962 research outputs found
Hybrid Simulation of Cosmic Ray Air Showers
Air shower simulations are essential for interpreting data from cosmic ray
experiments. At highest energies though, a microscopic treatment of a whole
shower is not possible any more, since it would require a huge amount of
CPU-time. We review hybrid approaches of air shower simulation which try to
overcome this problem without giving rise to artificial fluctuations as
generated by the thinning algorithm.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, invited talk at the XIII International Symposium
on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (Sept.6-12), Pylos, Greec
Antarctic phytoplankton community composition and size structure: importance of ice type and temperature as regulatory factors
Comment on Counting Black Hole Microstates Using String Dualities
We discuss a previous attempt at a microscopic counting of the entropy of
asymptotically flat non-extremal black-holes. This method used string dualities
to relate 4 and 5 dimensional black holes to the BTZ black hole. We show how
the dualities can be justified in a certain limit, equivalent to a near horizon
limit, but the resulting spacetime is no longer asymptotically flat.Comment: 10 pages, harvmac. v(2) typo correcte
Holography and Defect Conformal Field Theories
We develop both the gravity and field theory sides of the Karch-Randall
conjecture that the near-horizon description of a certain D5-D3 brane
configuration in string theory, realized as AdS_5 x S^5 bisected by an AdS_4 x
S^2 "brane", is dual to N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory in R^4 coupled to an R^3
defect. We propose a complete Lagrangian for the field theory dual, a novel
"defect superconformal field theory" wherein a subset of the fields of N=4 SYM
interacts with a d=3 SU(N) fundamental hypermultiplet on the defect preserving
conformal invariance and 8 supercharges. The Kaluza-Klein reduction of wrapped
D5 modes on AdS_4 x S^2 leads to towers of short representations of OSp(4|4),
and we construct the map to a set of dual gauge-invariant defect operators O_3
possessing integer conformal dimensions. Gravity calculations of and
are given. Spacetime and N-dependence matches expectations from dCFT,
while the behavior as functions of lambda = g^2 N at strong and weak coupling
is generically different. We comment on a class of correlators for which a
non-renormalization theorem may still exist. Partial evidence for the
conformality of the quantum theory is given, including a complete argument for
the special case of a U(1) gauge group. Some weak coupling arguments which
illuminate the duality are presented.Comment: 47 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures, feynmf. v2: fixed minor errors, added
references. v3: fixed more typo
Superconducting and pseudogap phases from scaling near a Van Hove singularity
We study the quantum corrections to the Fermi energy of a two-dimensional
electron system, showing that it is attracted towards the Van Hove singularity
for a certain range of doping levels. The scaling of the Fermi level allows to
cure the infrared singularities left in the BCS channel after renormalization
of the leading logarithm near the divergent density of states. A phase of
d-wave superconductivity arises beyond the point of optimal doping
corresponding to the peak of the superconducting instability. For lower doping
levels, the condensation of particle-hole pairs due to the nesting of the
saddle points takes over, leading to the opening of a gap for quasiparticles in
the neighborhood of the singular points.Comment: 4 pages, 6 Postscript figures, the physical discussion of the results
has been clarifie
Thermal Conductivity of Spin-1/2 Chains
We study the low-temperature transport properties of clean one-dimensional
spin-1/2 chains coupled to phonons. Due to the presence of approximate
conservation laws, the heat current decays very slowly giving rise to an
exponentially large heat conductivity, . As a result of an
interplay of Umklapp scattering and spinon-phonon coupling, the characteristic
energy scale turns out to be of order , where is
the Debye energy, rather than the magnetic exchange interaction -- in
agreement with recent measurements in SrCuO compounds. A large magnetic field
strongly affects the heat transport by two distinct mechanisms. First, it
induces a LINEAR spinon--phonon coupling, which alters the nature of the fixed point: the elementary excitations of the system are COMPOSITE
SPINON-PHONON objects. Second, the change of the magnetization and the
corresponding change of the wave vector of the spinons strongly affects the way
in which various Umklapp processes can relax the heat current, leading to a
characteristic fractal--like spiky behavior of when plotted as a
function of magnetization at fixed T.Comment: 16 pages, RevTex4, 2 figures included; revised refs. and some useful
comments on experimental relevance. On July 12 2005, added an appendix
correcting an error in the form of the phonon propagator. The main result is
unchange
Cosmic Neutrinos and the Energy Budget of Galactic and Extragalactic Cosmic Rays
Although kilometer-scale neutrino detectors such as IceCube are discovery
instruments, their conceptual design is very much anchored to the observational
fact that Nature produces protons and photons with energies in excess of
10^{20} eV and 10^{13} eV, respectively. The puzzle of where and how Nature
accelerates the highest energy cosmic particles is unresolved almost a century
after their discovery. We will discuss how the cosmic ray connection sets the
scale of the anticipated cosmic neutrino fluxes. In this context, we discuss
the first results of the completed AMANDA detector and the science reach of its
extension, IceCube.Comment: 13 pages, Latex2e, 3 postscript figures included. Talk presented at
the International Workshop on Energy Budget in the High Energy Universe,
Kashiwa, Japan, February 200
Kontsevich product and gauge invariance
We analyze the question of gauge invariance in a flat
non-commutative space where the parameter of non-commutativity,
, is a local function satisfying Jacobi identity (and
thereby leading to an associative Kontsevich product). We show that in this
case, both gauge transformations as well as the definitions of covariant
derivatives have to modify so as to have a gauge invariant action. We work out
the gauge invariant actions for the matter fields in the fundamental and the
adjoint representations up to order while we discuss the gauge
invariant Maxwell theory up to order . We show that despite the
modifications in the gauge transformations, the covariant derivative and the
field strength, Seiberg-Witten map continues to hold for this theory. In this
theory, translations do not form a subgroup of the gauge transformations
(unlike in the case when is a constant) which is reflected in
the stress tensor not being conserved.Comment: 7 page
The spectrum of high-energy cosmic rays measured with KASCADE-Grande
The energy spectrum of cosmic rays between 10**16 eV and 10**18 eV, derived
from measurements of the shower size (total number of charged particles) and
the total muon number of extensive air showers by the KASCADE-Grande
experiment, is described. The resulting all-particle energy spectrum exhibits
strong hints for a hardening of the spectrum at approximately 2x10**16 eV and a
significant steepening at c. 8x10**16 eV. These observations challenge the view
that the spectrum is a single power law between knee and ankle. Possible
scenarios generating such features are discussed in terms of astrophysical
processes that may explain the transition region from galactic to extragalactic
origin of cosmic rays.Comment: accepted by Astroparticle Physics June 201
Microscopic description of d-wave superconductivity by Van Hove nesting in the Hubbard model
We devise a computational approach to the Hubbard model that captures the
strong coupling dynamics arising when the Fermi level is at a Van Hove
singularity in the density of states. We rely on an approximate degeneracy
among the many-body states accounting for the main instabilities of the system
(antiferromagnetism, d-wave superconductivity). The Fermi line turns out to be
deformed in a manner consistent with the pinning of the Fermi level to the Van
Hove singularity. For a doping rate , the ground state is
characterized by d-wave symmetry, quasiparticles gapped only at the
saddle-points of the band, and a large peak at zero momentum in the d-wave
pairing correlations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 Postscript figure
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