The Role of a Specific Response of Media in the Vavilov-Cherenkov Effect

It is shown that the condition υ > υ_p (ω), which is necessary in order to trigger the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect, determines the interval of radiated frequencies and it alone cannot establish a strong restriction to the velocity of the particle. It is exhibited that it is possible to define a general lower bound for the velocity of the particle, which does not depend on the frequency when both, a specific response of the medium is taken into account and the mentioned condition is considered. The minimum value of the phase velocity of light in the medium determines the existence of such general lower bound.     

Characterization of supercommuting matrices

For a given n-by-n matrix A, we consider the set of matrices which commute with A and all of whose principal submatrices commute with the corresponding principal submatrices of A. The properties of this set are examined, with particular attention to its dimension.     

Inertia-preserving secant updates

Corrections to the last two equations of Ref. 1 are given.     

Transversal-Free Translation Nets

Translation planes of order q ² containing non-Desarguesian Baer subplanes are used to construct transversal-free translation nets with very small deficiencies. Also, a generalization of the ideas of Bruen shows that any non-Desarguesian spread in PG(3, q) produces a transversal-free net of small deficiency.     

Determination of the boiling point distribution of sulfur compounds in light cycle oil using GC with a flame photometric detector and pyrolyzer

A method has been developed to determine the boiling point distribution of sulfur compounds in light cycle oils (LCO'S). The method chosen for this analysis was GC with a flame photometric detector (FPD) and pyrolyzer. Tests were carried out to evaluate the recovery efficiency, repeatability, and accuracy of the method. Repeatabilities within 2% were obtained. The recovery of benzothiophenes and dibenzothiophenes was close to 100%; this was important because these are the major sulfur components in LCO's. No hydrocarbon or solvent interferences were observed with the use of the pyrolyzer, even for a 95% solvent level. Comparison with results from other techniques showed that the method accurately determined the levels of sulfur compounds in the LCO boiling point range.     

Underbody and ground effects on rotating disc flow: a global scale inviscid study

The flow induced by a finite disc rotating near horizontal ground is considered, including the effects of an underbody. This paper concentrates on determining the shape of the free layer beyond the rim of the disc which is horizontal in the absence of the underbody and ground but forced to deform to ensure that conditions across the layer are satisfied when the underbody or ground is added. The far-field behaviour, the inviscid flow produced by a nominally infinite disc near the ground and the global solution for small ground clearances are considered analytically, and the full problem is posed as an integral problem. This is then solved numerically and analytically. Results are presented for various heights of the disc above the ground and for discs with an axisymmetric underbody present. A universal form is found for the farfield shape (which is controlled by entrainment into the free layer) but both the underbody and the ground effects are found to increase very significantly for reduced clearances.     

Studies of large scale unstable growth formed during GaAs(001) homoepitaxy

Atomic force and scanning tunneling microscopy studies have been performed on GaAs(001) films grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Multilayered mounds are seen to evolve when the growth conditions favor island nucleation. As the epilayer thickness is increased, these features grow in all dimensions but the angle of inclination remains approximately constant at 1°. The mounding does not occur on surfaces grown in step-flow. We propose that the multi-layered features are due to an unstable growth mode which relies on island nucleation and the presence of a step edge barrier.