Two-body hadronic charmed meson decays

We study in this work the two-body hadronic charmed meson decays, including both the PP and VP modes. The latest experimental data are first analyzed in the diagrammatic approach. The magnitudes and strong phases of the flavor amplitudes are extracted from the Cabibbo-favored (CF) decay modes using $\chi^2$ minimization. The best-fitted values are then used to predict the branching fractions of the singly-Cabibbo-suppressed (SCS) and doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed decay modes in the flavor SU(3) symmetry limit. We observe significant SU(3) breaking effects in some of SCS channels. In the case of VP modes, we point out that the $A_P$ and $A_V$ amplitudes cannot be completely determined based on currently available data. We conjecture that the quoted experimental results for both $D_s^+\to\bar K^0K^{*+}$ and $D_s^+\to \rho^+\eta'$ are overestimated. We compare the sizes of color-allowed and color-suppressed tree amplitudes extracted from the diagrammatical approach with the effective parameters $a_1$ and $a_2$ defined in the factorization approach. The ratio $|a_2/a_1|$ is more or less universal among the $D \to {\bar K} \pi$, ${\bar K}^* \pi$ and ${\bar K} \rho$ modes. This feature allows us to discriminate between different solutions of topological amplitudes. For the long-standing puzzle about the ratio $\Gamma(D^0\to K^+K^-)/\Gamma(D^0\to\pi^+\pi^-)$, we argue that, in addition to the SU(3) breaking effect in the spectator amplitudes, the long-distance resonant contribution through the nearby resonance $f_0(1710)$ can naturally explain why $D^0$ decays more copiously to $K^+ K^-$ than $\pi^+ \pi^-$ through the $W$-exchange topology.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figures. An alternative method for error bar extraction is used; last columns of Tables~I to VI, and all entries in Tables~VII, VIII and X are modified. To appear in PRD

A-dependence of hadronization in nuclei

The A-dependence of models for the attenuation of hadron production in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering on a nucleus is investigated for realistic matter distributions. It is shown that the dependence for a pure partonic (absorption) mechanism is more complicated than a simple $A^{2/3}$ ($A^{1/3}$) behavior, commonly found when using rectangular or Gaussian distributions, but that the A-dependence may still be indicative for the dominant mechanism of hadronization.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Conceptualizing new forms of volunteering in urban governance

This article argues that developments in the spheres of the state, the market, and the community have changed their boundaries, affecting volunteering in urban governance. Shifts in the division of tasks between the state and community have led to a new form of manufactured volunteering, while technological developments have made it easier to bridge trust gaps, resulting in platform volunteering. Moreover, business organizations pursuing public goals and using public resources have created a new form of economic volunteering. Thus, three illustrative cases are used to explore these new forms of volunteering and their main strengths and weaknesses. These new forms challenge traditional conceptions of volunteering work and the ideal-typical role model of “the volunteer.”</p

Testing the Hypothesis of Modified Dynamics with Low Surface Brightness Galaxies and Other Evidence

The rotation curves of low surface brightness galaxies provide a unique data set with which to test alternative theories of gravitation over a large dynamic range in size, mass, surface density, and acceleration. Many clearly fail, including any in which the mass discrepancy appears at a particular length-scale. One hypothesis, MOND [Milgrom 1983, ApJ, 270, 371], is consistent with the data. Indeed, it accurately predicts the observed behavior. We find no evidence on any scale which clearly contradicts MOND, and a good deal which supports it.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 35 pages AAStex + 9 figures. This result surprised the bejeepers out of us, to

Halpha rotation curves: the soft core question

We present high resolution Halpha rotation curves of 4 late-type dwarf galaxies and 2 low surface brightness galaxies (LSB) for which accurate HI rotation curves are available from the literature. Observations are carried out at Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG). For LSB F583-1 an innovative dispersing element was used, the Volume Phase Holographic (VPH) with a dispersion of about 0.35 A/pxl. We find good agreement between the Halpha data and the HI observations and conclude that the HI data for these galaxies suffer very little from beam smearing. We show that the optical rotation curves of these dark matter dominated galaxies are best fitted by the Burkert profile. In the centers of galaxies, where the N-body simulations predict cuspy cores and fast rising rotation curves, our data seem to be in better agreement with the presence of soft cores.Comment: Accepted for Publication in ApJ with minor changes require

Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. III. Feedback from the First Stars

