Soft-collinear effective theory and heavy-to-light currents beyond leading power

An important unresolved question in strong interaction physics concerns the parameterization of power-suppressed long-distance effects to hard processes that do not admit an operator product expansion (OPE). Recently Bauer et al.\ have developed an effective field theory framework that allows one to formulate the problem of soft-collinear factorization in terms of fields and operators. We extend the formulation of soft-collinear effective theory, previously worked out to leading order, to second order in a power series in the inverse of the hard scale. We give the effective Lagrangian and the expansion of ``currents'' that produce collinear particles in heavy quark decay. This is the first step towards a theory of power corrections to hard processes where the OPE cannot be used. We apply this framework to heavy-to-light meson transition form factors at large recoil energy.Comment: 46 pages, LaTeX; v2: two references added, eq. (52) correcte

Coherent control of enrichment and conversion of molecular spin isomers

A theoretical model of nuclear spin conversion in molecules controlled by an external electromagnetic radiation resonant to rotational transition has been developed. It has been shown that one can produce an enrichment of spin isomers and influence their conversion rates in two ways, through coherences and through level population change induced by radiation. Influence of conversion is ranged from significant speed up to almost complete inhibition of the process by proper choice of frequency and intensity of the external field.Comment: REVTEX, 13 pages + 6 eps figure

Towards an effective-action approach to fermion-loop corrections

We present a study of the effective action approach to incorporate higher-order effects in e^+e^- -> n fermions. In its minimal version, the effective action approach is found to exhibit problems with unitarity and high-energy behaviour. We identify the origin of these problems by investigating the zero-mode solutions of the Ward Identities. A numerical analysis of the importance of the zero-mode solutions is presented for four-fermion production processes.Comment: 43 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in Nuclear Physics

Screened-Coulomb ansatz for the non-factorizable radiative corrections to the off-shell W^+ W^- production

We demonstrate that the results of the complete first order calculation of the non-factorizable QED corrections to the single-inclusive cross-sections for $e^+e^- \to W^+W^- \to 4$ fermions could be very well reproduced by a simple physically motivated ansatz. The latter allows to take into account effectively the screening role of the non-Coulomb radiative mechanisms by introducing a dampening factor in front of the width-dependent part of the known first-order Coulomb correction, the so-called screened-Coulomb ansatz.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX2e, 5 figure

Non-factorizable corrections to W-pair production: methods and analytic results

In this paper we present two methods to evaluate non-factorizable corrections to pair-production of unstable particles. The methods are illustrated in detail for W-pair-mediated four-fermion production. The results are valid a few widths above threshold, but not at threshold. One method uses the decomposition of $n$-point scalar functions for virtual and real photons, and can therefore be generalized to more complicated final states than four fermions. The other technique is an elaboration on a method known from the literature and serves as a useful check. Applications to other processes than W-pair production are briefly mentioned.Comment: 45 pages, LaTeX2e, 4 postscript figures, uses axodraw.st

Non-factorizable corrections and effective field theories

We analyze the structure of higher-order radiative corrections for processes with unstable particles. By subsequently integrating out the various scales that are induced by the presence of unstable particles we obtain a hierarchy of effective field theories. In the effective field theory framework the separation of physically different effects is achieved naturally. In particular, we automatically obtain a separation of factorizable and non-factorizable corrections to all orders in perturbation theory. At one loop this treatment is equivalent to the double-pole approximation (DPA) but generalizes to higher orders and, at least in principle, to beyond the DPA. It is known that one-loop non-factorizable corrections to invariant mass distributions are suppressed at high energy. We study the mechanism of this suppression and obtain estimates of higher-order non-factorizable corrections at high energy.Comment: 45 page