4,913 research outputs found
Transition from a phase-segregated state to single-phase incommensurate sodium ordering in Na_xCoO_2 with x \approx 0.53
Synchrotron X-ray diffraction investigations of two single crystals of
Na_xCoO_2 from different batches with composition x = 0.525-0.530 reveal
homogeneous incommensurate sodium ordering with propagation vector (0.53 0.53
0) at room-temperature. The incommensurate (qq0) superstructure exists between
220 K and 430 K. The value of q varies between q = 0.514 and 0.529, showing a
broad plateau at the latter value between 260 K and 360 K. On cooling, unusual
reversible phase segregation into two volume fractions is observed. Below 220
K, one volume fraction shows the well-known commensurate orthorhombic x = 0.50
superstructure, while a second volume fraction with x = 0.55 exhibits another
commensurate superstructure, presumably with a 6a x 6a x c hexagonal supercell.
We argue that the commensurate-to-incommensurate transition is an intrinsic
feature of samples with Na concentrations x = 0.5 + d with d ~ 0.03.Comment: Corrected/improved versio
On the influence of the cosmological constant on gravitational lensing in small systems
The cosmological constant Lambda affects gravitational lensing phenomena. The
contribution of Lambda to the observable angular positions of multiple images
and to their amplification and time delay is here computed through a study in
the weak deflection limit of the equations of motion in the Schwarzschild-de
Sitter metric. Due to Lambda the unresolved images are slightly demagnified,
the radius of the Einstein ring decreases and the time delay increases. The
effect is however negligible for near lenses. In the case of null cosmological
constant, we provide some updated results on lensing by a Schwarzschild black
hole.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure; v2: extended discussion on the lens equation,
references added, results unchanged, in press on PR
A criterion for separating process calculi
We introduce a new criterion, replacement freeness, to discern the relative
expressiveness of process calculi. Intuitively, a calculus is strongly
replacement free if replacing, within an enclosing context, a process that
cannot perform any visible action by an arbitrary process never inhibits the
capability of the resulting process to perform a visible action. We prove that
there exists no compositional and interaction sensitive encoding of a not
strongly replacement free calculus into any strongly replacement free one. We
then define a weaker version of replacement freeness, by only considering
replacement of closed processes, and prove that, if we additionally require the
encoding to preserve name independence, it is not even possible to encode a non
replacement free calculus into a weakly replacement free one. As a consequence
of our encodability results, we get that many calculi equipped with priority
are not replacement free and hence are not encodable into mainstream calculi
like CCS and pi-calculus, that instead are strongly replacement free. We also
prove that variants of pi-calculus with match among names, pattern matching or
polyadic synchronization are only weakly replacement free, hence they are
separated both from process calculi with priority and from mainstream calculi.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS'10, arXiv:1011.601
The Higgs resonance in vector boson scattering
A heavy Higgs resonance is described in a representation-independent way
which is valid for the whole energy range of 2 -> 2 scattering processes,
including the asymptotic behavior at low and high energies. The low-energy
theorems which follow from to the custodial SU_2 symmetry of the Higgs sector
restrict the possible parameterizations of the lineshape that are consistent in
perturbation theory. Matching conditions are specified which are necessary and
sufficient to relate the parameters arising in different expansions. The
construction is performed explicitly up to next-to-leading order.Comment: 25 pages, revtex, uses epsf, amssym
On the protection of extrasolar Earth-like planets around K/M stars against galactic cosmic rays
Previous studies have shown that extrasolar Earth-like planets in close-in
habitable zones around M-stars are weakly protected against galactic cosmic
rays (GCRs), leading to a strongly increased particle flux to the top of the
planetary atmosphere. Two main effects were held responsible for the weak
shielding of such an exoplanet: (a) For a close-in planet, the planetary
magnetic moment is strongly reduced by tidal locking. Therefore, such a
close-in extrasolar planet is not protected by an extended magnetosphere. (b)
The small orbital distance of the planet exposes it to a much denser stellar
wind than that prevailing at larger orbital distances. This dense stellar wind
leads to additional compression of the magnetosphere, which can further reduce
the shielding efficiency against GCRs. In this work, we analyse and compare the
effect of (a) and (b), showing that the stellar wind variation with orbital
distance has little influence on the cosmic ray shielding. Instead, the weak
shielding of M star planets can be attributed to their small magnetic moment.
