All-sky Relative Opacity Mapping Using Night Time Panoramic Images

An all-sky cloud monitoring system that generates relative opacity maps over many of the world's premier astronomical observatories is described. Photometric measurements of numerous background stars are combined with simultaneous sky brightness measurements to differentiate thin clouds from sky glow sources such as air glow and zodiacal light. The system takes a continuous pipeline of all-sky images, and compares them to canonical images taken on other nights at the same sidereal time. Data interpolation then yields transmission maps covering almost the entire sky. An implementation of this system is currently operating through the Night Sky Live network of CONCAM3s located at Cerro Pachon (Chile), Mauna Kea (Hawaii), Haleakala (Hawaii), SALT (South Africa) and the Canary Islands (Northwestern Africa).Comment: Accepted for publication in PAS

Non-Collinear Ferromagnetic Luttinger Liquids

The presence of electron-electron interactions in one dimension profoundly changes the properties of a system. The separation of charge and spin degrees of freedom is just one example. We consider what happens when a system consisting of a ferromagnetic region of non-collinearity, i.e. a domain wall, is coupled to interacting electrons in one-dimension (more specifically a Luttinger liquid). The ferromagnetism breaks spin charge separation and the presence of the domain wall introduces a spin dependent scatterer into the problem. The absence of spin charge separation and the effects of the electron correlations results in very different behaviour for the excitations in the system and for spin-transfer-torque effects in this model.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to Journal of Physics: Conference Series for JEMS 201

Numerical simulation of the mechanical response during strain path change: application to Zn alloys.

The microstructure-based hardening model (Beyerlein and Tome, 2007), that accounts for the dislocation reversal-related mechanisms and the cut-through effect, is extended to HCP metals. This model, which is embedded in the visco-plastic self-consistent framework, is applied in this work to predict the mechanical response of Zn alloy during strain path change. The predicted mechanical behavior and texture evolution during pre-loading and reloading is in good agreement with experimental observations. The change in hardening behavior after reloading is well reproduced by this model. The contributions of the different mechanisms are also analyzed. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.open1111Nsciescopu

Lorentzian spin foam amplitudes: graphical calculus and asymptotics

The amplitude for the 4-simplex in a spin foam model for quantum gravity is defined using a graphical calculus for the unitary representations of the Lorentz group. The asymptotics of this amplitude are studied in the limit when the representation parameters are large, for various cases of boundary data. It is shown that for boundary data corresponding to a Lorentzian simplex, the asymptotic formula has two terms, with phase plus or minus the Lorentzian signature Regge action for the 4-simplex geometry, multiplied by an Immirzi parameter. Other cases of boundary data are also considered, including a surprising contribution from Euclidean signature metrics.Comment: 30 pages. v2: references now appear. v3: presentation greatly improved (particularly diagrammatic calculus). Definition of "Regge state" now the same as in previous work; signs change in final formula as a result. v4: two references adde

Berry phases and zero-modes in toroidal topological insulator

An effective Hamiltonian describing the surface states of a toroidal topological insulator is obtained, and it is shown to support both bound-states and charged zero-modes. Actually, the spin connection induced by the toroidal curvature can be viewed as an position-dependent effective vector potential, which ultimately yields the zero-modes whose wave-functions harmonically oscillate around the toroidal surface. In addition, two distinct Berry phases are predicted to take place by the virtue of the toroidal topology.Comment: New version, accepted for publication in EPJB, 6 pages, 1 figur

Dirac and Klein-Gordon particles in one-dimensional periodic potentials

We evaluate the dispersion relation for massless fermions, described by the Dirac equation, and for zero-spin bosons, described by the Klein-Gordon equation, moving in two dimensions and in the presence of a one-dimensional periodic potential. For massless fermions the dispersion relation shows a zero gap for carriers with zero momentum in the direction parallel to the barriers in agreement with the well-known "Klein paradox". Numerical results for the energy spectrum and the density of states are presented. Those for fermions are appropriate to graphene in which carriers behave relativistically with the "light speed" replaced by the Fermi velocity. In addition, we evaluate the transmission through a finite number of barriers for fermions and zero-spin bosons and relate it with that through a superlattice.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure

Magneto-optical trap for metastable helium at 389 nm

We have constructed a magneto-optical trap (MOT) for metastable triplet helium atoms utilizing the 2 3S1 -> 3 3P2 line at 389 nm as the trapping and cooling transition. The far-red-detuned MOT (detuning Delta = -41 MHz) typically contains few times 10^7 atoms at a relatively high (~10^9 cm^-3) density, which is a consequence of the large momentum transfer per photon at 389 nm and a small two-body loss rate coefficient (2 * 10^-10 cm^3/s < beta < 1.0 * 10^-9 cm^3/s). The two-body loss rate is more than five times smaller than in a MOT on the commonly used 2 3S1 -> 2 3P2 line at 1083 nm. Furthermore, we measure a temperature of 0.46(1) mK, a factor 2.5 lower as compared to the 1083 nm case. Decreasing the detuning to Delta= -9 MHz results in a cloud temperature as low as 0.25(1) mK, at small number of trapped atoms. The 389 nm MOT exhibits small losses due to two-photon ionization, which have been investigated as well.Comment: 11 page