The Geometric Dual of a–Maximisation for Toric Sasaki–Einstein Manifolds

We show that the Reeb vector, and hence in particular the volume, of a Sasaki–Einstein metric on the base of a toric Calabi–Yau cone of complex dimension n may be computed by minimising a function Z on which depends only on the toric data that defines the singularity. In this way one can extract certain geometric information for a toric Sasaki–Einstein manifold without finding the metric explicitly. For complex dimension n = 3 the Reeb vector and the volume correspond to the R–symmetry and the a central charge of the AdS/CFT dual superconformal field theory, respectively. We therefore interpret this extremal problem as the geometric dual of a–maximisation. We illustrate our results with some examples, including the Y ^p,q singularities and the complex cone over the second del Pezzo surface.     

Empirical Study of an Air-to-Air Heat Pipe Heat Exchanger in Tropical Climates

Abstract

This article presents the empirical study of a heat pipe heat exchanger that was directly experiencing the ambient tropical air in its evaporator section. The performance of the heat pipe heat exchanger was monitored during two weeks of operation to determine the performance curves. The temperature of return air was controlled at about 22°C as the representative temperature of inside air, and a face velocity of 2 m/s on the heat pipe heat exchanger coil was established for this purpose. It was found that for the present investigation, the heat pipe heat exchanger can pay for itself in 1.5 years.