We further analyse how the planetary mass and composition influence the
planetary magnetic moment, and thus modify the cosmic ray shielding efficiency.
We show that more massive planets are not necessarily better protected against
galactic cosmic rays, but that the planetary bulk composition can play an
important role.Comment: 7 figure
Asymptotic properties of Born-improved amplitudes with gauge bosons in the final state
For processes with gauge bosons in the final state we show how to
continuously connect with a single Born-improved amplitude the resonant region,
where resummation effects are important, with the asymptotic region far away
from the resonance, where the amplitude must reduce to its tree-level form.
While doing so all known field-theoretical constraints are respected, most
notably gauge-invariance, unitarity and the equivalence theorem. The
calculations presented are based on the process , mediated by a
possibly resonant Higgs boson; this process captures all the essential
features, and can serve as a prototype for a variety of similar calculations.
By virtue of massive cancellations the resulting closed expressions for the
differential and total cross-sections are particularly compact.Comment: 23 pages, Latex, 4 Figures, uses axodra
Obtainment of internal labelling operators as broken Casimir operators by means of contractions related to reduction chains in semisimple Lie algebras
We show that the In\"on\"u-Wigner contraction naturally associated to a
reduction chain of semisimple Lie algebras
induces a decomposition of the Casimir operators into homogeneous polynomials,
the terms of which can be used to obtain additional mutually commuting missing
label operators for this reduction. The adjunction of these scalars that are no
more invariants of the contraction allow to solve the missing label problem for
those reductions where the contraction provides an insufficient number of
labelling operators
Super Earth Explorer: A Coronagraphic Off-Axis Space Telescope
The Super-Earth Explorer is an Off-Axis Space Telescope (SEE-COAST) designed
for high contrast imaging. Its scientific objective is to make the
physico-chemical characterization of exoplanets possibly down to 2 Earth radii
>. For that purpose it will analyze the spectral and polarimetric properties of
the parent starlight reflected by the planets, in the wavelength range 400-1250
nmComment: Accepted in Experimental Astronom
A Logic with Reverse Modalities for History-preserving Bisimulations
We introduce event identifier logic (EIL) which extends Hennessy-Milner logic
by the addition of (1) reverse as well as forward modalities, and (2)
identifiers to keep track of events. We show that this logic corresponds to
hereditary history-preserving (HH) bisimulation equivalence within a particular
true-concurrency model, namely stable configuration structures. We furthermore
show how natural sublogics of EIL correspond to coarser equivalences. In
particular we provide logical characterisations of weak history-preserving (WH)
and history-preserving (H) bisimulation. Logics corresponding to HH and H
bisimulation have been given previously, but not to WH bisimulation (when
autoconcurrency is allowed), as far as we are aware. We also present
characteristic formulas which characterise individual structures with respect
to history-preserving equivalences.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS 2011, arXiv:1108.407
Uses and Abuses of Effective Lagrangians
Motivated by past and recent analyses we critically re-examine the use of
effective lagrangians in the literature to constrain new physics and to
determine the `physics reach' of future experiments. We demonstrate that many
calculations, such as those involving anomalous trilinear gauge-boson
couplings, either considerably overestimate loop-induced effects, or give
ambiguous answers. The source of these problems is the use of cutoffs to
evaluate the size of such operators in loop diagrams. In contrast to other
critics of these loop estimates, we prove that the inclusion of
nonlinearly-realized gauge invariance into the low-energy lagrangian is
irrelevant to this conclusion. We use an explicit example using known
multi-Higgs physics above the weak scale to underline these points. We show how
to draw conclusions regarding the nature of the unknown high-energy physics
without making reference to low-energy cutoffs.Comment: 36 page
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