The first stars form in dark matter halos of masses ~10^6 M_sun as suggested by an increasing number of numerical simulations. Radiation feedback from these stars expels most of the gas from their shallow potential well of their surrounding dark matter halos. We use cosmological adaptive mesh refinement simulations that include self-consistent Population III star formation and feedback to examine the properties of assembling early dwarf galaxies. Accurate radiative transport is modeled with adaptive ray tracing. We include supernova explosions and follow the metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium. The calculations focus on the formation of several dwarf galaxies and their progenitors. In these halos, baryon fractions in 10^8 solar mass halos decrease by a factor of 2 with stellar feedback and by a factor of 3 with supernova explosions. We find that radiation feedback and supernova explosions increase gaseous spin parameters up to a factor of 4 and vary with time. Stellar feedback, supernova explosions, and H_2 cooling create a complex, multi-phase interstellar medium whose densities and temperatures can span up to 6 orders of magnitude at a given radius. The pair-instability supernovae of Population III stars alone enrich the halos with virial temperatures of 10^4 K to approximately 10^{-3} of solar metallicity. We find that 40% of the heavy elements resides in the intergalactic medium (IGM) at the end of our calculations. The highest metallicity gas exists in supernova remnants and very dilute regions of the IGM.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, accepted to ApJ. Many changes, including estimates of metal line cooling. High resolution images and movies available at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~jwise/research/PGalaxies3

Smooth HI Low Column Density Outskirts In Nearby Galaxies

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in The Astronomical Journal. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aabbaa.The low column density gas at the outskirts of galaxies as traced by the 21 cm hydrogen line emission (H i) represents the interface between galaxies and the intergalactic medium, i.e., where galaxies are believed to get their supply of gas to fuel future episodes of star formation. Photoionization models predict a break in the radial profiles of H i at a column density of ∼5 × 10 19 cm -2 due to the lack of self-shielding against extragalactic ionizing photons. To investigate the prevalence of such breaks in galactic disks and to characterize what determines the potential edge of the H i disks, we study the azimuthally averaged H i column density profiles of 17 nearby galaxies from the H i Nearby Galaxy Survey and supplemented in two cases with published Hydrogen Accretion in LOcal GAlaxieS data. To detect potential faint H i emission that would otherwise be undetected using conventional moment map analysis, we line up individual profiles to the same reference velocity and average them azimuthally to derive stacked radial profiles. To do so, we use model velocity fields created from a simple extrapolation of the rotation curves to align the profiles in velocity at radii beyond the extent probed with the sensitivity of traditional integrated H i maps. With this method, we improve our sensitivity to outer-disk H i emission by up to an order of magnitude. Except for a few disturbed galaxies, none show evidence of a sudden change in the slope of the H i radial profiles: the alleged signature of ionization by the extragalactic background.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Calculation of 1/m^3 terms in the total semileptonic width of D mesons.

We calculate the 1/$m^3_c$ corrections in the inclusive semileptonic widths of $D$ mesons. We show that these are due to the novel penguin type operators that appear at this level in the transition operator. Taking into account the nonperturbative corrections leads to the predicted value of the semileptonic width significantly lower than the experimental value. The $1/m^3_c$ worsen the situation or at the very least, within uncertainty, give small contribution. We indicate possible ways out. It seems most probable that violations of duality are noticeable in the energy range characteristic to the inclusive decays in the charm family. Theoretically these deviations are related to divergence of the high-order terms in the power expansion in the inverse heavy quark mass.Comment: Final version accepted for publication in Physical Review D (19 pages, 5 figures appended as two PS files at the end of the LATEX file

Validity of the distorted-wave impulse-approximation description of 40{}^{40}Ca(e,e′p)39(e,e'p)^{39}K data using only ingredients from a nonlocal dispersive optical model

The nonlocal implementation of the dispersive optical model (DOM) provides all the ingredients for distorted-wave impulse-approximation (DWIA) calculations of the $(e,e'p)$ reaction. It provides both the overlap function, including its normalization, and the outgoing proton distorted wave. This framework is applied to describe the knockout of a proton from the $0\textrm{d}\frac{3}{2}$ and $1\textrm{s}\frac{1}{2}$ orbitals in ${}^{40}$Ca with fixed normalizations of 0.71 and 0.60, respectively. Data were obtained in parallel kinematics for three outgoing proton energies: 70, 100, and 135 MeV. Agreement with the data is as good as, or better than, previous descriptions employing local optical potentials and overlap functions from Woods-Saxon potentials - both with standard nonlocality corrections - whose normalization (spectroscopic factor) and radius were fitted to the data. The present analysis suggests that slightly larger spectroscopic factors are obtained when nonlocal optical potentials are employed than those generated with local potentials. The results further suggest that the chosen kinematical window around 100 MeV proton energy provides the best and cleanest method to employ the DWIA for the analysis of this reaction. The conclusion that substantial ground-state correlations cannot be ignored when describing a closed-shell atomic nucleus is therefore confirmed in detail. To reach these conclusions, it is essential to have a complete description of the nucleon single-particle propagator that accounts for all elastic nucleon-scattering observables in a wide energy domain up to 200 MeV. The current nonlocal implementation of the DOM fulfills this requirement.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure