LIDAR studies on microbursts

Preliminary analysis of requirements for future airborne windshear detection systems is presented. The following topics are covered: flight mechanics; microbursts modeling; microburst detection with airborne systems (LIDAR, radar, passive IR sensors); microbursts prediction with ground systems (VHF interferometry). A short overview of these studies is presented and some results are discussed

Enhanced thermal production of hard dileptons by 3→23\to 2 processes

In the framework of the Hard Thermal Loop effective theory, we calculate the two-loop contributions to hard lepton pair production in a quark-gluon plasma. We show that the result is free of any infrared and collinear singularity. We also recover the known fact that perturbation theory leads to integrable singularities at the location of the threshold for $q\bar{q}\to\gamma^*$. It appears that the process calculated here significantly enhances the rate of low mass hard dileptons.Comment: 32 latex pages, 14 postscript figure

A simple sum rule for the thermal gluon spectral function and applications

In this paper, we derive a simple sum rule satisfied by the gluon spectral function at finite temperature. This sum rule is useful in order to calculate exactly some integrals that appear frequently in the photon or dilepton production rate by a quark gluon plasma. Using this sum rule, we rederive simply some known results and obtain some new results that would be extremely difficult to justify otherwise. In particular, we derive an exact expression for the collision integral that appears in the calculation of the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect.Comment: 24 latex pages, 2 postscript figure

Dileptons from hot heavy static photons

We compute the production rate of lepton pair by static photons at finite temperature at two-loop order. We treat the infrared region of the gluon phase space carefully by using a hard thermal loop gluon propagator. The result is free of infrared and collinear divergences and exhibits an enhancement which produces a result of order $\sim e^2 g^3$ instead of $\sim e^2 g^4$ as would be expected from ordinary perturbation theory.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

A Parton Shower Model for Hadronic Two-Photon Process in e^+e^- Scatterings

A new model of QCD parton shower is proposed which is dedicated to two-photon process in $e^+ e^-$ scattering. When hadron jets are produced, the photon may resolve into quark-antiquark pairs so that the structure functions of the photon should be introduced. Based on the Altarelli-Parisi equation for these functions, an algorithm is formulated that allows us to construct a model for parton showers for the photon. Our model consists of two parts, one of which describes the deep inelastic scattering of the photon and the other one the scattering of two quasi-real photons. Using the model some results are presented on parton distributions and jet production.Comment: LaTeX file 16 pages 7 figures available on requis

Anomalous mass dependence of radiative quark energy loss in a finite-size quark-gluon plasma

We demonstrate that for a finite-size quark-gluon plasma the induced gluon radiation from heavy quarks is stronger than that for light quarks when the gluon formation length becomes comparable with (or exceeds) the size of the plasma. The effect is due to oscillations of the light-cone wave function for the in-medium $q\to gq$ transition. The dead cone model by Dokshitzer and Kharzeev neglecting quantum finite-size effects is not valid in this regime. The finite-size effects also enhance the photon emission from heavy quarks.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Exploring the polarization of gluons in the nucleon

We give an overview of the current status of investigations of the polarization of gluons in the nucleon. We describe some of the physics of the spin-dependent gluon parton distribution and its phenomenology in high-energy polarized hadronic scattering. We also review the recent experimental results.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures. Talk presented at the "Second Meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadronic Physics", Nashville, Tennessee, October 22-24, 2006. Reference adde

Prompt photon hadroproduction at high energies in off-shell gluon-gluon fusion

The amplitude for production of a single photon associated with quark pair in the fusion of two off-shell gluons is calculated. The matrix element found is applied to the inclusive prompt photon hadroproduction at high energies in the framework of kt-factorization QCD approach. The total and differential cross sections are calculated in both central and forward pseudo-rapidity regions. The conservative error analisys is performed. We used the unintegrated gluon distributions in a proton which were obtained from the full CCFM evolution equation as well as from the Kimber-Martin-Ryskin prescription. Theoretical results were compared with recent experimental data taken by the D0 and CDF collaborations at Fermilab Tevatron. Theoretical predictions for the LHC energies are given.Comment: 32 pages, 18 figure

Comments on two papers by Kapusta and Wong

We critically examine recently published results on the thermal production of massive vector bosons in a quark-gluon plasma. We claim the production rate is a collinear safe observable.Comment: 6 pages LATEX documen