Striving towards a politics of possibility

It stands to reason that critical theorists should be interested in the newest student movements working to challenge the neoliberalisation of higher education. Yet, while these politics are pushing the limits of critical knowledge about the cultivation of new modalities of radical political resistance, their theoretical significance remains marginalised within the academy. While the academic literature is replete with analysis of the long-anticipated ‘crisis of the university’, many professional responses to the most recent privatisation policies have been muted and ambivalent; or, at the very least, hopeful that the trends can be arrested or mitigated by sanctioned operations of professional critique and opposition. In this essay, I suggest that some of the recent work of student activists demonstrates both the contingency of this position and the possibility of cultivating new political subjectivities and critical-experimental modalities of resistance, within and beyond the university

Creative militancy, militant creativity and the new student movement

The practical significance of critical theory, and student action leading to the hope of a new education, and a new politics

Luminescence quenching of the triplet excimer state by air traces in gaseous argon

While developing a liquid argon detector for dark matter searches we investigate the influence of air contamination on the VUV scintillation yield in gaseous argon at atmospheric pressure. We determine with a radioactive alpha-source the photon yield for various partial air pressures and different reflectors and wavelength shifters. We find for the fast scintillation component a time constant tau1= 11.3 +- 2.8 ns, independent of gas purity. However, the decay time of the slow component depends on gas purity and is a good indicator for the total VUV light yield. This dependence is attributed to impurities destroying the long-lived argon excimer states. The population ratio between the slowly and the fast decaying excimer states is determined for alpha-particles to be 5.5 +-0.6 in argon gas at 1100 mbar and room temperature. The measured mean life of the slow component is tau2 = 3.140 +- 0.067 microsec at a partial air pressure of 2 x 10-6 mbar.Comment: 7 pages submitted to NIM

Rates for the reactions antiproton-proton --> pi phi and gamma phi

We study antiproton-proton annihilation at rest into $\pi\phi$ and $\gamma\phi$. Rescattering by $\overline{K^*}K+K^*\overline{K}$ and $\rho^{+}\rho^{-}$ for $\overline{p}p\rightarrow\pi\phi$ states is sizable, of order $(0.90\, {\rm to}\,2.6)\times 10^{-4}$ in the branching ratio, but smaller than experiment. For $\overline{p}p\rightarrow\gamma\phi$ the rescattering contributions are negligible, but the $\gamma\phi$ channel is well explained by a $\rho\phi$ intermediate state combined with vector meson dominance.Comment: 12 pages, plain latex, 2 postscript figures available upon request, PSI-PR-93-2

Numerical Evidence for the Observation of a Scalar Glueball

We compute from lattice QCD in the valence (quenched) approximation the partial decay widths of the lightest scalar glueball to pairs of pseudoscalar quark-antiquark states. These predictions and values obtained earlier for the scalar glueball's mass are in good agreement with the observed properties of $f_J(1710)$ and inconsistent with all other observed meson resonances.Comment: 12 pages of Latex, 3 PostsScript figures as separate uufil

The multiplets of finite width 0++ mesons and encounters with exotics

Complex-mass (finite-width) $0^{++}$ nonet and decuplet are investigated by means of exotic commutator method. The hypothesis of vanishing of the exotic commutators leads to the system of master equations (ME). Solvability conditions of these equations define relations between the complex masses of the nonet and decuplet mesons which, in turn, determine relations between the real masses (mass formulae), as well as between the masses and widths of the mesons. Mass formulae are independent of the particle widths. The masses of the nonet and decuplet particles obey simple ordering rules. The nonet mixing angle and the mixing matrix of the isoscalar states of the decuplet are completely determined by solution of ME; they are real and do not depend on the widths. All known scalar mesons with the mass smaller than $2000MeV$ (excluding $\sigma(600)$) and one with the mass $2200\div2400MeV$ belong to two multiplets: the nonet $(a_0(980), K_0(1430), f_0(980), f_0(1710))$ and the decuplet $(a_0(1450), K_0(1950), f_0(1370), f_0(1500), f_0(2200)/f_0(2330))$. It is shown that the famed anomalies of the $f_0(980)$ and $a_0(980)$ widths arise from an extra "kinematical" mechanism, suppressing decay, which is not conditioned by the flavor coupling constant. Therefore, they do not justify rejecting the $q\bar{q}$ structure of them. A unitary singlet state (glueball) is included into the higher lying multiplet (decuplet) and is divided among the $f_0(1370)$ and $f_0(1500)$ mesons. The glueball contents of these particles are totally determined by the masses of decuplet particles. Mass ordering rules indicate that the meson $\sigma(600)$ does not mix with the nonet particles.Comment: 22 pp, 1 fig, a few changes in argumentation, conclusions unchanged. Final version to appear in EPJ