No Arabic abstract
This paper is written as a brief introduction for beginning graduate students. The picture of electron waves moving in a cristalline potential and interacting weakly with each other and with cristalline vibrations suffices to explain the properties of technologically important materials such as semiconductors and also simple metals that become superconductors. In magnetic materials, the relevant picture is that of electrons that are completely localized, spin being left as the only relevant degree of freedom. A number of recently discovered materials with unusual properties do not fit in any of these two limiting cases. These challenging materials are generally very anisotropic, either quasi one-dimensional or quasi two-dimensional, and in addition their electrons interact strongly but not enough to be completely localized. High temperature superconductors and certain organic conductors fall in the latter category. This paper discusses how the effect of low dimension leads to new paradigms in the one-dimensional case (Luttinger liquids, spin-charge separation), and indicates some of the attempts that are being undertaken to develop, concurrently, new methodology and new concepts for the quasi-two-dimensional case, especially relevant to high-temperature superconductors.
The finding that massive galaxies grow with cosmic time fired the starting gun for the search of objects which could have survived up to the present day without suffering substantial changes (neither in their structures, neither in their stellar populations). Nevertheless, and despite the community efforts, up to now only one firm candidate to be considered one of these relics is known: NGC 1277. Curiously, this galaxy is located at the centre of one of the most rich near galaxy clusters: Perseus. Is its location a matter of chance? Should relic hunters focus their search on galaxy clusters? In order to reply this question, we have performed a simultaneous and analogous analysis using simulations (Millennium I-WMAP7) and observations (New York University Value-Added Galaxy Catalogue). Our results in both frameworks agree: it is more probable to find relics in high density environments.
We present a summary of our understanding of Type Ia Supernova progenitors, mostly discussing the observational approach. The main goal of this review is to provide the non-specialist with a sufficiently comprehensive view of where we stand.
Space and time are crucial twins in physics. In quantum mechanics, spatial correlations already reveal nonclassical features, such as entanglement, and have bred many quantum technologies. However, the nature of quantum temporal correlations still remains in vague. In this Letter, based on the entangled-history formalism, we prove rigorously that temporal correlations are equivalent to spatial correlations. The effect of temporal correlations corresponds to a quantum channel. The resulting quantifications and classifications of quantum temporal correlations are illustrated in a natural way. Our proposed procedures also show how to determine temporal correlations completely.
We study the number and the distribution of low mass Pop III stars in the Milky Way. In our numerical model, hierarchical formation of dark matter minihalos and Milky Way sized halos are followed by a high resolution cosmological simulation. We model the Pop III formation in H2 cooling minihalos without metal under UV radiation of the Lyman-Werner bands. Assuming a Kroupa IMF from 0.15 to 1.0 Msun for low mass Pop III stars, as a working hypothesis, we try to constrain the theoretical models in reverse by current and future observations. We find that the survivors tend to concentrate on the center of halo and subhalos. We also evaluate the observability of Pop III survivors in the Milky Way and dwarf galaxies, and constraints on the number of Pop III survivors per minihalo. The higher latitude fields require lower sample sizes because of the high number density of stars in the galactic disk, the required sample sizes are comparable in the high and middle latitude fields by photometrically selecting low metallicity stars with optimized narrow band filters, and the required number of dwarf galaxies to find one Pop III survivor is less than ten at <100 kpc for the tip of redgiant stars. Provided that available observations have not detected any survivors, the formation models of low mass Pop III stars with more than ten stars per minihalo are already excluded. Furthermore, we discuss the way to constrain the IMF of Pop III star at a high mass range of > 10 Msun.
The use of emergent constraints to quantify uncertainty for key policy relevant quantities such as Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) has become increasingly widespread in recent years. Many researchers, however, claim that emergent constraints are inappropriate or even under-report uncertainty. In this paper we contribute to this discussion by examining the emergent constraints methodology in terms of its underpinning statistical assumptions. We argue that the existing frameworks are based on indefensible assumptions, then show how weakening them leads to a more transparent Bayesian framework wherein hitherto ignored sources of uncertainty, such as how reality might differ from models, can be quantified. We present a guided framework for the quantification of additional uncertainties that is linked to the confidence we can have in the underpinning physical arguments for using linear constraints. We provide a software tool for implementing our general framework for emergent constraints and use it to illustrate the framework on a number of recent emergent constraints for ECS. We find that the robustness of any constraint to additional uncertainties depends strongly on the confidence we can have in the underpinning physics, allowing a future framing of the debate over the validity of a particular constraint around the underlying physical arguments, rather than statistical assumptions.