Optimal Source Tracking and Beaming of LISA

We revisit the directionally optimal data streams of LISA first introduced in Nayak etal. It was shown that by using appropriate choice of Time delay interferometric (TDI) combinations, a monochromatic fixed source in the barycentric frame can be optimally tracked in the LISA frame. In this work, we study the beaming properties of these optimal streams. We show that all the three streams V+, Vx and Vo with maximum, minimum and zero directional SNR respectively are highly beamed. We study in detail the frequency dependence of the beaming.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures. To appear in the proceedings of Sixth International LISA Symposiu

A Woman\u27s Kind of Love: Female Longing in the Tamil Alvar Poetry

In the eighth section of Andal\u27s Nacciyar Tirumoli, a woman calls to the clouds and bids them to take a message of love to her delinquent lover, Vishnu, here figured as the lord of Venkatam. In the opening verse of the decad, she begins by plaintively questioning the clouds of her beloved\u27s whereabouts only to end with a bitter complaint about her sullied womanhood -- pen-nirmai. Bracketed by her eager questions -- has the lord of Venkatam come with you -- and her bitter complaint -- how does this bring him pride -- is the landscape of her body. Her tears are waterfalls, her breasts mountains, and just as the waterfalls erode the soil from the mountain slopes, her tears erase her womanhood. The black mark against the unrepentant divine lover is not just her (implied) lost chastity, but the gradual corrosion of her very self

The effect of environment on post surgical overall well-being and pain sensitivity in an animal model

With chronic post surgical pain affecting up to one third of patients undergoing surgeries and the price of treatment being astoundingly high there has been a transition in research to investigate and identify risk factors. Through identification of risk factors new preventative measures can be taken to ensure better surgical outcomes. The role that psychosocial factors can play in the development of chronic post surgical pain has long been recognized yet its mechanisms are still unknown. We aim to investigate how environment can play a direct role in pain perception and sensitivity. We used a Chronic Mild Stress (CMS) paradigm to induce depression in 10 adult male mice, we used 10 control mice who were left in standard opti cages, and 10 enriched mice who were placed in large enrichment cages. CMS mice were exposed to a series of stressors and all mice underwent spared nerve injury surgery. During spared nerve injury the common peroneal and tibial branches of the sciatic nerve were severed while the sural branch was left intact. Overall well-being and pain threshold of mice were tested via Von Frey, Hot Plate, Heat Place Preference, Dynamic Weight Bearing, Hole Board, and Social Interaction. It was found that CMS mice experienced thermal hyperalgesia yet normal thermal threshold sensation. CMS mice also spent less time interacting with novel mice in social interaction, and less amount of time exploring the center of the hole board arena than control or enriched mice. While Von Frey results did not change over the course of the experiment, dynamic weight bearing results indicated spared nerve injury surgery was successful and produced chronic pain. Results indicate that environment plays a role in thermal pain perception and CMS affected overall well being of mice as CMS mice exhibited more timid and anxious behavior

Magnetic Chern Insulators in a monolayer of Transition Metal Trichalcogenides

A monolayer of transition metal trichalcogenides has received a lot of attention as potential two dimensional magnetic materials. The system has a honeycomb structure of transition metal ions, where both spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation effect play an important role. Here, motivated by these transition metal series with effective doping or mixed valence case, we propose the possible realization of magnetic Chern insulators at quarter filled honeycomb lattice. We show that the interplay of intrinsic spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation opens a wide region of ferromagnetic Chern insulating phases in between metals and normal insulators. Within the mean field approximation, we present the phase diagram of a quarter filled Kane-Mele Hubbard model and also discuss the effects of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and nearest neighbor interactions on it.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Towards realistic simulations of QED cascades: non-ideal laser and electron seeding effects

A number of analytical and numerical studies has been performed to investigate the onset and the development of QED cascades in the collision of two counterpropagating laser pulses as a function of the laser intensity. However, it has been recently demonstrated [M. Tamburini et al., Sci. Rep. 7, 5694 (2017)] that the onset of QED cascades is also strongly influenced by the structure of the laser pulses, such as the laser pulse waist radius. Here we investigate how QED cascades are affected by: (a) the laser pulse duration, (b) the presence of a relative delay for the peak of the laser pulses to reach the focus, (c) the existence of a mismatch between the laser focal axis of the two laser pulses. This is especially important as, in realistic laboratory conditions, fluctuations may arise in the temporal and point stability of the lasers.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Physics of Plasma

Gauge Coupling Unification in Heterotic String Models with Gauge Mediated SUSY Breaking

We calculate the weak scale MSSM spectrum starting from a heterotic string theory compactified on an anisotropic orbifold. Supersymmetry breaking is mediated by vector-like exotics that arise naturally in heterotic string theories. The messengers that mediate SUSY breaking come in incomplete GUT multiplets and give rise to non-universal gaugino masses at the GUT scale. Models with non-universal gaugino masses at the GUT scale have the attractive feature of allowing for precision gauge coupling unification at the GUT scale with negligible contributions from threshold corrections near the unification scale. The unique features of the MSSM spectrum are light gluinos and also large mass differences between the lightest and the next-to-lightest neutralinos and charginos which could lead to interesting signatures at the colliders.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figure