Frame dragging with optical vortices

General Relativistic calculations in the linear regime have been made for electromagnetic beams of radiation known as optical vortices. These exotic beams of light carry a physical quantity known as optical orbital angular momentum (OAM). It is found that when a massive spinning neutral particle is placed along the optical axis, a phenomenon known as inertial frame dragging occurs. Our results are compared with those found previously for a ring laser and an order of magnitude estimate of the laser intensity needed for a precession frequency of 1 Hz is given for these "steady" beams of light.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Full orbital calculation scheme for materials with strongly correlated electrons

We propose a computational scheme for the ab initio calculation of Wannier functions (WFs) for correlated electronic materials. The full-orbital Hamiltonian H is projected into the WF subspace defined by the physically most relevant partially filled bands. The Hamiltonian H^{WF} obtained in this way, with interaction parameters calculated by constrained LDA for the Wannier orbitals, is used as an ab initio setup of the correlation problem, which can then be solved by many-body techniques, e.g., dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). In such calculations the self-energy operator \Sigma(e) is defined in WF basis which then can be converted back into the full-orbital Hilbert space to compute the full-orbital interacting Green function G(r,r',e). Using G(r,r',e) one can evaluate the charge density, modified by correlations, together with a new set of WFs, thus defining a fully self-consistent scheme. The Green function can also be used for the calculation of spectral, magnetic and electronic properties of the system. Here we report the results obtained with this method for SrVO3 and V2O3. Comparisons are made with previous results obtained by the LDA+DMFT approach where the LDA DOS was used as input, and with new bulk-sensitive experimental spectra.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figure

A demonstration of 'broken' visual space

It has long been assumed that there is a distorted mapping between real and ‘perceived’ space, based on demonstrations of systematic errors in judgements of slant, curvature, direction and separation. Here, we have applied a direct test to the notion of a coherent visual space. In an immersive virtual environment, participants judged the relative distance of two squares displayed in separate intervals. On some trials, the virtual scene expanded by a factor of four between intervals although, in line with recent results, participants did not report any noticeable change in the scene. We found that there was no consistent depth ordering of objects that can explain the distance matches participants made in this environment (e.g. A > B > D yet also A < C < D) and hence no single one-to-one mapping between participants’ perceived space and any real 3D environment. Instead, factors that affect pairwise comparisons of distances dictate participants’ performance. These data contradict, more directly than previous experiments, the idea that the visual system builds and uses a coherent 3D internal representation of a scene

Duality and scaling in 3-dimensional scalar electrodynamics

Three-dimensional scalar electrodynamics, with a local U(1) gauge symmetry, is believed to be dual to a scalar theory with a global U(1) symmetry, near the phase transition point. The conjectured duality leads to definite predictions for the scaling exponents of the gauge theory transition in the type II region, and allows thus to be scrutinized empirically. We review these predictions, and carry out numerical lattice Monte Carlo measurements to test them: a number of exponents, characterising the two phases as well as the transition point, are found to agree with expectations, supporting the conjecture. We explain why some others, like the exponent characterising the photon correlation length, appear to disagree with expectations, unless very large system sizes and the extreme vicinity of the transition point are considered. Finally, we remark that in the type I region the duality implies an interesting quantitative relationship between a magnetic flux tube and a 2-dimensional non-topological soliton.Comment: 27 pages. v2: reference and minor clarifications added, to appear in Nucl.Phys.

Modelling human visual navigation using multi-view scene reconstruction

It is often assumed that humans generate a 3D reconstruction of the environment, either in egocentric or world-based coordinates, but the steps involved are unknown. Here, we propose two reconstruction-based models, evaluated using data from two tasks in immersive virtual reality. We model the observer’s prediction of landmark location based on standard photogrammetric methods and then combine location predictions to compute likelihood maps of navigation behaviour. In one model, each scene point is treated independently in the reconstruction; in the other, the pertinent variable is the spatial relationship between pairs of points. Participants viewed a simple environment from one location, were transported (virtually) to another part of the scene and were asked to navigate back. Error distributions varied substantially with changes in scene layout; we compared these directly with the likelihood maps to quantify the success of the models. We also measured error distributions when participants manipulated the location of a landmark to match the preceding interval, providing a direct test of the landmark-location stage of the navigation models. Models such as this, which start with scenes and end with a probabilistic prediction of behaviour, are likely to be increasingly useful for understanding 3D vision

The escape of ionising radiation from high-redshift dwarf galaxies

The UV escape fraction from high-redshift galaxies plays a key role in models of cosmic reionisation. Because it is currently not possible to deduce the escape fractions during the epoch of reionisation from observations, we have to rely on numerical simulations. Our aim is to better constrain the escape fraction from high-redshift dwarf galaxies, as these are the most likely sources responsible for reionising the Universe. We employ a N-body/SPH method that includes realistic prescriptions for the physical processes that are important for the evolution of dwarf galaxies. These models are post-processed with radiative transfer to determine the escape fraction of ionising radiation. We perform a parameter study to assess the influence of the spin parameter, gas fraction and formation redshift of the galaxy and study the importance of numerical parameters as resolution, source distribution and local gas clearing. We find that the UV escape fraction from high-redshift dwarf galaxies that have formed a rotationally supported disc lie between 1e-5 and 0.1. The mass and angular momentum of the galaxy are the most important parameters that determine the escape fraction. We compare our results to previous work and discuss the uncertainties of our models. The low escape fraction we find for high-redshift dwarf galaxies is balanced by their high stellar content, resulting in an efficiency parameter for stars that is only marginally lower than the values found by semi-analytic models of reionisation. We therefore conclude that dwarf galaxies play an important role in cosmic reionisation also after the initial starburst phase, when the gas has settled into a disc.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in A&