A model for the orientational ordering of the plant microtubule cortical array

The plant microtubule cortical array is a striking feature of all growing plant cells. It consists of a more or less homogeneously distributed array of highly aligned microtubules connected to the inner side of the plasma membrane and oriented transversely to the cell growth axis. Here we formulate a continuum model to describe the origin of orientational order in such confined arrays of dynamical microtubules. The model is based on recent experimental observations that show that a growing cortical microtubule can interact through angle dependent collisions with pre-existing microtubules that can lead either to co-alignment of the growth, retraction through catastrophe induction or crossing over the encountered microtubule. We identify a single control parameter, which is fully determined by the nucleation rate and intrinsic dynamics of individual microtubules. We solve the model analytically in the stationary isotropic phase, discuss the limits of stability of this isotropic phase, and explicitly solve for the ordered stationary states in a simplified version of the model.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Beam Performance of Tracking Detectors with Industrially Produced GEM Foils

Three Gas-Electron-Multiplier tracking detectors with an active area of 10 cm x 10 cm and a two-dimensional, laser-etched orthogonal strip readout have been tested extensively in particle beams at the Meson Test Beam Facility at Fermilab. These detectors used GEM foils produced by Tech-Etch, Inc. They showed an efficiency in excess of 95% and spatial resolution better than 70 um. The influence of the angle of incidence of particles on efficiency and spatial resolution was studied in detail.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, accepted by Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research

Indication on the universal hadron substructure - constituent quarks

The universality of single-spin asymmetry on inclusive pi-meson production is discussed. This universality can be related to the hadron substructure - constituent quarks.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, references adde

Breathers in the weakly coupled topological discrete sine-Gordon system

Existence of breather (spatially localized, time periodic, oscillatory) solutions of the topological discrete sine-Gordon (TDSG) system, in the regime of weak coupling, is proved. The novelty of this result is that, unlike the systems previously considered in studies of discrete breathers, the TDSG system does not decouple into independent oscillator units in the weak coupling limit. The results of a systematic numerical study of these breathers are presented, including breather initial profiles and a portrait of their domain of existence in the frequency-coupling parameter space. It is found that the breathers are uniformly qualitatively different from those found in conventional spatially discrete systems.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. Section 4 (numerical analysis) completely rewritte

Nucleon-Nucleon Optical Model for Energies to 3 GeV

Several nucleon-nucleon potentials, Paris, Nijmegen, Argonne, and those derived by quantum inversion, which describe the NN interaction for T-lab below 300$ MeV are extended in their range of application as NN optical models. Extensions are made in r-space using complex separable potentials definable with a wide range of form factor options including those of boundary condition models. We use the latest phase shift analyses SP00 (FA00, WI00) of Arndt et al. from 300 MeV to 3 GeV to determine these extensions. The imaginary parts of the optical model interactions account for loss of flux into direct or resonant production processes. The optical potential approach is of particular value as it permits one to visualize fusion, and subsequent fission, of nucleons when T-lab above 2 GeV. We do so by calculating the scattering wave functions to specify the energy and radial dependences of flux losses and of probability distributions. Furthermore, half-off the energy shell t-matrices are presented as they are readily deduced with this approach. Such t-matrices are required for studies of few- and many-body nuclear reactions.Comment: Latex, 40 postscript pages including 17 figure

Nonlinear Regge trajectories and glueballs

We apply a phenomenological approach based on nonlinear Regge trajectories to glueball states. The parameters, i.e., intercept and threshold, or trajectory termination point beyond which no bound states should exist, are determined from pomeron (scattering) data. Systematic errors inherent to the approach are discussed. We then predict masses of glueballs on the tensor trajectory. For comparison, the approach is applied to available quenched lattice data. We find a discrepancy between the lattice based thresholds and the pomeron threshold that we extract from data.Comment: 15pp., revtex4, 2 fig

Proton-proton scattering above 3 GeV/c

A large set of data on proton-proton differential cross sections, analyzing powers and the double polarization parameter A_NN is analyzed employing the Regge formalism. We find that the data available at proton beam momenta from 3 GeV/c to 50 GeV/c exhibit features that are very well in line with the general characteristics of Regge phenomenology and can be described with a model that includes the rho, omega, f_2, and a_2 trajectories and single Pomeron exchange. Additional data, specifically for spin-dependent observables at forward angles, would be very helpful for testing and refining our Regge model.Comment: 16 pages, 19 figures; revised version accepted for publication in EPJ

A Descent Method for Equality and Inequality Constrained Multiobjective Optimization Problems

In this article we propose a descent method for equality and inequality constrained multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs) which generalizes the steepest descent method for unconstrained MOPs by Fliege and Svaiter to constrained problems by using two active set strategies. Under some regularity assumptions on the problem, we show that accumulation points of our descent method satisfy a necessary condition for local Pareto optimality. Finally, we show the typical behavior of our method in a numerical example

Measurement of the Absolute Differential Cross Section for np Elastic Scattering at 194 MeV

A tagged medium-energy neutron beam has been used in a precise measurement of the absolute differential cross section for np back-scattering. The results resolve significant discrepancies within the np database concerning the angular dependence in this regime. The experiment has determined the absolute normalization with 1.5% uncertainty, suitable to verify constraints of supposedly comparable precision that arise from the rest of the database in partial wave analyses. The analysis procedures, especially those associated with evaluation of systematic errors in the experiment, are described in detail so that systematic uncertainties may be included in a reasonable way in subsequent partial wave analysis fits incorporating the present results.Comment: 22 pages, 21 figures, submitted for publication in Physical Review