Tropospheric and ionospheric effects upon radio frequency /VHF-SHF/ communication

Tropospheric and ionospheric effects on radio frequency communication

Syntactic annotation of non-canonical linguistic structures

This paper deals with the syntactic annotation of corpora that contain both ‘canonical’ and ‘non-canonical’ sentences

Magnetic Solutions to 2+1 Gravity

We report on a new solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations in 2+1 dimensions with a negative cosmological constant. The solution is static, rotationally symmetric and has a non-zero magnetic field. The solution can be interpreted as a monopole with an everywhere finite energy density.Comment: 9 pages, harvmac; we correct a reference and a typ

Nature versus nurture: what regulates star formation in satellite galaxies?

We use our state-of-the-art Galaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) semi-analytic model to study how and on which time-scales star formation is suppressed in satellite galaxies. Our fiducial stellar feedback model, implementing strong stellar driven outflows, reproduces relatively well the variations of passive fractions as a function of galaxy stellar mass and halo mass measured in the local Universe, as well as the `quenching' time-scales inferred from the data. We show that the same level of agreement can be obtained by using an alternative stellar feedback scheme featuring lower ejection rates at high redshift, and modifying the treatment for hot gas stripping. This scheme over-predicts the number densities of low to intermediate mass galaxies. In addition, a good agreement with the observed passive fractions can be obtained only by assuming that cooling can continue on satellites, at the rate predicted considering halo properties at infall, even after their parent dark matter substructure is stripped below the resolution of the simulation. For our fiducial model, the better agreement with the observed passive fractions can be ascribed to: (i) a larger cold gas fraction of satellites at the time of accretion, and (ii) a lower rate of gas reheating by supernovae explosions and stellar winds with respect to previous versions of our model. Our results suggest that the abundance of passive galaxies with stellar mass larger than ~10^10 Msun is primarily determined by the self-regulation between star formation and stellar feedback, with environmental processes playing a more marginal role.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 appendix. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Galaxy assembly, stellar feedback and metal enrichment: the view from the GAEA model

One major problem of current theoretical models of galaxy formation is given by their inability to reproduce the apparently `anti-hierarchical' evolution of galaxy assembly: massive galaxies appear to be in place since $z\sim 3$, while a significant increase of the number densities of low mass galaxies is measured with decreasing redshift. In this work, we perform a systematic analysis of the influence of different stellar feedback schemes, carried out in the framework of GAEA, a new semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. It includes a self-consistent treatment for the timings of gas, metal and energy recycling, and for the chemical yields. We show this to be crucial to use observational measurements of the metallicity as independent and powerful constraints for the adopted feedback schemes. The observed trends can be reproduced in the framework of either a strong ejective or preventive feedback model. In the former case, the gas ejection rate must decrease significantly with cosmic time (as suggested by parametrizations of the cosmological `FIRE' simulations). Irrespective of the feedback scheme used, our successful models always imply that up to 60-70 per cent of the baryons reside in an `ejected' reservoir and are unavailable for cooling at high redshift. The same schemes predict physical properties of model galaxies (e.g. gas content, colour, age, and metallicity) that are in much better agreement with observational data than our fiducial model. The overall fraction of passive galaxies is found to be primarily determined by internal physical processes, with environment playing a secondary role.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication by MNRAS; note that corresponding new galaxy catalogues (FIRE model) will soon be made publicly available at http://gavo.mpa-garching.mpg.de/Millennium

Critical Phenomena in Nonlinear Sigma Models

We consider solutions to the nonlinear sigma model (wave maps) with target space S^3 and base space 3+1 Minkowski space, and we find critical behavior separating singular solutions from nonsingular solutions. For families of solutions with localized spatial support a self-similar solution is found at the boundary. For other families, we find that a static solution appears to sit at the boundary. This behavior is compared to the black hole critical phenomena found by Choptuik.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; a couple small corrections; a revised discussion of the role of the static solution; main conclusions unaltere

Instability of an "Approximate Black Hole"

We investigate the stability of a family of spherically symmetric static solutions in vacuum Brans-Dicke theory (with $\omega=0$) recently described by van Putten. Using linear perturbation theory, we find one exponentially growing mode for every member of the family of solutions, and thus conclude that the solutions are not stable. Using a previously constructed code for spherically symmetric Brans-Dicke, additional evidence for instability is provided by directly evolving the static solutions with perturbations. The full non-linear evolutions also suggest that the solutions are black-hole-threshold critical solutions.Comment: 5 pages, REVTeX 3.0, 6 figures include

Isolated galaxies in hierarchical galaxy formation models - present-day properties and environmental histories

In this study, we have carried out a detailed, statistical analysis of isolated model galaxies, taking advantage of publicly available hierarchical galaxy formation models. To select isolated galaxies, we employ 2D methods widely used in the observational literature, as well as a more stringent 3D isolation criterion that uses the full 3D-real space information. In qualitative agreement with observational results, isolated model galaxies have larger fractions of late-type, star forming galaxies with respect to randomly selected samples of galaxies with the same mass distribution. We also find that the samples of isolated model galaxies typically contain a fraction of less than 15 per cent of satellite galaxies, that reside at the outskirts of their parent haloes where the galaxy number density is low. Projection effects cause a contamination of 2D samples of about 18 per cent, while we estimate a typical completeness of 65 per cent. Our model isolated samples also include a very small (few per cent) fraction of bulge dominated galaxies (B/T > 0.8) whose bulges have been built mainly by minor mergers. Our study demonstrates that about 65-70 per cent of 2D isolated galaxies that are classified as isolated at z = 0 have indeed been completely isolated since z = 1 and only 7 per cent have had more than 3 neighbours within a comoving radius of 1 Mpc. Irrespectively of the isolation criteria, roughly 45 per cent of isolated galaxies have experienced at least one merger event in the past (most of the mergers are minor, with mass ratios between 1:4 and 1:10). The latter point validates the approximation that isolated galaxies have been mainly influenced by internal processes.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, minor changes in the text, accepted for publication by MNRA