Special Issue on "Response of Polar Organisms and Natural Environment to Global Changes"

High altitude and high latitude regions on Earth are experiencing rapid changes in climate, with impacts on polar organisms and the environment. The persistent cold and sometimes inhospitable conditions create unique ecosystems and habitats for polar organisms.

Inviting Contributions to a Special Issue on "Response of Polar Organisms and Natural Environment to Global Changes"

Dear Colleagues, We would like to invite you to submit manuscripts to a special issue of the journal Advances in Polar Science （APS） on ＂Response of Polar Organisms and Natural Environment to Global Changes＂.

IGS polar motion measurement accuracy

We elaborate an error budget for the long-term accuracy of IGS（International Global Navigation Satellite System Service） polar motion estimates, concluding that it is probably about 25-30 μas（1-sigma）overall, although it is not possible to quantify possible contributions（mainly annual） that might transfer directly from aliases of subdaily rotational tide errors. The leading sources are biases arising from the need to align daily, observed terrestrial frames, within which the pole coordinates are expressed and which are continuously deforming, to the secular, linear international reference frame. Such biases are largest over spans longer than about a year. Thanks to the very large number of IGS tracking stations, the formal covariance errors are much smaller,around 5 to 10 μas. Large networks also permit the systematic frame-related errors to be more effectively minimized but not eliminated. A number of periodic errors probably also influence polar motion results, mainly at annual, GPS（Global Positioning System） draconitic, and fortnightly periods, but their impact on the overall error budget is unlikely to be significant except possibly for annual tidal aliases. Nevertheless, caution should be exercised in interpreting geophysical excitations near any of the suspect periods.

Revisiting the spin effects induced by thermal vorticity

We revisit the spin effects induced by thermal vorticity by calculating them directly from the spin-dependent distribution functions.For spin-1/2 particles,we provide the polarization up to the first order of thermal vorticity and compare it with the usual results calculated from the spin vector.For spin-1 particles,we show that all the non-diagonal elements vanish and there is no spin alignment up to the first order of thermal vortcity.We present the spin alignment at second-order contribution from thermal vorticity.We also show that the spin effects for both Dirac and vector particles receive an extra contribution when the spin direction is associated with the momentum of the particle.

The effect of hadronic scatterings on the measurement of vector meson spin alignments in heavy-ion collisions

Spin alignments of vector mesons and hyperons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been proposed as signals of global polarization.The STAR experiment first observed the ∧ polarization.Recently,the ALICE collaboration measured the transverse momentum {PT) and the collision centrality dependence of K*,and Φ spin alignments during Pb-Pb collisions at 1/2sNN=2.76 TeV.A large signal is observed in the low pT region of mid-central collisions for K*,while the signal is much smaller for Φ,and these have not been understood yet.Since vector mesons have different lifetimes and their decay products have different scattering cross sections,they suffer from different hadronic effects.In this paper,we study the effect of hadronic interactions on the spin alignment of K*,Φ,and p mesons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions with a multi-phase transport model.We find that hadronic scatterings lead to a deviation of the observed spin alignment matrix element p00 away from the true value for p and K*mesons(with a bigger effect on p) while the effect is negligible for the Φ meson.The effect depends on the kinematic acceptance:the observed p00 value is lower than the true value when the pseudorapidity(η) coverage is small,while there is little effect when the η coverage is large.Hence,this study provides valuable information to understand the vector meson spin alignment signals observed during the experiments.

Vector meson’s spin alignments in high energy reactions

The global spin alignment of vector mesons has been observed by the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider(RHIC)at Brookhaven National Laboratory(BNL).It provides a unique opportunity to probe the correlation between the po-larized quark and antiquark in the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma(sQGP)produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions,opening a new window to explore the properties of sQGP.In addition,spin alignments of vector mesons have also been observed in other high-energy particle collisions such as e^(+)e^(−)annihilations at high energies where hadron production is dominated by quark fragmentation mechanism.The results obtained are quite different from those obtained in heavy ion collisions where quark coalescence/combination mechanism dominates suggesting strong dependence on hadronization mechanisms.So comprehensive studies in different hadronization processes are needed.In this article,we present a brief review of theoretical and experimen-tal advances in the study of vector meson’s spin alignments in a variety of high-energy particle collisions,with emphasis on hadronization mechanisms.