Subsynchronous instability of a geared centrifugal compressor of overhung design

The original design analysis and shop test data are presented for a three stage (poster) air compressor with impellers mounted on the extensions of a twin pinion gear, and driven by an 8000 hp synchronous motor. Also included are field test data, subsequent rotor dynamics analysis, modifications, and final rotor behavior. A subsynchronous instability existed on a geared, overhung rotor. State-of-the-art rotor dynamics analysis techniques provided a reasonable analytical model of the rotor. A bearing modification arrived at analytically eliminated the instability

On the Meridional Structure of Annular Modes

Using a simple stochastic model, the authors illustrate that the occurrence of a meridional dipole in the first empirical orthogonal function (EOF) of a time-dependent zonal jet is a simple consequence of the north–south excursion of the jet center, and this geometrical fact can be understood without appealing to fluid dynamical principles. From this it follows that one ought not, perhaps, be surprised at the fact that such dipoles, commonly referred to as the Arctic Oscillation (AO) or the Northern Annular Mode (NAM), have robustly been identified in many observational studies and appear to be ubiquitous in atmospheric models across a wide range of complexity

Magnetic Moments of the Baryon Decuplet in a Relativistic Quark Model

The magnetic moments of the baryon decuplet are calculated in a relativistic constituent quark model using the light-front formalism. Of particular interest are the magnetic moments of the $\Omega^-$ and $\Delta^{++}$ for which new recent experimental measurements are available. Our calculation for the magnetic moment ratio $\mu(\Delta^{++})/\mu(p)$ is in excellent agreement with the experimental ratio, while our ratio $\mu(\Omega^-)/\mu(\Lambda^0)$ is slightly higher than the experimental ratio.Comment: 10 pages ReVTeX, SLAC-PUB-621

Annealing a Follow-up Program: Improvement of the Dark Energy Figure of Merit for Optical Galaxy Cluster Surveys

The precision of cosmological parameters derived from galaxy cluster surveys is limited by uncertainty in relating observable signals to cluster mass. We demonstrate that a small mass-calibration follow-up program can significantly reduce this uncertainty and improve parameter constraints, particularly when the follow-up targets are judiciously chosen. To this end, we apply a simulated annealing algorithm to maximize the dark energy information at fixed observational cost, and find that optimal follow-up strategies can reduce the observational cost required to achieve a specified precision by up to an order of magnitude. Considering clusters selected from optical imaging in the Dark Energy Survey, we find that approximately 200 low-redshift X-ray clusters or massive Sunyaev-Zel'dovich clusters can improve the dark energy figure of merit by 50%, provided that the follow-up mass measurements involve no systematic error. In practice, the actual improvement depends on (1) the uncertainty in the systematic error in follow-up mass measurements, which needs to be controlled at the 5% level to avoid severe degradation of the results; and (2) the scatter in the optical richness-mass distribution, which needs to be made as tight as possible to improve the efficacy of follow-up observations.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, replaced to match published versio

Preliminary Results from NEOWISE: An Enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for Solar System Science

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has surveyed the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with greatly improved sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to its predecessors, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite and the Cosmic Background Explorer. NASA's Planetary Science Division has funded an enhancement to the WISE data processing system called "NEOWISE" that allows detection and archiving of moving objects found in the WISE data. NEOWISE has mined the WISE images for a wide array of small bodies in our solar system, including near-Earth objects (NEOs), Main Belt asteroids, comets, Trojans, and Centaurs. By the end of survey operations in 2011 February, NEOWISE identified over 157,000 asteroids, including more than 500 NEOs and ~120 comets. The NEOWISE data set will enable a panoply of new scientific investigations

