Time variations of the narrow FeII and HI spectral emission lines from the close vicinity of Eta Carinae during the spectral event of 2003

The spectrum of Eta Carinae and its ejecta shows slow variations over a period of 5.5 years. However, the spectrum changes drastically on a time scale of days once every period called the 'spectral event'. We report on variations in the narrow emission line spectrum of gas condensations (the Weigelt blobs) close to the central star during a spectral event. The rapid changes in the stellar radiation field illuminating the blobs make the blobs a natural astrophysical laboratory to study atomic photoprocesses. The different responses of the HI Paschen lines, fluorescent lines and forbidden [FeII] lines allow us to identify the processes and estimate physical conditions in the blobs. This paper is based on observations from the Pico dos Dias Observatory (LNA/Brazil) during the previous event in June 2003.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Self Interference of Single Electrodynamic Particle in Double Slit

It is by the long established fact in experiment and theory that electromagnetic waves, here as one component of an IED particle, passing a double slit will undergo self inference each, producing at a detector plane fringed intensities. The wave generating point charge of a zero rest mass, as the other component of the particle, is maintained a constant energy and speed by a repeated radiation reabsorption/reemission scheme, and in turn steered in direction in its linear motion by the reflected radiation field, and will thereby travel to the detector along (one of) the optical path(s) of the waves leading to a bright interference fringe. We elucidate the process formally based on first principles solutions for the IED particle and known principles for wave-matter interaction.Comment: Presentation at The 6th Int. Symp. Quantum Theory and Symmetries, Univ. Kent, 2009

Discrete polynuclear growth and determinantal processes

We consider a discrete polynuclear growth (PNG) process and prove a functioal limit theorem for its convergrence to the Airy process. This generalizes previous results by Pr"ahofer and Spohn. The result enables us to express the GOE largest eigenvalue (Tracy-Widom) distribution in terms of the Airy process. We also show some results and give a conjecture about the transversal fluctuations in a point to line last passage percolation problem.Comment: In the new version some parts have been replaced, new material has beeb added and errors correcte

Optomechanical-like coupling between superconducting resonators

We propose and analyze a circuit that implements a nonlinear coupling between two superconducting microwave resonators. The resonators are coupled through a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) that terminates one of the resonators. This produces a nonlinear interaction on the standard optomechanical form, where the quadrature of one resonator couples to the photon number of the other resonator. The circuit therefore allows for all-electrical realizations of analogs to optomechanical systems, with coupling that can be both strong and tunable. We estimate the coupling strengths that should be attainable with the proposed device, and we find that the device is a promising candidate for realizing the single-photon strong-coupling regime. As a potential application, we discuss implementations of networks of nonlinearly-coupled microwave resonators, which could be used in microwave-photon based quantum simulation.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure