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Masonry infill performance during the Northridge earthquake
The response of masonry infills during the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake is described in terms of three categories: (1) lowrise and midrise structures experiencing large near field seismic excitations, (2) lowrise and midrise structures experiencing moderate far field excitation, and (3) highrise structures experiencing moderate far field excitation. In general, the infills provided a positive beneficial effect on the performance of the buildings, even those experiencing large peak accelerations near the epicenter. Varying types of masonry infills, structural frames, design conditions, and construction deficiencies were observed and their performance during the earthquake indicated. A summary of observations of the performance of infills in other recent earthquakes is given. Comparison with the Northridge earthquake is made and expected response of infill structures in lower seismic regions of the central and eastern United States is discussed
Fluctuations of an evaporating black hole from back reaction of its Hawking radiation: Questioning a premise in earlier work
This paper delineates the first steps in a systematic quantitative study of
the spacetime fluctuations induced by quantum fields in an evaporating black
hole. We explain how the stochastic gravity formalism can be a useful tool for
that purpose within a low-energy effective field theory approach to quantum
gravity. As an explicit example we apply it to the study of the
spherically-symmetric sector of metric perturbations around an evaporating
black hole background geometry. For macroscopic black holes we find that those
fluctuations grow and eventually become important when considering sufficiently
long periods of time (of the order of the evaporation time), but well before
the Planckian regime is reached. In addition, the assumption of a simple
correlation between the fluctuations of the energy flux crossing the horizon
and far from it, which was made in earlier work on spherically-symmetric
induced fluctuations, is carefully analyzed and found to be invalid. Our
analysis suggests the existence of an infinite amplitude for the fluctuations
of the horizon as a three-dimensional hypersurface. We emphasize the need for
understanding and designing operational ways of probing quantum metric
fluctuations near the horizon and extracting physically meaningful information.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX; minor changes, a few references added and a brief
discussion of their relevance included. To appear in the proceedings of the
10th Peyresq meeting. Dedicated to Rafael Sorkin on the occasion of his 60th
birthda
Linear Response, Validity of Semi-Classical Gravity, and the Stability of Flat Space
A quantitative test for the validity of the semi-classical approximation in
gravity is given. The criterion proposed is that solutions to the
semi-classical Einstein equations should be stable to linearized perturbations,
in the sense that no gauge invariant perturbation should become unbounded in
time. A self-consistent linear response analysis of these perturbations, based
upon an invariant effective action principle, necessarily involves metric
fluctuations about the mean semi-classical geometry, and brings in the
two-point correlation function of the quantum energy-momentum tensor in a
natural way. This linear response equation contains no state dependent
divergences and requires no new renormalization counterterms beyond those
required in the leading order semi-classical approximation. The general linear
response criterion is applied to the specific example of a scalar field with
arbitrary mass and curvature coupling in the vacuum state of Minkowski
spacetime. The spectral representation of the vacuum polarization function is
computed in n dimensional Minkowski spacetime, and used to show that the flat
space solution to the semi-classical Einstein equations for n=4 is stable to
all perturbations on distance scales much larger than the Planck length.Comment: 22 pages: This is a significantly expanded version of gr-qc/0204083,
with two additional sections and two new appendices giving a complete,
explicit example of the semi-classical stability criterion proposed in the
previous pape
On the Detection of a Scalar Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves
In the near future we will witness the coming to a full operational regime of
laser interferometers and resonant mass detectors of spherical shape. In this
work we study the sensitivity of pairs of such gravitational wave detectors to
a scalar stochastic background of gravitational waves. Our computations are
carried out both for minimal and non minimal coupling of the scalar fields.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figure
Towards a Realistic Neutron Star Binary Inspiral: Initial Data and Multiple Orbit Evolution in Full General Relativity
This paper reports on our effort in modeling realistic astrophysical neutron
star binaries in general relativity. We analyze under what conditions the
conformally flat quasiequilibrium (CFQE) approach can generate
``astrophysically relevant'' initial data, by developing an analysis that
determines the violation of the CFQE approximation in the evolution of the
binary described by the full Einstein theory. We show that the CFQE assumptions
significantly violate the Einstein field equations for corotating neutron stars
at orbital separations nearly double that of the innermost stable circular
orbit (ISCO) separation, thus calling into question the astrophysical relevance
of the ISCO determined in the CFQE approach. With the need to start numerical
simulations at large orbital separation in mind, we push for stable and long
term integrations of the full Einstein equations for the binary neutron star
system. We demonstrate the stability of our numerical treatment and analyze the
stringent requirements on resolution and size of the computational domain for
an accurate simulation of the system.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev.
