Destruction of a metastable string by particle collisions

We calculate the probability of destruction of a metastable string by collisions of the Goldstone bosons, corresponding to the transverse waves on the string. We find a general formula that allows to determine the probability of the string breakup by a collision of arbitrary number of the bosons. We find that the destruction of a metastable string takes place only in collisions of even number of the bosons, and we explicitly calculate the energy dependence of such process in a two-particle collision for an arbitrary relation between the energy and the largest infrared scale in the problem, the length of the critical gap in the string.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur

Fractal dimension crossovers in turbulent passive scalar signals

The fractal dimension $\delta_g^{(1)}$ of turbulent passive scalar signals is calculated from the fluid dynamical equation. $\delta_g^{(1)}$ depends on the scale. For small Prandtl (or Schmidt) number $Pr<10^{-2}$ one gets two ranges, $\delta_g^{(1)}=1$ for small scale r and $\delta_g^{(1)}$=5/3 for large r, both as expected. But for large $Pr> 1$ one gets a third, intermediate range in which the signal is extremely wrinkled and has $\delta_g^{(1)}=2$. In that range the passive scalar structure function $D_\theta(r)$ has a plateau. We calculate the $Pr$-dependence of the crossovers. Comparison with a numerical reduced wave vector set calculation gives good agreement with our predictions.Comment: 7 pages, Revtex, 3 figures (postscript file on request

Particle and particle pair dispersion in turbulence modeled with spatially and temporally correlated stochastic processes

In this paper we present a new model for modeling the diffusion and relative dispersion of particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. We use an Heisenberg-like Hamiltonian to incorporate spatial correlations between fluid particles, which are modeled by stochastic processes correlated in time. We are able to reproduce the ballistic regime in the mean squared displacement of single particles and the transition to a normal diffusion regime for long times. For the dispersion of particle pairs we find a $t^{2}$-dependence of the mean squared separation at short times and a $t$-dependence for long ones. For intermediate times indications for a Richardson $t^{3}$ law are observed in certain situations. Finally the influence of inertia of real particles on the dispersion is investigated.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Semiclassical Calculation of Photon-Stimulated Schwinger Pair Creation

We consider the electron-positron pair creation by a photon in an external constant electric field. The presented treatment is based on a purely quasiclassical calculation of the imaginary part of the on-shell photon polarization operator. By using this approach we find the pair production rate for photons with polarization parallel as well as orthogonal to the external electric field in the leading order in the parameter $eE / m ^ 2$, which has been recently found by other methods. For the orthogonal polarization we also find a new contribution to the rate, which is leading in the ratio of the photon energy to the electron mass $\omega/m$. We also reproduce by a purely geometrical calculation the exponential factor in the probability of the stimulated pair creation at arbitrary energy of the photon.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure