise is equivalent to about 1 Omega or 0.15 mK in a second for the
RuO_2 resistive thermometers at 2.7 K. The average power dissipation in each
thermometer is 1 nW. The control system can take full advantage of the
thermometers to maintain stable temperatures. Systematic effects are still
under investigation, but the measured precision and accuracy are sufficient to
allow measurement of the cosmic background spectrum.
Journal-ref: Review of Scientific Instruments Vol 73 #10 (Oct 2002)Comment: 5 pages text 7 figure
Constraining decaying dark energy density models with the CMB temperature-redshift relation
We discuss the thermodynamic and dynamical properties of a variable dark
energy model with density scaling as , z being the
redshift. These models lead to the creation/disruption of matter and radiation,
which affect the cosmic evolution of both matter and radiation components in
the Universe. In particular, we have studied the temperature-redshift relation
of radiation, which has been constrained using a recent collection of cosmic
microwave background (CMB) temperature measurements up to . We find
that, within the uncertainties, the model is indistinguishable from a
cosmological constant which does not exchange any particles with other
components. Future observations, in particular measurements of CMB temperature
at large redshift, will allow to give firmer bounds on the effective equation
of state parameter for such types of dark energy models.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 3rd
Italian-Pakistani Workshop on Relativistic Astrophysics, Lecce 20-22 June
2011, published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS
The Expected Rate of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows In Supernova Searches
We predict the rate at which Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) afterglows should be
detected in supernova searches as a function of limiting flux. Although GRB
afterglows are rarer than supernovae, they are detectable at greater distances
because of their higher intrinsic luminosity. Assuming that GRBs trace the
cosmic star formation history and that every GRB gives rise to a bright
afterglow, we find that the average detection rate of supernovae and afterglows
should be comparable at limiting magnitudes brighter than K=18. The actual rate
of afterglows is expected to be somewhat lower since only a fraction of all
gamma-ray selected GRBs were observed to have associated afterglows. However,
the rate could also be higher if the initial gamma-ray emission from GRB
sources is more beamed than their late afterglow emission. Hence, current and
future supernova searches can place strong constraints on the afterglow
appearance fraction and the initial beaming angle of GRB sources.Comment: 13 pages, submitted to ApJ
A new kind of Lax-Oleinik type operator with parameters for time-periodic positive definite Lagrangian systems
In this paper we introduce a new kind of Lax-Oleinik type operator with
parameters associated with positive definite Lagrangian systems for both the
time-periodic case and the time-independent case. On one hand, the new family
of Lax-Oleinik type operators with an arbitrary as
initial condition converges to a backward weak KAM solution in the
time-periodic case, while it was shown by Fathi and Mather that there is no
such convergence of the Lax-Oleinik semigroup. On the other hand, the new
family of Lax-Oleinik type operators with an arbitrary
as initial condition converges to a backward weak KAM solution faster than the
Lax-Oleinik semigroup in the time-independent case.Comment: We give a new definition of Lax-Oleinik type operator; add some
reference
Spectra of random Hermitian matrices with a small-rank external source: supercritical and subcritical regimes
Random Hermitian matrices with a source term arise, for instance, in the
study of non-intersecting Brownian walkers \cite{Adler:2009a, Daems:2007} and
sample covariance matrices \cite{Baik:2005}.
We consider the case when the external source matrix has two
distinct real eigenvalues: with multiplicity and zero with multiplicity
. The source is small in the sense that is finite or , for . For a Gaussian potential, P\'ech\'e
\cite{Peche:2006} showed that for sufficiently small (the subcritical
regime) the external source has no leading-order effect on the eigenvalues,
while for sufficiently large (the supercritical regime) eigenvalues
exit the bulk of the spectrum and behave as the eigenvalues of
Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE). We establish the universality of these results
for a general class of analytic potentials in the supercritical and subcritical
regimes.Comment: 41 pages, 4 figure
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