Noise induced transitions in semiclassical cosmology
A semiclassical cosmological model is considered which consists of a closed
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker in the presence of a cosmological constant, which
mimics the effect of an inflaton field, and a massless, non-conformally coupled
quantum scalar field. We show that the back-reaction of the quantum field,
which consists basically of a non local term due to gravitational particle
creation and a noise term induced by the quantum fluctuations of the field, are
able to drive the cosmological scale factor over the barrier of the classical
potential so that if the universe starts near zero scale factor (initial
singularity) it can make the transition to an exponentially expanding de Sitter
phase. We compute the probability of this transition and it turns out to be
comparable with the probability that the universe tunnels from "nothing" into
an inflationary stage in quantum cosmology. This suggests that in the presence
of matter fields the back-reaction on the spacetime should not be neglected in
quantum cosmology.Comment: LaTex, 33.tex pages, no figure
Rip/singularity free cosmology models with bulk viscosity
In this paper we present two concrete models of non-perfect fluid with bulk
viscosity to interpret the observed cosmic accelerating expansion phenomena,
avoiding the introduction of exotic dark energy. The first model we inspect has
a viscosity of the form by
taking into account of the decelerating parameter q, and the other model is of
the form . We give out the
exact solutions of such models and further constrain them with the latest
Union2 data as well as the currently observed Hubble-parameter dataset (OHD),
then we discuss the fate of universe evolution in these models, which confronts
neither future singularity nor little/pseudo rip. From the resulting curves by
best fittings we find a much more flexible evolution processing due to the
presence of viscosity while being consistent with the observational data in the
region of data fitting. With the bulk viscosity considered, a more realistic
universe scenario is characterized comparable with the {\Lambda}CDM model but
without introducing the mysterious dark energy.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, submitted to EPJ-
Gravitational Coupling and Dynamical Reduction of The Cosmological Constant
We introduce a dynamical model to reduce a large cosmological constant to a
sufficiently small value. The basic ingredient in this model is a distinction
which has been made between the two unit systems used in cosmology and particle
physics. We have used a conformal invariant gravitational model to define a
particular conformal frame in terms of large scale properties of the universe.
It is then argued that the contributions of mass scales in particle physics to
the vacuum energy density should be considered in a different conformal frame.
In this manner, a decaying mechanism is presented in which the conformal factor
appears as a dynamical field and plays a key role to relax a large effective
cosmological constant. Moreover, we argue that this model also provides a
possible explanation for the coincidence problem.Comment: To appear in GR
Efficient Data Race Detection for Async-Finish Parallelism
Abstract. A major productivity hurdle for parallel programming is the presence of data races. Data races can lead to all kinds of harmful program behaviors, includ-ing determinism violations and corrupted memory. However, runtime overheads of current dynamic data race detectors are still prohibitively large (often incurring slowdowns of 10 × or larger) for use in mainstream software development. In this paper, we present an efficient dynamic race detector algorithm targeting the async-finish task-parallel parallel programming model. The async and finish constructs are at the core of languages such as X10 and Habanero Java (HJ). These constructs generalize the spawn-sync constructs used in Cilk, while still ensuring that all computation graphs are deadlock-free. We have implemented our algorithm in a tool called TASKCHECKER and eval-uated it on a suite of 12 benchmarks. To reduce overhead of the dynamic analysis, we have also implemented various static optimizations in the tool. Our experi-mental results indicate that our approach performs well in practice, incurring an average slowdown of 3.05 × compared to a serial execution in the optimized case.
A dynamic neural field approach to natural and efficient human-robot collaboration
A major challenge in modern robotics is the design of autonomous robots
that are able to cooperate with people in their daily tasks in a human-like way. We
address the challenge of natural human-robot interactions by using the theoretical
framework of dynamic neural fields (DNFs) to develop processing architectures that
are based on neuro-cognitive mechanisms supporting human joint action. By explaining
the emergence of self-stabilized activity in neuronal populations, dynamic
field theory provides a systematic way to endow a robot with crucial cognitive functions
such as working memory, prediction and decision making . The DNF architecture
for joint action is organized as a large scale network of reciprocally connected
neuronal populations that encode in their firing patterns specific motor behaviors,
action goals, contextual cues and shared task knowledge. Ultimately, it implements
a context-dependent mapping from observed actions of the human onto adequate
complementary behaviors that takes into account the inferred goal of the co-actor.
We present results of flexible and fluent human-robot cooperation in a task in which
the team has to assemble a toy object from its components.The present research was conducted in the context of the fp6-IST2 EU-IP
Project JAST (proj. nr. 003747) and partly financed by the FCT grants POCI/V.5/A0119/2005 and
CONC-REEQ/17/2001. We would like to thank Luis Louro, Emanuel Sousa, Flora Ferreira, Eliana
Costa e Silva, Rui Silva and Toni Machado for their assistance during the robotic experiment
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