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A precision measurement by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station of the positron fraction in primary cosmic rays in the energy range from 0.5 to 350 GeV based on $6.8\times {10}^6$ positron and electron events is presented. The very accurate data show that the positron fraction is steadily increasing from 10 to $\sim 250\mathrm{GeV}$, but, from 20 to 250 GeV, the slope decreases by an order of magnitude. The positron fraction spectrum shows no fine structure, and the positron to electron ratio shows no observable anisotropy. Together, these features show the existence of new physical phenomena.

We report a joint experimental and theoretical study of circular dichroism in the valence photoelectron spectra of a free chiral molecule. The circular dichroism in photoelectron spectroscopy is measured at the magic angle for various valence states of $R(+)$ and $S(-)$ methyl-oxirane enantiomers in the vapor phase. The maximum dichroism measured is about $5\times {10}^{-2}$. Experimental and theoretical results are in agreement. The ab initio calculation employs a multicentric basis set of B-spline functions and a Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian.

In this paper we study the equilibrium configurations of anisotropic self-gravitating fermions, by extending to general relativity the solutions obtained in a previous paper. This treatment also generalizes to anisotropic systems the relativistic self-gravitating Fermi gas model, by considering different degrees of anisotropy. We discuss some important characteristics of the models and the obtained density profiles, and generalize the relation between the anisotropy and the mass of particles in the relativistic regime. These relativistic models may also be applied to the study of superdense neutron stars with anisotropic pressure or super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs generated by the presence of a magnetic field.

We determine the caloric curves of classical self-gravitating systems at statistical equilibrium in general relativity. In the classical limit, the caloric curves of a self-gravitating gas depend on a unique parameter $\nu =GNm/R{c}^2$, called the compactness parameter, where $N$ is the particle number and $R$ the system's size. Typically, the caloric curves have the form of a double spiral. The “cold spiral,” corresponding to weakly relativistic configurations, is a generalization of the caloric curve of nonrelativistic classical self-gravitating systems. The “hot spiral,” corresponding to strongly relativistic configurations, is similar (but not identical) to the caloric curve of the ultrarelativistic self-gravitating black-body radiation. We introduce two types of normalization of energy and temperature to obtain asymptotic caloric curves describing, respectively, the cold and the hot spirals in the limit $\nu \to 0$. As the number of particles increases, the cold and the hot spirals approach each other, merge at ${\nu }_S^{\prime }=0.128$, form a loop above ${\nu }_S=0.1415$, reduce to a point at ${\nu }_{\max }=0.1764$, and finally disappear. Therefore, the double spiral shrinks when the compactness parameter $\nu$ increases, implying that general relativistic effects render the system more unstable. We discuss the nature of the gravitational collapse at low and high energies with respect to a dynamical (fast) or a thermodynamical (slow) instability. We also provide an historical account of the developments of the statistical mechanics of classical self-gravitating systems in Newtonian gravity and general relativity.

Systems of self-gravitating fermions constitute a topic of great interest in astrophysics, due to the wide field of applications. In this paper, we consider the gravitational equilibrium of spherically symmetric Newtonian models of collisionless semidegenerate fermions. We construct numerical solutions by taking into account the effects of the anisotropy in the distribution function and considering the prevalence of tangential velocity. In this way, our models generalize the solutions obtained for isotropic Fermi-Dirac statistics. We also extend the analysis to equilibrium configurations in the classical regime and in the fully degenerate limit, recovering, for different levels of anisotropy, hollow equilibrium configurations obtained in the Maxwellian regime. Moreover, in the limit of full degeneracy, we find a direct expression relating the anisotropy with the mass of the particles composing the system.