Tracing the Dynamics of Disk Galaxies with Optical and IR Surface Photometry: Color Gradients in M99

We present optical and IR surface photometry of M99 (NGC 4254) at g, r_S i, J and K'. We also present a K' image of M51 (NGC 5194) for comparison. Fourier decomposition of the disk light reveals that the radial distribution of power depends on wavelength, which in turn implies that the spiral structure traced in the visual (i.e. young population I and dust) is different from the one detected at 2 microns (i.e. old stellar disk). We observe radial modulation of the power and a dependency of power with wavelength that are consistent with modal theory of spiral structure. A central motivation for our research is the fundamental idea of density wave theory that the passage of a spiral density wave triggers star formation. We have found a stellar population age gradient consistent with this scenario in a reddening-free, red supergiant-sensitive, Q-like photometric parameter at 6 kpc galactocentric distance across one of the arms of M99. We rule out that the change in this parameter, Q(r_SJgi), across the arm is mainly due to dust. The difference in Q(r_SJgi) going from the interarm regions to the arms also indicates that arms cannot be due exclusively to crowding of stellar orbits. We present the first measurement of Omega_p, the angular speed of the spiral pattern, and of the location of the corotation radius, derived from the drift velocity of the young stars away from their birth site. The measured Q(r_SJgi) implies a star formation rate for M99 within the range of 10-20 M_odot/yr; a disk stellar mass surface density of ~80 M_odot/pc^2; and a maximum contribution of ~20 percent from red supergiants to the K' light in a small region, and much smaller on average. We measure a K' arm--interarm contrast of 2-3, too high for M99 to be a truly isolated galaxy.Comment: 25 pages of uuencoded, compressed Postscript (text only). To appear in 1 April 1996 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Also available, together with 2 uuencoded, compressed PostScript files with 10 figures each, at http://astro.berkeley.edu/preprints.htm

Russian manufacturing and the threat of ‘Dutch disease’: a comparison of competitiveness developments in Russian and Ukrainian industry

This paper examines the development of Russian industry in comparison with that of Ukrainian industry during 1995–2004 in an effort to ascertain to what extent, if any, Russian manufacturing showed signs of succumbing to ‘Dutch disease’. Ukraine and Russia began the market transition with broadly similar institutions, industrial structures and levels of technology, and the economic reforms implemented in the two countries were also similar, although Ukraine was reckoned to lag behind Russia in many areas. The main difference between them is Russia’s far greater resource wealth. It follows that differences in industrial development since 1991 may to some degree be attributable to differences in initial natural resource endowments. In short, Ukraine could provide a rough approximation of how a resource-poor Russia might have developed over the transition

Topological Vertex, String Amplitudes and Spectral Functions of Hyperbolic Geometry

We discuss the homological aspects of the connection between quantum string generating function and the formal power series associated to the dimensions of chains and homologies of suitable Lie algebras. Our analysis can be considered as a new straightforward application of the machinery of modular forms and spectral functions (with values in the congruence subgroup of $SL(2,{\mathbb Z})$) to the partition functions of Lagrangian branes, refined vertex and open string partition functions, represented by means of formal power series that encode Lie algebra properties. The common feature in our examples lies in the modular properties of the characters of certain representations of the pertinent affine Lie algebras and in the role of Selberg-type spectral functions of an hyperbolic three-geometry associated with $q$-series in the computation of the string amplitudes.Comment: Revised version. References added, results remain unchanged. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:hep-th/0701156, arXiv:1105.4571, arXiv:1206.0664 by other author

Reliability of the optimized perturbation theory in the 0-dimensional O(N)O(N) scalar field model

We address the reliability of the Optimized Perturbation Theory (OPT) in the context of the 0-dimensional $O(N)$ scalar field model. The effective potential, the self-energy and the 1PI four-point Green's function for the model are computed using different optimization schemes and the results contrasted to the exact results for the model. Our results are also compared to those obtained with the $1/N$-expansion and with those from ordinary perturbation theory. The OPT results are shown to be stable even at large couplings and to have better convergence properties than the ones produced in the $1/N$-expansion. It is also shown that the principle of minimal sensitive optimization procedure used in conjunction with the OPT method tends to always produce better results, in particular when applied directly to the self-energy.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures, v2 Physica A versio

Nonextensive Thermostatistics and the HH-Theorem Revisited

In this paper we present a new derivation of the $H$-theorem and the corresponding collisional equilibrium velocity distributions, within the framework of Tsallis' nonextensive thermostatistics. Unlike previous works, in our derivation we do not assume any modification on the functional form of Boltzmann's original "molecular chaos hypothesis". Rather, we explicitly introduce into the collision scenario, the existence of statistical dependence between the molecules before the collision has taken place, through a conditional distribution $f(\vec{v}_2|\vec{v}_1)$. In this approach, different equilibrium scenarios emerge depending on the value of the nonextensive entropic parameter.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Physica