Dyson-Schwinger Equations and the Quark-Gluon Plasma

We review applications of Dyson-Schwinger equations at nonzero temperature, T, and chemical potential, mu, touching topics such as: deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration; the behaviour of bulk thermodynamic quantities; the (T,mu)-dependence of hadron properties; and the possibility of diquark condensation.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, sprocl.sty, epsfig.sty. Summary of presentations by the authors at the Workshop "Understanding Deconfinement in QCD", ECT*, Trento, 1-13/March, 199

Controlling evaporation loss from water storages

[Executive Summary]: Evaporation losses from on-farm storage can potentially be large, particularly in irrigation areas in northern New South Wales and Queensland where up to 40% of storage volume can be lost each year to evaporation. Reducing evaporation from a water storage would allow additional crop production, water trading or water for the environment. While theoretical research into evaporation from storages has previously been undertaken there has been little evaluation of current evaporation mitigation technologies (EMTs) on commercial sized water storages. This project was initiated by the Queensland Government Department of Natural Resources and Mines (NRM) with the express aim of addressing this gap in our knowledge. The report addressed i) assessment of the effectiveness of different EMT’s in reducing evaporation from commercial storages across a range of climate regions, ii) assessment of the practical and technical limitations of different evaporation control products, and iii) comparison of the economics of different EMT’s on water storages used for irrigation

Understanding the nucleon as a Borromean bound-state

Analyses of the three valence-quark bound-state problem in relativistic quantum field theory predict that the nucleon may be understood primarily as a Borromean bound-state, in which binding arises mainly from two separate effects. One originates in non-Abelian facets of QCD that are expressed in the strong running coupling and generate confined but strongly-correlated colour-antitriplet diquark clusters in both the scalar-isoscalar and pseudovector-isotriplet channels. That attraction is magnified by quark exchange associated with diquark breakup and reformation. Diquark clustering is driven by the same mechanism which dynamically breaks chiral symmetry in the Standard Model. It has numerous observable consequences, the complete elucidation of which requires a framework that also simultaneously expresses the running of the coupling and masses in the strong interaction. Planned experiments are capable of validating this picture.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Saving in Mexico: The National and International Evidence

How does Mexico’s saving performance compare to the world’s? Is Mexico ‘different’? And what drives Mexico’s saving behavior since the 1980s? This paper addresses these questions bringing together empirical evidence from Mexico with that from a large cross-country time-series data set on saving aggregates and their determinants. Using dynamic panel data estimation techniques, the paper characterizes the major factors behind world saving performance. In the light of this evidence, Mexico’s saving experience is compared to the international benchmark. Further, the paper turns to quarterly time-series evidence on saving in Mexico, and examines the factors behind the observed evolution of private and national saving using a regression framework, with particular attention to the issues of inflation adjustment and Ricardian equivalence. Key variables in Mexico’s saving performance have been the terms of trade, public saving, the real interest rate, and the inflation rate. Sustained future growth could be reinforced by a virtuous saving-growth cycle, nurtured by the strong response of private (and national) saving rates to income growth observed in the world sample.

Ward-Green-Takahashi identities and the axial-vector vertex

The colour-singlet axial-vector vertex plays a pivotal role in understanding dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and numerous hadronic weak interactions, yet scant model-independent information is available. We therefore use longitudinal and transverse Ward-Green-Takahashi (WGT) identities, together with kinematic constraints, in order to ameliorate this situation and expose novel features of the axial vertex: amongst them, Ward-like identities for elements in the transverse piece of the vertex, which complement and shed new light on identities determined previously for components in its longitudinal part. Such algebraic results are verified via solutions of the Bethe-Salpeter equation for the axial vertex obtained using two materially different kernels for the relevant Dyson-Schwinger equations. The solutions also provide insights that suggest a practical Ansatz for the axial-vector vertex.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Nucleon spin structure at very high-x

Dyson-Schwinger equation treatments of the strong interaction show that the presence and importance of nonpointlike diquark correlations within the nucleon are a natural consequence of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. Using this foundation, we deduce a collection of simple formulae, expressed in terms of diquark appearance and mixing probabilities, from which one may compute ratios of longitudinal-spin-dependent u- and d-quark parton distribution functions on the domain x =1. A comparison with predictions from other approaches plus a consideration of extant and planned experiments shows that the measurement of nucleon longitudinal spin asymmetries on x =1 can add considerably to our capacity for discriminating between contemporary pictures of nucleon structure.Comment: 6 pages, 1 table, 3 figures. To appear in Phys. Lett.