Frequency scaling of photo-induced tunneling

The DC current-voltage characteristics, induced by a driving electric field with frequency Omega, of a one dimensional electron channel with a tunnel barrier is calculated. Electron-electron interaction of finite-range is taken into account. For intermediate interaction strengths, the non-linear differential conductance shows cusp-like minima at bias voltages integer multiples of hbar Omega / e that are a consequence of the finite non-zero range of the interaction but are independent of the shape of the driving electric field. However, the frequency-scaling of the photo-induced current shows a cross-over between Omega^{-1} and Omega^{-2}, and depends on the spatial shape of the driving field and the range of the interaction.Comment: 7 pages, EURO-TeX, 3 figures, to appear in Europhysics Letter

VLT/UVES observations of peculiar alpha abundances in a sub-DLA at z ~ 1.8 towards the quasar B1101-26

We present a detailed analysis of chemical abundances in a sub-damped Lyman alpha absorber at z=1.839 towards the quasar B1101-26, based on a very-high-resolution (R ~ 75,000) and high-signal-to-noise (S/N >100) spectrum observed with the UV Visual Echelle spectrograph (UVES) installed on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). The absorption line profiles are resolved into a maximum of eleven velocity components spanning a rest-frame velocity range of 200 km/s. Detected ions include CII, CIV, NII, OI, MgI, MgII, AlII, AlIII, SiII, SiIII, SiIV, FeII, and possibly SII. The total neutral hydrogen column density is log N(HI) = 19.48 +/- 0.01. From measurements of column densities and Doppler parameters we estimate element abundances of the above-given elements. The overall metallicity, as traced by [OI/HI], is -1.56 +/- 0.01. For the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio we derive an upper limit of [NI/OI] < -0.65, which suggests a chemically young absorption line system. This is supported by a supersolar alpha/Fe ratio of [SiII/FeII] ~ 0.5. The most striking feature in the observed abundance pattern is an unusually high sulphur-to-oxygen ratio of 0.69 < [SII/OI] < 1.26. We calculate detailed photoionisation models for two subcomponents with Cloudy, and can rule out that ionisation effects alone are responsible for the high S/O ratio. We instead speculate that the high S/O ratio is caused by the combination of several effects, such as specific ionisation conditions in multi-phase gas, unusual relative abundances of heavy elements, and/or dust depletion in a local gas environment that is not well mixed and/or that might be related to star-formation activity in the host galaxy. We discuss the implications of our findings for the interpretation of alpha-element abundances in metal absorbers at high redshift.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, to be published in A&

The HeII Lyman alpha forest and the thermal state of the IGM

Recent analyses of the intergalactic UV background by means of the HeII Lyman alpha forest assume that HeII and HI absorption features have the same line widths. We omit this assumption to investigate possible effects of thermal line broadening on the inferred HeII/HI ratio eta and to explore the potential of intergalactic HeII observations to constrain the thermal state of the IGM. Deriving a simple relation between the column density and the temperature of an absorber we develop a procedure to fit the parameters of a power law temperature-density relation and eta simultaneously. In an alternative approach the temperature of an absorber, eta, and the redshift scale of eta variations are estimated simultaneously. Tests with artificial data show that well-constrained results can be obtained only if the signal-to-noise ratio in the HeII forest is S/N > 20. Thus, it is impossible to give an estimate of the temperature-density relation with the HeII data available at present (S/N ~5). However, we find that only 45% of the lines in our sample favor turbulent line widths. Furthermore, the inferred eta values are on average about 0.05 dex larger if a thermal component is taken into account, and their distribution is 46% narrower in comparison to a purely turbulent fit. Therefore, variations of eta on a 10% level may be related to the presence of thermal line broadening. The apparent correlation between the strength of the HI absorption and the eta value, which has been found in former studies, essentially disappears if thermal broadening is taken into account. In the redshift range 2.58 < z < 2.74 towards the quasars HE2347-4342 and HS1700+6416 we obtain eta ~ 100. (abridged)Comment: accepted for publication by A&A, 11 pages, 13 figure

Accelerating Cooperative Planning for Automated Vehicles with Learned Heuristics and Monte Carlo Tree Search

Efficient driving in urban traffic scenarios requires foresight. The observation of other traffic participants and the inference of their possible next actions depending on the own action is considered cooperative prediction and planning. Humans are well equipped with the capability to predict the actions of multiple interacting traffic participants and plan accordingly, without the need to directly communicate with others. Prior work has shown that it is possible to achieve effective cooperative planning without the need for explicit communication. However, the search space for cooperative plans is so large that most of the computational budget is spent on exploring the search space in unpromising regions that are far away from the solution. To accelerate the planning process, we combined learned heuristics with a cooperative planning method to guide the search towards regions with promising actions, yielding better solutions at lower computational costs