Short distance physics with heavy quark potentials

We present lattice studies of heavy quark potentials in the quenched approximation of QCD at finite temperatures. Both, the color singlet and color averaged potentials are calculated. While the potentials are well known at large distances, we give a detailed analysis of their short distance behavior (from 0.015 fm to 1 fm) near the critical temperature. At these distances we expect that the T-dependent potentials go over into the zero temperature potential. Indeed, we find evidences that the temperature influence gets suppressed and the potentials starts to become a unique function of the underlying distance scale. We use this feature to normalize the heavy quark potentials at short distances and extract the free energy of the quark system in a gluonic heat bath.Comment: Lattice2001(hightemp), 3 pages, 2 figure

The Volume Source Technique for flavor singlets: a second look

We reconsider the Volume Source Technique (VST) for the determination of flavor singlet quantities on the lattice. We point out a difficulty arising in the case of fermions in real representations of the gauge group and propose an improved version of the method (IVST) based on random gauge transformations of the background configuration. We compare the performance of IVST with the method based on stochastic estimators (SET). We consider the case of the N=1 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory (SYM), where just one fermionic flavor is present, the gluino in the adjoint representation, and only flavor singlet states are possible. The work is part of an inclusive analysis of the spectrum of the lightest particles of the theory, based on the simulation of the model on a $16^3\cdot32$ lattice with dynamical gluinos in the Wilson scheme.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, some formulations change

An important fingerprint of wildfires on the European aerosol load

Abstract. Wildland fires represent the major source of fine aerosols, i.e., atmospheric particles with diameters <1 μm. The largest numbers of these fires occur in Africa, Asia and South America, but a not negligible fraction also occurs in Eastern Europe and former USSR countries, particularly in the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Besides the impact of large forest fires, recent studies also highlighted the crucial role played by routine agricultural fires in Eastern Europe and Russia on the Arctic atmosphere. An evaluation of the impact of these fires over Europe is currently not available. The assessment of the relative contribution of fires to the European aerosol burden is hampered by the complex mixing of natural and anthropogenic particle types across the continent. In this study we use long term (2002–2007) satellite-based fires and aerosol data coupled to atmospheric trajectory modelling in the attempt to estimate the wildfires contribution to the European aerosol optical thickness (AOT). Based on this dataset, we provide evidence that fires-related aerosols play a major role in shaping the AOT yearly cycle at the continental scale. In general, the regions most impacted by wildfires emissions and/or transport are Eastern and Central Europe as well as Scandinavia. Conversely, a minor impact is found in Western Europe and in the Western Mediterranean. We estimate that in spring 5 to 35% of the European fine fraction AOT (FFAOT) is attributable to wildland fires. The estimated impact maximizes in April (20–35%) in Eastern and Central Europe as well as in Scandinavia and in the Central Mediterranean. An important contribution of wildfires to the FFAOT is also found in summer over most of the continent, particularly in August over Eastern Europe (28%) and the Mediterranean regions, from Turkey (34%) to the Western Mediterranean (25%). Although preliminary, our results suggest that this fires-related, continent-wide haze plays a not negligible role on the European radiation budget, and possibly, on the European air quality, therefore representing a clear target for mitigation

Strongly coupled N=1 SYM theory on the lattice

We propose a strong coupling expansion as a possible tool to obtain qualitative and quantitative informations about N=1 SYM theory. We point out the existence of a mapping between strongly coupled lattice N=1 SYM theory and a generalized SO(4) antiferromagnetic spin system.Comment: Lattice2002(spin), 3 pages, no figure

Screening in Hot SU(2) Gauge Theory and Propagators in 3d Adjoint Higgs model

We investigate the large distance behavior of the electric and magnetic propagators of hot SU(2) gauge theory in different gauges using lattice simulations of the full 4d theory and the effective, dimensionally reduced 3d theory. A comparison of the 3d and 4d data for the propagators suggests that dimensional reduction works surprisingly well down to temperatures T=2 T_c. A detailed study of the volume dependence of magnetic propagators is performed. The electric propagators show exponential decay at large distances in all gauges considered and a possible gauge dependence of the electric screening mass turns out to be statistically insignificant.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of Lattice 2000 and Workshop "Strong and Electroweak Matter 2000". LaTeX uses espcrc2.st

Scaling, asymptotic scaling and Symanzik improvement. Deconfinement temperature in SU(2) pure gauge theory

We report on a high statistics simulation of SU(2) pure gauge field theory at finite temperature, using Symanzik action. We determine the critical coupling for the deconfinement phase transition on lattices up to 8 x 24, using Finite Size Scaling techniques. We find that the pattern of asymptotic scaling violation is essentially the same as the one observed with conventional, not improved action. On the other hand, the use of effective couplings defined in terms of plaquette expectation values shows a precocious scaling, with respect to an analogous analysis of data obtained by the use of Wilson action, which we interpret as an effect of improvement.Comment: 43 pages ( REVTeX 3.0, self-extracting shell archive, 13 PostScript figs.), report IFUP-TH 21/93 (2 TYPOS IN FORMULAS CORRECTED,1 CITATION UPDATED,CITATIONS IN TEXT ADDED

Why stem/progenitor cells lose their regenerative potential

Nowadays, it is clear that adult stem cells, also called as tissue stem cells, play a central role to repair and maintain the tissue in which they reside by their selfrenewal ability and capacity of differentiating into distinct and specialized cells. As stem cells age, their renewal ability declines and their capacity to maintain organ homeostasis and regeneration is impaired. From a molecular perspective, these changes in stem cells properties can be due to several types of cell intrinsic injury and DNA aberrant alteration (i.e epigenomic profile) as well as changes in the tissue microenviroment, both into the niche and by systemic circulating factors. Strikingly, it has been suggested that aging-induced deterioration of stem cell functions may play a key role in the pathophysiology of the various agingassociated disorders. Therefore, understanding how resident stem cell age and affects near and distant tissues is fundamental. Here, we examine the current knowledge about aging mechanisms in several kinds of adult stem cells under physiological and pathological conditions and the principal aging-related changes in number, function and phenotype that determine the loss of tissue renewal properties. Furthermore, we examine the possible cell rejuvenation strategies. Stem cell rejuvenation may reverse the aging phenotype and the discovery of effective methods for inducing and differentiating pluripotent stem cells for cell replacement therapies could open up new possibilities for treating age-related diseases

Perturbative QCD Fragmentation Functions for BcB_c and Bc∗B_c^* Production

The dominant production mechanism for ${\bar b} c$ bound states in high energy processes is the production of a high energy ${\bar b}$ or $c$ quark, followed by its fragmentation into the ${\bar b} c$ state. We calculate the fragmentation functions for the production of the S-wave states $B_c$ and $B_c^*$ to leading order in the QCD coupling constant. The fragmentation probabilities for ${\bar b} \rightarrow B_c$ and ${\bar b} \rightarrow B_c^*$ are approximately $2.2 \times 10^{-4}$ and $3.1 \times 10^{-4}$, while those for $c \rightarrow B_c$ and $c \rightarrow B_c^*$ are smaller by almost two orders of magnitude.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, 3 figures available upon request, NUHEP-TH-93-