Partonic Energy Loss and the Drell-Yan Process

We examine the current status of the extraction of the rate of partonic energy loss in nuclei from A dependent data. The advantages and difficulties of using the Drell-Yan process to measure the energy loss of a parton traversing a cold nuclear medium are discussed. The prospects of using relatively low energy proton beams for a definitive measurement of partonic energy loss are presented.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Fractional Energy Loss and Centrality Scaling

The phenomenon of centrality scaling in the high-\pt spectra of $\pi^0$ produced in Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt s=200$ GeV is examined in the framework of relating fractional energy loss to fractional centrality increase. A new scaling behavior is found where the scaling variable is given a power-law dependence on $N_{\rm part}$. The exponent $\gamma$ specifies the fractional proportionality relationship between energy loss and centrality, and is a phenomenologically determined number that characterizes the nuclear suppression effect. The implication on the parton energy loss in the context of recombination is discussed.Comment: 4 pages in RevTe

Photon splitting in a laser field

Photon splitting due to vacuum polarization in a laser field is considered. Using an operator technique, we derive the amplitudes for arbitrary strength, spectral content and polarization of the laser field. The case of a monochromatic circularly polarized laser field is studied in detail and the amplitudes are obtained as three-fold integrals. The asymptotic behavior of the amplitudes for various limits of interest are investigated also in the case of a linearly polarized laser field. Using the obtained results, the possibility of experimental observation of the process is discussed.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figure

Phenomenology of Jet Quenching in Heavy Ion Collisions

We derive an analytical expression for the quenching factor in the strong quenching limit where the $p_T$ spectrum of hard partons is dominated by surface emission. We explore the phenomenological consequences of different scaling laws for the energy loss and calculate the additional suppression of the away-side jet.Comment: Substantially modified manuscrip

Anisotropic Flow and Viscous Hydrodynamics

We report part of our recent work on viscous hydrodynamics with consistent phase space distribution f(x,\p) for freeze out. We develop the gradient expansion formalism based on kinetic theory, and with the constraints from the comparison between hydrodynamics and kinetic theory, viscous corrections to f(x,\p) can be consistently determined order by order. Then with the obtained f(x,\p), second order viscous hydrodynamical calculations are carried out for elliptic flow $v_2$.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Proceedings for the 28th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Dorado Del Mar, Puerto Rico, United States Of America, 7 - 14 Apr 201

Limit Synchronization in Markov Decision Processes

Markov decision processes (MDP) are finite-state systems with both strategic and probabilistic choices. After fixing a strategy, an MDP produces a sequence of probability distributions over states. The sequence is eventually synchronizing if the probability mass accumulates in a single state, possibly in the limit. Precisely, for 0 <= p <= 1 the sequence is p-synchronizing if a probability distribution in the sequence assigns probability at least p to some state, and we distinguish three synchronization modes: (i) sure winning if there exists a strategy that produces a 1-synchronizing sequence; (ii) almost-sure winning if there exists a strategy that produces a sequence that is, for all epsilon > 0, a (1-epsilon)-synchronizing sequence; (iii) limit-sure winning if for all epsilon > 0, there exists a strategy that produces a (1-epsilon)-synchronizing sequence. We consider the problem of deciding whether an MDP is sure, almost-sure, limit-sure winning, and we establish the decidability and optimal complexity for all modes, as well as the memory requirements for winning strategies. Our main contributions are as follows: (a) for each winning modes we present characterizations that give a PSPACE complexity for the decision problems, and we establish matching PSPACE lower bounds; (b) we show that for sure winning strategies, exponential memory is sufficient and may be necessary, and that in general infinite memory is necessary for almost-sure winning, and unbounded memory is necessary for limit-sure winning; (c) along with our results, we establish new complexity results for alternating finite automata over a one-letter alphabet

Jet correlation measurement in heavy-ion collisions: from RHIC to LHC

We attempt to deduce simple options of `jet quenching' phenomena in heavy-ion collisions at \snn=5.5 \tev at the LHC from the present knowledge of leading-hadron suppression at RHIC energies. In light of the nuclear modification factor for leading particles we introduce the nuclear modification factor for jets, \RAA^{jet}, and for the longitudinal momenta of particles along the jet axis, \RAA^{p_{\rm L}}.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, proceedings, MIT workshop on fluctuations and correlations in relativistic nuclear collision

Competing mechanisms of stress-assisted diffusivity and stretch-activated currents in cardiac electromechanics

We numerically investigate the role of mechanical stress in modifying the conductivity properties of the cardiac tissue and its impact in computational models for cardiac electromechanics. We follow a theoretical framework recently proposed in [Cherubini, Filippi, Gizzi, Ruiz-Baier, JTB 2017], in the context of general reaction-diffusion-mechanics systems using multiphysics continuum mechanics and finite elasticity. In the present study, the adapted models are compared against preliminary experimental data of pig right ventricle fluorescence optical mapping. These data contribute to the characterization of the observed inhomogeneity and anisotropy properties that result from mechanical deformation. Our novel approach simultaneously incorporates two mechanisms for mechano-electric feedback (MEF): stretch-activated currents (SAC) and stress-assisted diffusion (SAD); and we also identify their influence into the nonlinear spatiotemporal dynamics. It is found that i) only specific combinations of the two MEF effects allow proper conduction velocity measurement; ii) expected heterogeneities and anisotropies are obtained via the novel stress-assisted diffusion mechanisms; iii) spiral wave meandering and drifting is highly mediated by the applied mechanical loading. We provide an analysis of the intrinsic structure of the nonlinear coupling using computational tests, conducted using a finite element method. In particular, we compare static and dynamic deformation regimes in the onset of cardiac arrhythmias and address other potential biomedical applications

Calculating Quenching Weights

We calculate the probability (``quenching weight'') that a hard parton radiates an additional energy fraction due to scattering in spatially extended QCD matter. This study is based on an exact treatment of finite in-medium path length, it includes the case of a dynamically expanding medium, and it extends to the angular dependence of the medium-induced gluon radiation pattern. All calculations are done in the multiple soft scattering approximation (Baier-Dokshitzer-Mueller-Peign\'e-Schiff--Zakharov ``BDMPS-Z''-formalism) and in the single hard scattering approximation (N=1 opacity approximation). By comparison, we establish a simple relation between transport coefficient, Debye screening mass and opacity, for which both approximations lead to comparable results. Together with this paper, a CPU-inexpensive numerical subroutine for calculating quenching weights is provided electronically. To illustrate its applications, we discuss the suppression of hadronic transverse momentum spectra in nucleus-nucleus collisions. Remarkably, the kinematic constraint resulting from finite in-medium path length reduces significantly the transverse momentum dependence of the nuclear modification factor, thus leading to consistency with the data measured at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).Comment: 45 pages LaTeX, 20 eps-figure

A Component-oriented Framework for Autonomous Agents

The design of a complex system warrants a compositional methodology, i.e., composing simple components to obtain a larger system that exhibits their collective behavior in a meaningful way. We propose an automaton-based paradigm for compositional design of such systems where an action is accompanied by one or more preferences. At run-time, these preferences provide a natural fallback mechanism for the component, while at design-time they can be used to reason about the behavior of the component in an uncertain physical world. Using structures that tell us how to compose preferences and actions, we can compose formal representations of individual components or agents to obtain a representation of the composed system. We extend Linear Temporal Logic with two unary connectives that reflect the compositional structure of the actions, and show how it can be used to diagnose undesired behavior by tracing the falsification of a specification back to one or more culpable components