Effective potential energy in St\ormer's problem for an inclined rotating magnetic dipole

We discuss the dynamics of a charged nonrelativistic particle in electromagnetic field of a rotating magnetized celestial body. The equations of motion of the particle are obtained and some particular solutions are found. Effective potential energy is defined on the base of the first constant of motion. Regions accessible and inaccessible for a charged particle motion are studied and depicted for different values of a constant of motion.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Prospects for the measurement of B_s oscillations with the ATLAS detector at LHC

The prospects for the measurement of $B_{s}^{0}$ oscillations with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are presented. $B_{s}^{0}$ candidates in the $D_{s}^{-} \pi^{+}$ and $D_{s}^{-} a_{1}^{+}$ decay modes from semileptonic events were fully simulated and reconstructed, using a detailed detector description. The sensitivity and the expected accuracy for the measurement of the oscillation frequency were derived from unbinned maximum likelihood amplitude fits as functions of the integrated luminosity. A detailed treatment of the systematic uncertainties was performed. The dependence of the measurement sensitivity on various parameters was also evaluated.Comment: Invited talk at the Workshop on the CKM Unitarity Triangle, IPPP Durham, April 2003 (eConf C0304052). 4 pages LaTeX, 2 eps figure

Dirac versus Reduced Quantization of the Poincar\'{e} Symmetry in Scalar Electrodynamics

The generators of the Poincar\'{e} symmetry of scalar electrodynamics are quantized in the functional Schr\"{o}dinger representation. We show that the factor ordering which corresponds to (minimal) Dirac quantization preserves the Poincar\'{e} algebra, but (minimal) reduced quantization does not. In the latter, there is a van Hove anomaly in the boost-boost commutator, which we evaluate explicitly to lowest order in a heat kernel expansion using zeta function regularization. We illuminate the crucial role played by the gauge orbit volume element in the analysis. Our results demonstrate that preservation of extra symmetries at the quantum level is sometimes a useful criterion to select between inequivalent, but nevertheless self-consistent, quantization schemes.Comment: 24 page

Electoral turnover has very little effect on the spending habits of Western democracies

Do new electoral brooms sweep clean the economic policies of the parties that went before? In new research that examines how incoming Western governments set their spending priorities, Derek A. Epp, John Lovett, and Frank R. Baumgartner find that budgets tend to be set with little regard to a government’s ideology, be it left or right. They argue that when setting budgets, incoming policymakers are constrained by social, economic and international realities that are largely beyond their control. This means that budgets are set consistently and inconsistently with what went before at roughly the same rate; left-wing parties do not necessarily favor “big government” nor to right parties always seek to reduce government spending