Strange-Beauty Meson Production at ppˉp\bar p Colliders

The production rates and transverse momentum distributions of the strange-beauty mesons $B_s$ and $B_s^*$ at $p\bar p$ colliders are calculated assuming fragmentation is the dominant process. Results are given for the Tevatron in the large transverse momentum region, where fragmentation is expected to be most important.Comment: Minor changes in the discussion section. Also available at http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~cheung/paper.htm

Language as a Geometry in Wittgenstein"s Tractatus

In TLP 4.011, while admitting that propositions expressed by the phonetic notation, or the alphabet, just like the written notes of a piece of music, do not seem at first sight to be pictures of what they represent, the Tractatus insists that those "sign-languages" (that is, the phonetic notation and the written musical notes) prove to be pictures of what they represent (that is, our speech and the piece of music, respectively) "even in the ordinary sense". (TLP 4.016 also says that "alphabetic script developed out of [hieroglyphic script] without losing what was essential to depiction".) So, contrary to the view of some commentators (e.g. Pears 1987, 115-121), instead of making an analogy here, the Tractatus holds that a proposition is a picture literally. How can a proposition be a picture literally

Charm Lifetimes and Mixing

A review of the latest results on charm lifetimes and D-mixing is presented. The e+e- collider experiments are now able to measure charm lifetimes quite precisely, however comparisons with the latest results from fixed-target experiments show that possible systematic effects could be evident. The new D-mixing results from the B-factories have changed the picture that is emerging. Although the new world averaged value of y_CP is now consistent with zero, there is still a very interesting and favoured scenario if the strong phase difference between the Doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed and the Cabibbo-flavoured D0 -> Kpi decay is large.Comment: Presented at the 9th International Symposium on Heavy Flavors, Caltech, Pasadena, 10-13 Sept. 2001. To appear in proceeding

A labeling procedure for linear finite-state codes

A method to define the labels of the state diagram of a linear finite-state code is presented and investigated. This method is particularly suitable for simple hardware implementation since it simplifies the encoder structure. The method can also be applied to the labeling of a state diagram that is not completely connected to obtain a linear finite state code with larger free distance

Non-adiabatic optomechanical Hamiltonian of a moving dielectric membrane in a cavity

We formulate a non-relativistic Hamiltonian in order to describe the interaction between a moving dielectric membrane and radiation pressure. Such a Hamiltonian is derived without making use of the single-mode adiabatic approximation, and hence it enables us to incorporate multi-mode effects in cavity optomechanics. By performing second quantization, we show how a set of generalized Fock states can be constructed to represent quantum states of the membrane and cavity field. In addition, we discuss examples showing how photon scattering among different cavity modes would modify the interaction strengths and the mechanical frequency of the membrane

A lower bound for the decoder error probability of the linear MDS code

A lower bound for the decoder error probability (P sub E (u)) of a linear maximum distance separable (MDS) code is derived by counting the dominant types of decoding words around code words. It is shown that the lower bound derived is similar in form, and close numerically, to the upper bound derived

An adaptive vector quantization scheme

Vector quantization is known to be an effective compression scheme to achieve a low bit rate so as to minimize communication channel bandwidth and also to reduce digital memory storage while maintaining the necessary fidelity of the data. However, the large number of computations required in vector quantizers has been a handicap in using vector quantization for low-rate source coding. An adaptive vector quantization algorithm is introduced that is inherently suitable for simple hardware implementation because it has a simple architecture. It allows fast encoding and decoding because it requires only addition and subtraction operations