Measuring the Reduced Shear

Neglecting the second order corrections in weak lensing measurements can lead to a few percent uncertainties on cosmic shears, and becomes more important for cluster lensing mass reconstructions. Existing methods which claim to measure the reduced shears are not necessarily accurate to the second order when a point spread function (PSF) is present. We show that the method of Zhang (2008) exactly measures the reduced shears at the second order level in the presence of PSF. A simple theorem is provided for further confirming our calculation, and for judging the accuracy of any shear measurement method at the second order based on its properties at the first order. The method of Zhang (2008) is well defined mathematically. It does not require assumptions on the morphologies of galaxies and the PSF. To reach a sub-percent level accuracy, the CCD pixel size is required to be not larger than 1/3 of the Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) of the PSF. Using a large ensemble (> 10^7) of mock galaxies of unrestricted morphologies, we find that contaminations to the shear signals from the noise of background photons can be removed in a well defined way because they are not correlated with the source shapes. The residual shear measurement errors due to background noise are consistent with zero at the sub-percent level even when the amplitude of such noise reaches about 1/10 of the source flux within the half-light radius of the source. This limit can in principle be extended further with a larger galaxy ensemble in our simulations. On the other hand, the source Poisson noise remains to be a cause of systematic errors. For a sub-percent level accuracy, our method requires the amplitude of the source Poisson noise to be less than 1/80 ~ 1/100 of the source flux within the half-light radius of the source, corresponding to collecting roughly 10^4 source photons.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, minor changes from the previous versio

Exploring Dark Energy with Next-Generation Photometric Redshift Surveys

The coming decade will be an exciting period for dark energy research, during which astronomers will address the question of what drives the accelerated cosmic expansion as first revealed by type Ia supernova (SN) distances, and confirmed by later observations. The mystery of dark energy poses a challenge of such magnitude that, as stated by the Dark Energy Task Force (DETF), nothing short of a revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics will be required to achieve a full understanding of the cosmic acceleration. The lack of multiple complementary precision observations is a major obstacle in developing lines of attack for dark energy theory. This lack is precisely what next-generation surveys will address via the powerful techniques of weak lensing (WL) and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) -- galaxy correlations more generally -- in addition to SNe, cluster counts, and other probes of geometry and growth of structure. Because of their unprecedented statistical power, these surveys demand an accurate understanding of the observables and tight control of systematics. This white paper highlights the opportunities, approaches, prospects, and challenges relevant to dark energy studies with wide-deep multiwavelength photometric redshift surveys. Quantitative predictions are presented for a 20000 sq. deg. ground-based 6-band (ugrizy) survey with 5-sigma depth of r~27.5, i.e., a Stage 4 survey as defined by the DETF

Analysis of negative magnetoresistance. Statistics of closed paths. I. Theory

Statistics of closed paths in two-dimensional (2D) systems, which just determines the interference quantum correction to conductivity and anomalous magnetoconductance, has been studied by computer simulation of a particle motion over the plane with randomly distributed scatterers. Both ballistic and diffusion regimes have been considered. The results of simulation have been analyzed in the framework of diffusion approximation. They are used for calculation of the magnetic field dependence of magnetoconductance in the model 2D system. It is shown that the anomalous magnetoconductance can be in principle described by the well known expression, obtained in the diffusion approximation, but with the prefactor less than unity and phase breaking length which differs from true value.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, to be published in Phys.Rev.

Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking of phi4(1+1) in Light Front Field Theory

We study spontaneous symmetry breaking in phi^4_(1+1) using the light-front formulation of the field theory. Since the physical vacuum is always the same as the perturbative vacuum in light-front field theory the fields must develop a vacuum expectation value through the zero-mode components of the field. We solve the nonlinear operator equation for the zero-mode in the one-mode approximation. We find that spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs at lambda_critical = 4 pi(3+sqrt 3), which is consistent with the value lambda_critical = 54.27 obtained in the equal time theory. We calculate the value of the vacuum expectation value as a function of the coupling constant in the broken phase both numerically and analytically using the delta expansion. We find two equivalent broken phases. Finally we show that the energy levels of the system have the expected behavior within the broken phase.Comment: 17 pages, OHSTPY-HEP-TH-92-02

Strontium-90 Liquid Concentration Solubility Correlation in the Hanford Tank Waste Operations Simulator

A new correlation was developed to estimate the concentration of strontium-90 in a waste solution based on total organic carbon. This correlation replaces the strontium-90 wash factors, and when applied in the Hanford Tank Waste Operations Simulator, significantly reduced the estimated quantity of strontium-90 in the delivered low-activity waste feed. This is thought to be a more realistic estimate of strontium-90 than using the wash-factor method