Faddeev-Jackiw formalism for a topological-like oscillator in planar dimensions

The problem of a harmonic oscillator coupling to an electromagnetic potential plus a topological-like (Chern-Simons) massive term, in two-dimensional space, is studied in the light of the symplectic formalism proposed by Faddeev and Jackiw for constrained systems.Comment: 17 pages, Latex file, to appear in Mod. Phys. Let.

Gauge/string duality and scalar glueball mass ratios

It has been shown by Polchinski and Strassler that the scaling of high energy QCD scattering amplitudes can be obtained from string theory. They considered an AdS slice as an approximation for the dual space of a confining gauge theory. Here we use this approximation to estimate in a very simple way the ratios of scalar glueball masses imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions on the string dilaton field. These ratios are in good agreement with the results in the literature. We also find that they do not depend on the size of the slice.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. References updated. Version published in JHE

Generalized partition functions and interpolating statistics

We show that the assumption of quasiperiodic boundary conditions (those that interpolate continuously periodic and antiperiodic conditions) in order to compute partition functions of relativistic particles in 2+1 space-time can be related with anyonic physics. In particular, in the low temperature limit, our result leads to the well known second virial coefficient for anyons. Besides, we also obtain the high temperature limit as well as the full temperature dependence of this coefficient.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, updated and enlarged versio

Virial coefficients from 2+1 dimensional QED effective actions at finite temperature and density

From spinor and scalar 2+1 dimensional QED effective actions at finite temperature and density in a constant magnetic field background, we calculate the corresponding virial coefficients for particles in the lowest Landau level. These coefficients depend on a parameter theta related to the time-component of the gauge field, which plays an essential role for large gauge invariance. The variation of the parameter theta might lead to an interpolation between fermionic and bosonic virial coefficients, although these coefficients are singular for theta=pi/2.Comment: 10 Latex pages, no figures. Version to appear in MPL

GENERALIZED THERMAL ZETA-FUNCTIONS

We calculate the partition function of a harmonic oscillator with quasi-periodic boundary conditions using the zeta-function method. This work generalizes a previous one by Gibbons and contains the usual bosonic and fermionic oscillators as particular cases. We give an alternative prescription for the analytic extension of the generalized Epstein function involved in the calculation of the generalized thermal zeta-functions. We also conjecture about the relation of our calculation to anyonic systems.Comment: 10 pages, latex, no figure