Open Heavy Flavor Production in Heavy Ion Collisions

The interaction of heavy partons, charm and beauty, with the matter created in heavy ion collisions has been of great interest in recent years. Heavy partons were predicted to interact less strongly with the matter than light partons. In apparent contrast to these predictions, unexpectedly strong suppression of non-photonic electrons from heavy flavor decays has been seen. However, significant experimental uncertainties remain, both in the measurements themselves and in the separation of the contribution from charm and beauty, which have complicated the interpretation of these results. The current experimental situation is critically reviewed and prospects for making these measurements more easily interpretable discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee v2: typos correcte

Near-threshold measurement of the 4He(g,n) reaction

A near-threshold 4He(g,n) cross-section measurement has been performed at MAX-lab. Tagged photons from 23 < Eg < 42 MeV were directed toward a liquid 4He target, and neutrons were detected by time-of-flight in two liquid-scintillator arrays. Seven-point angular distributions were measured for eight photon energies. The results are compared to experimental data measured at comparable energies and Recoil-Corrected Continuum Shell Model, Resonating Group Method, and recent Hyperspherical-Harmonic Expansion calculations. The angle-integrated cross-section data is peaked at a photon energy of about 28 MeV, in disagreement with the value recommended by Calarco, Berman, and Donnelly in 1983.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, some revisions, submitted to Physics Letters

The dihadron fragmentation function and its evolution

Dihadron fragmentation functions and their evolution are studied in the process of $e^+e^-$ annihilation. Under the collinear factorization approximation and facilitated by the cut-vertex technique, the two hadron inclusive cross section at leading order (LO) is shown to factorize into a short distance parton cross section and a long distance dihadron fragmentation function. We provide the definition of such a dihadron fragmentation function in terms of parton matrix elements and derive its DGLAP evolution equation at leading log. The evolution equation for the non-singlet quark fragmentation function is solved numerically with a simple ansatz for the initial condition and results are presented for cases of physical interest.Comment: 27 pages, 2 column, Revtex4, 21 figure

Single-Inclusive Jet Production in Polarized pp Collisions at O(alpha_s^3)

We present a next-to-leading order QCD calculation for single-inclusive high-p_T jet production in longitudinally polarized pp collisions within the ``small-cone'' approximation. The fully analytical expressions obtained for the underlying partonic hard-scattering cross sections greatly facilitate the analysis of upcoming BNL-RHIC data on the double-spin asymmetry A_{LL}^{jet} for this process in terms of the unknown polarization of gluons in the nucleon. We simultaneously rederive the corresponding QCD corrections to unpolarized scattering and confirm the results existing in the literature. We also numerically compare to results obtained with Monte-Carlo methods and assess the range of validity of the ``small-cone'' approximation for the kinematics relevant at BNL-RHIC.Comment: 23 pages, 8 eps-figure

Global Standards in Action: Insights from Anti-Money Laundering Regulation

As organizations have come under the increasing influence of global rules of all sorts, organization scholars have started studying the dynamics of global regulation. The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate the contribution to this interdisciplinary field by the ‘Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research’. The latter’s key proposition is that while global regulation often consists of voluntary best practice rules it can nevertheless become highly influential under certain conditions. We assess how innovative this approach is using as a benchmark the state of the art in another field of relevance to the study of global regulation, i.e. ‘International Relations’. Our discussion is primarily theoretical but we draw on the case of global anti-money laundering regulation to illustrate our arguments and for inspirations of how to further elaborate the approach

Fermion family recurrences in the Dyson-Schwinger formalism

We study the multiple solutions of the truncated propagator Dyson-Schwinger equation for a simple fermion theory with Yukawa coupling to a scalar field. Upon increasing the coupling constant $g$, other parameters being fixed, more than one non-perturbative solution breaking chiral symmetry becomes possible and we find these numerically. These ``recurrences'' appear as a mechanism to generate different fermion generations as quanta of the same fundamental field in an interacting field theory, without assuming any composite structure. The number of recurrences or flavors is reduced to a question about the value of the Yukawa coupling, and has no special profound significance in the Standard Model. The resulting mass function can have one or more nodes and the measurement that potentially detects them can be thought of as a collider-based test of the virtual dispersion relation $E=\sqrt{p^2+M(p^2)^2}$ for the charged lepton member of each family. This requires three independent measurements of the charged lepton's energy, three-momentum and off-shellness. We illustrate how this can be achieved for the (more difficult) case of the tau lepton

Equilibrium crystal shapes in the Potts model

The three-dimensional $q$-state Potts model, forced into coexistence by fixing the density of one state, is studied for $q=2$, 3, 4, and 6. As a function of temperature and number of states, we studied the resulting equilibrium droplet shapes. A theoretical discussion is given of the interface properties at large values of $q$. We found a roughening transition for each of the numbers of states we studied, at temperatures that decrease with increasing $q$, but increase when measured as a fraction of the melting temperature. We also found equilibrium shapes closely approaching a sphere near the melting point, even though the three-dimensional Potts model with three or more states does not have a phase transition with a diverging length scale at the melting point.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Three-Higgs-doublet model with A4A_4 symmetry

We worked out in detail the three-Higgs-doublet extension of the standard model when the $A_4$ symmetry, which is imposed to solve the flavor problem, is extended to the scalar sector. The three doublets may be related to the fermion mass generation and, in particular, they may be the unique responsible for the generation of the neutrino masses. If this is the case, the respective VEVs have to be quite smaller than the electroweak scale if no fine tuning in the Yukawa couplings is assumed. We consider here the mass spectra in the scalar sector in three different situations. In one of them there are no light scalars at all, but in the other ones a light or two massless scalars, at the tree level, may survive. The later fields are safe, from the phenomenological point of view, since it couples mainly with neutrinos and/or becomes enough massive at the tree level if there exist trilinear interactions. Quantum effects may be important too.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, new references adde

Transfer-Matrix Monte Carlo Estimates of Critical Points in the Simple Cubic Ising, Planar and Heisenberg Models

The principle and the efficiency of the Monte Carlo transfer-matrix algorithm are discussed. Enhancements of this algorithm are illustrated by applications to several phase transitions in lattice spin models. We demonstrate how the statistical noise can be reduced considerably by a similarity transformation of the transfer matrix using a variational estimate of its leading eigenvector, in analogy with a common practice in various quantum Monte Carlo techniques. Here we take the two-dimensional coupled $XY$-Ising model as an example. Furthermore, we calculate interface free energies of finite three-dimensional O($n$) models, for the three cases $n=1$, 2 and 3. Application of finite-size scaling to the numerical results yields estimates of the critical points of these three models. The statistical precision of the estimates is satisfactory for the modest amount of computer time spent

Effective field theory

I give a brief review of effective field theory, disscussing the contribution of Feza G\"ursey in particular and focusing on the literature I am most familiar with.Comment: 17 pages, no figs, macros appended, plain te