“...The Daughter of Glorious Leontius”: Historical Role and Literary Works of Aelia Eudocia Augusta in Modern Historiography (Based on Tatyana Aleksandrova’s Book “Byzantine Empress Athenais-Eudocia. Life and Works in the Context of the Reign of Emperor Theodosius II (401–450)”. Saint Petersburg, Aleteya Publ., 2018. 416 p.)

Introduction. The article analyzes the contents of the monograph “Byzantine Empress Athenais-Eudocia. Life and Works in the Context of the Reign of Emperor Theodosius II (401–450)” by Tatyana Aleksandrova. It is devoted to the personality of Empress Eudocia (ca. 405–460) and her poetical heritage in the context of the period. Discussion. Over the recent decades academic interest in personalities has grown significantly. And it is not only within the framework of historical science. The genre of historical research has become very popular among many Russian and Western academic researchers. Because of such attention to personalities one of the urgent tasks of modern Byzantine studies is studying works of little-known or “secondary” Byzantine authors. These ones include the personality of royal poetess Aelia Eudocia Augusta (ca. 405–460). The scale of her activity and influence on the Byzantine culture is still poorly understood. Analysis. As a historical figure and poetess Eudocia attracted attention of researchers of Byzantine history and literature more than once. Historiography is mostly characterized by a certain duality of the approach to studying the personality and works of Eudocia. It often happens that researchers consider Eudocia the author and Eudocia the Empress as two different persons. Tatyana Alexandrova tries to combine both of these approaches and explore the poetic legacy of Eudocia in the historical and literary context of the 5th century. The author of the monograph reconstructs the biography of Eudocia, analyzes and verifies various research hypotheses of the predecessors (A. Cameron, B. Sowers, K. Holum, T. Graumann, C. Bevegni, E. Livrea, etc.). The author of the monograph comes to the conclusion that legends and myths around Eudocia’s name only remotely reflect the reality and their appearance was politically motivated. At the same time, the author studies all attributable poems and works by Eudocia and focuses attention on such ones as the Martyrdom of St. Cyprian and the Homeric centos. Results. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the monograph is an important step in understanding and representing the role of Eudocia in the Byzantine history and culture of the 5th century

Measurement of the Pion Form Factor in the Energy Range 1.04-1.38 GeV with the CMD-2 Detector

The cross section for the process $e^+e^-\to\pi^+\pi^-$ is measured in the c.m. energy range 1.04-1.38 GeV from 995 000 selected collinear events including 860000 $e^+e^-$ events, 82000 $\mu^+\mu^-$ events, and 33000 $\pi^+\pi^-$ events. The systematic and statistical errors of measuring the pion form factor are equal to 1.2-4.2 and 5-13%, respectively.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Genre Nature of Church Canonical Catechism by the Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas III Grammatikos

Introduction. The paper examines the genre genealogy of church canonical questions and answers by Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas III Grammatikos. Genre determination of Byzantine catechism literature is a very important aspect of studying of the entire textual corpus in format of a series of question and answers. Although the rhetorical format of catechism was widespread in Byzantium in the 11th–15th cc., unfortunately, this topic is poorly studied. In addition, the literature in this format does not constitute a homogeneous corpus of texts. That is why genre nature of questions and answers is subtle. Methods. Therefore, it necessitates a differentiated approach to every collection of catechism since the very solution of the problem is in the research of their content. Solution by means of method of text structural and compositional features’ analysis allows sheding light on genre nature of other catechism collections. Analysis and results. Canonical catechism by Nicholas Grammatikos has a complex manuscript tradition: there are seven editions of various Greek versions of the text available at the moment at our disposal. Considering this the total number of question-and-answer’ units reaches 27. Based on analysis of the text structure, its content particularities and stylistics, the author comes to conclusion of the epistolary genesis of the monument. This finding should be taken into consideration in the further study of the Byzantine catechism

CP asymmetry in B→ϕKSB \to \phi K_S in a general two-Higgs-doublet model with fourth-generation quarks

We discuss the time-dependent CP asymmetry of decay $B \to \phi K_S$ in an extension of the Standard Model with both two Higgs doublets and additional fourth-generation quarks. We show that although the Standard Model with two-Higgs-doublet and the Standard model with fourth generation quarks alone are not likely to largely change the effective $\sin 2 \beta$ from the decay of $B \to \phi K_S$, the model with both additional Higgs doublet and fourth-generation quarks can easily account for the possible large negative value of $\sin 2 \beta$ without conflicting with other experimental constraints. In this model, additional large CP violating effects may arise from the flavor changing Yukawa interactions between neutral Higgs bosons and the heavy fourth generation down type quark, which can modify the QCD penguin contributions. With the constraints obtained from $b \to s \bar{s} s$ processes such as $B \to X_s \gamma$ and $\Delta m_{B_s^0}$, this model can lead to the effective $\sin 2 \beta$ to be as large as $- 0.4$ in the CP asymmetry of $B \to \phi K_S$.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, references added, to appear in Eur.Phys.J.

Evidence for an Excess of Soft Photons in Hadronic Decays of Z^0

Soft photons inside hadronic jets converted in front of the DELPHI main tracker (TPC) in events of qqbar disintegrations of the Z^0 were studied in the kinematic range 0.2 < E_gamma < 1 GeV and transverse momentum with respect to the closest jet direction p_T < 80 MeV/c. A clear excess of photons in the experimental data as compared to the Monte Carlo predictions is observed. This excess (uncorrected for the photon detection efficiency) is (1.17 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.27) x 10^{-3} gamma/jet in the specified kinematic region, while the expected level of the inner hadronic bremsstrahlung (which is not included in the Monte Carlo) is (0.340 +/- 0.001 +/- 0.038) x 10^{-3} gamma/jet. The ratio of the excess to the predicted bremsstrahlung rate is then (3.4 +/- 0.2 +/- 0.8), which is similar in strength to the anomalous soft photon signal observed in fixed target experiments with hadronic beams.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.