Partonic Effects in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC

Effects of partonic interactions in heavy ion collisions at RHIC are studied in a multiphase transport model (AMPT) that includes both initial partonic and final hadronic interactions.It is found that a large parton scattering cross section is needed to understand the measured elliptic flow of pions and two-pion correlation function.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, Workshop on Quark and Hadron Dynamics, Budapest, Hungary, March 3-7, 200

Adaptive voltage control for large scale solar PV power plant considering real life factors

This paper presents an accurate and realistic estimation of reactive power capability of solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters considering ambient temperature, solar irradiance, and terminal voltage. Based on the accurate estimation of reactive power capability, a self-adaptive voltage controller is proposed to enable solar PV power plant participation in voltage control ancillary service. The proposed accurate and realistic estimation has revealed the possibility of solar PV power plant failing to comply with grid code requirements under extreme weather conditions. On the other hand, the proposed control strategy has shown significantly better effectiveness to utilise solar PV inverter capability, and provide better voltage control support service to the grid

Strangeness equilibration in heavy ion collisions

Using a relativistic transport model for heavy ion collisions at energies that are below the threshold for kaon and antikaon production in nucleon-nucleon collisions, we study how their abundances approach the canonical equilibrium during the collisions. We find that kaons are far from chemical equilibrium at the initial and high density stage, and they approach equilibrium only during the expansion stage of the collisions when their production rate is small and becomes comparable to their annihilation rate. In contrast, antikaons approach chemical equilibrium much earlier but eventually fall out of equilibrium again as a result of their large annihilation cross sections in nuclear matter

Magnetic field induced orientation of superconducting MgB2_2 crystallites determined by X-ray diffraction

X-ray diffraction studies of fine polycrystalline samples of MgB$_2$ in the superconducting state reveal that crystals orient with their \emph{c}-axis in a plane normal to the direction of the applied magnetic field. The MgB$_2$ samples were thoroughly ground to obtain average grain size 5 - 10 $\mu$m in order to increase the population of free single crystal grains in the powder. By monitoring Bragg reflections in a plane normal to an applied magnetic field we find that the powder is textured with significantly stronger (\emph{0,0,l}) reflections in comparison to (\emph{h,k,0}), which remain essentially unchanged. The orientation of the crystals with the \emph{ab}-plane parallel to the magnetic field at all temperatures below $T_c$ demonstrates that the sign of the torque under magnetic field does not alter, in disagreement with current theoretical predictions

Period dependent temperature and ambient index effects on long period fibre gratings

The ambient index and temperature effects on the spectral profiles of two sets of long period gratings (LPGs) of different periods were investigated. The shorter period LPGs were found to be more sensitive than the longer period LPGs over identical ambient index ranges but less sensitive over identical temperature ranges. The coupling wavelength shifts due to temperature are also seen to be linear and in opposite directions in each set of LPGs and unlike the ambient index shifts there seems to be no obvious modal dependency with respect to sensitivity in any individual LPG. The conclusion to this investigation is that it may be possible to design an LPG of such a period that parts of the spectral profile are unaffected by temperature whilst maintaining a reasonable ambient index sensitivity

Charged particle rapidity distributions at RHIC

Using a multiphase transport model (AMPT), which includes both initial partonic and final hadronic scattering, we study the rapidity distributions of charged particles such as protons, antiprotons, pions and kaons in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt s$ = 56, 130, and 200 AGeV at RHIC. We find that present data at 56 and 130 AGeV by the PHOBOS collaboration are consistent with a rather weak jet quenching in the initial dense matter. We also find that the antiproton to proton ratio at mid-rapidity increases appreciably with $\sqrt s$, indicating the approach to a nearly baryon-antibaryon symmetric matter in high energy collisions. Furthermore, the $K^+/\pi^+$ ratio is almost constant within the energy range studied here, suggesting the approximate chemical equilibrium for strangeness production in these collisions