Quark Condensate in the Deuteron

We study the changes produced by the deuteron on the QCD quark condensate by means the Feynman-Hellmann theorem and find that the pion mass dependence of the pion-nucleon coupling could play an important role. We also discuss the relation between the many body effect of the condensate and the meson exchange currents, as seen by photons and pions. For pion probes, the many-body term in the physical amplitude differs significantly from that of soft pions, the one linked to the condensate. Thus no information about the many-body term of the condensate can be extracted from the pion-deuteron scattering length. On the other hand, in the Compton amplitude, the relationship with the condensate is a more direct one.Comment: to appear in Physics Review C (19 pages, 3 figures

Investigating magnetic activity of F stars with the it Kepler mission

The dynamo process is believed to drive the magnetic activity of stars like the Sun that have an outer convection zone. Large spectroscopic surveys showed that there is a relation between the rotation periods and the cycle periods: the longer the rotation period is, the longer the magnetic activity cycle period will be. We present the analysis of F stars observed by Kepler for which individual p modes have been measure and with surface rotation periods shorter than 12 days. We defined magnetic indicators and proxies based on photometric observations to help characterise the activity levels of the stars. With the Kepler data, we investigate the existence of stars with cycles (regular or not), stars with a modulation that could be related to magnetic activity, and stars that seem to show a flat behaviour.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, proceedings of IAU Symposium 302 'Magnetic fields through stellar evolution', 25-30 August 2013, Biarritz, Franc

The Sun-as-a-star observations: GOLF & VIRGO on SoHO, and BiSON network

Sun-as-a-star observations are very important for the study of the conditions within the Sun and in particular for the deep interior where higher degree modes do not penetrate. They are also of significance in this era of dramatic advances in stellar asteroseismology as they are comparable to those measured in other stars by asteroseismic missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, and MOST. More than 17 years of continuous measurements of SoHO and more than 30 years of BiSON observations provide very long data sets of uninterrupted helioseismic observations. In this work, we discuss the present status of all these facilities that continue to provide state- of-the-art measurements and invaluable data to improve our knowledge of the deepest layers of the Sun and its structural changes during the activity cycle.Comment: Proceedings of the GONG 2012 / LWS/SDO-5 / SOHO 27. 4 Pages, 5 Figure

Calculation of the Alpha--Particle Ground State within the Hyperspherical Harmonic Basis

The problem of calculating the four--nucleon bound state properties for the case of realistic two- and three-body nuclear potentials is studied using the hyperspherical harmonic (HH) approach. A careful analysis of the convergence of different classes of HH functions has been performed. A restricted basis is chosen to allow for accurate estimates of the binding energy and other properties of the 4He ground state. Results for various modern two-nucleon and two- plus three-nucleon interactions are presented. The 4He asymptotic normalization constants for separation in 2+2 and 1+3 clusters are also computed.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, 11 tables, revtex

Solar-like oscillations with low amplitude in the CoRoT target HD 181906

Context: The F8 star HD 181906 (effective temperature ~6300K) was observed for 156 days by the CoRoT satellite during the first long run in the centre direction. Analysis of the data reveals a spectrum of solar-like acoustic oscillations. However, the faintness of the target (m_v=7.65) means the signal-to-noise (S/N) in the acoustic modes is quite low, and this low S/N leads to complications in the analysis. Aims: To extract global variables of the star as well as key parameters of the p modes observed in the power spectrum of the lightcurve. Methods: The power spectrum of the lightcurve, a wavelet transform and spot fitting have been used to obtain the average rotation rate of the star and its inclination angle. Then, the autocorrelation of the power spectrum and the power spectrum of the power spectrum were used to properly determine the large separation. Finally, estimations of the mode parameters have been done by maximizing the likelihood of a global fit, where several modes were fit simultaneously. Results: We have been able to infer the mean surface rotation rate of the star (~4 microHz) with indications of the presence of surface differential rotation, the large separation of the p modes (~87 microHz), and therefore also the ridges corresponding to overtones of the acoustic modes.Comment: Paper Accepted to be published in A&A. 10 Pages, 12 figure

Magnetic variability in the young solar analog KIC 10644253: Observations from the Kepler satellite and the HERMES spectrograph

The continuous photometric observations collected by the Kepler satellite over 4 years provide a whelm of data with an unequalled quantity and quality for the study of stellar evolution of more than 200000 stars. Moreover, the length of the dataset provide a unique source of information to detect magnetic activity and associated temporal variability in the acoustic oscillations. In this regards, the Kepler mission was awaited with great expectation. The search for the signature of magnetic activity variability in solar-like pulsations still remained unfruitful more than 2 years after the end of the nominal mission. Here, however, we report the discovery of temporal variability in the low-degree acoustic frequencies of the young (1 Gyr-old) solar analog KIC 10644253 with a modulation of about 1.5 years with significant temporal variations along the duration of the Kepler observations. The variations are in agreement with the derived photometric activity. The frequency shifts extracted for KIC 10644253 are shown to result from the same physical mechanisms involved in the inner sub-surface layers as in the Sun. In parallel, a detailed spectroscopic analysis of KIC 10644253 is performed based on complementary ground-based, high-resolution observations collected by the HERMES instrument mounted on the MERCATOR telescope. Its lithium abundance and chromospheric activity S-index confirm that KIC 10644253 is a young and more active star than the Sun.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 12 pages, 8 figure