Jim Agard: A Retrospective

The subject of illusion has been at the core of Jim’s work from the get-go. So when he serendipitously met some guy one night who was toying with a bent hanger, insisting Jim entertain him by seeing if he could visually make the wire cube turn inside out, Jim was captivated. Moving from side to side, as instructed, Jim experienced the cube floating on an invisible axis. He went rampant. Up until then, his work had implied illusion rather than created actual illusion. A chance encounter and his discovery of the Necker cube propelled him into what would become the basis of his life’s work. Like when one learns to open one’s eyes underwater for the first time, everything becomes wildly different, just knowing there is a whole other way of seeing. Jim’s work is purely non-objective and formal, yet equally laden with profound conceptual significance. It invites an approach that is lucid and straightforward, while encouraging a willingness to let the focus blur. To hold these views simultaneously. To see and then hyper-see and be willing to not see, and in not seeing, see even more. [excerpt]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Finite-Size Effects and Operator Product Expansions in a CFT for d>2

The large momentum expansion for the inverse propagator of the auxiliary field $\lambda(x)$ in the conformally invariant O(N) vector model is calculated to leading order in 1/N, in a strip-like geometry with one finite dimension of length $L$ for $2<d<4$. Its leading terms are identified as contributions from $\lambda(x)$ itself and the energy momentum tensor, in agreement with a previous calculation based on conformal operator product expansions. It is found that a non-trivial cancellation takes place by virtue of the gap equation. The leading coefficient of the energy momentum tensor contribution is shown to be related to the free energy density.Comment: 10 pages LaTeX 2 eps figures, minor changes in text. Revised version to be published in Phys.Lett. B. email: [email protected] [email protected]

Huge in France: Explaining French Underperformance in the International Box Office

In the face of near complete American dominance of the global film industry, the French have adopted a number of policies to protect their domestic industry. This project provides a history of public intervention in the French film industry, a theoretical framework to explain American dominance and the possibility of French competition, and finally an empirical evaluation of the French policy of public intervention. It finds significant evidence that public spending has a depressing effect on the size of movies on the upper end of the budget spectrum, but perversely that increasing the proportion of public spending on film increases their performance in the box office

Massless Three Dimensional Quantum Electrodynamics and Thirring Model Constrained by Large Flavor Number

We explicitly prove that in three dimensional massless quantum electrodynamics at finite temperature, zero density and large number of flavors the number of infrared degrees of freedom is never larger than the corresponding number of ultraviolet. Such a result, strongly dependent on the asymptotic freedom of the theory, is reversed in three dimensional Thirring model due to the positive derivative of its running coupling constant

HIV as an index stressor for PTSD: challenges and pitfalls in applying DSM criteria

Guest Editoria

The Dynamical Behaviors in (2+1)-Dimensional Gross-Neveu Model with a Thirring Interaction

We analyze (2+1)-dimensional Gross-Neveu model with a Thirring interaction, where a vector-vector type four-fermi interaction is on equal terms with a scalar-scalar type one. The Dyson-Schwinger equation for fermion self-energy function is constructed up to next-to-leading order in 1/N expansion. We determine the critical surface which is the boundary between a broken phase and an unbroken one in ($\alpha_c,~ \beta_c,~ N_c$) space. It is observed that the critical behavior is mainly controlled by Gross-Neveu coupling $\alpha_c$ and the region of the broken phase is separated into two parts by the line $\alpha_c=\alpha_c^*(=\frac{8}{\pi^2})$. The mass function is strongly dependent upon the flavor number N for $\alpha > \alpha_c^*$, while weakly for $\alpha \alpha_c^*$, the critical flavor number $N_c$ increases as Thirring coupling $\beta$ decreases. By driving the CJT effective potential, we show that the broken phase is energetically preferred to the symmetric one. We discuss the gauge dependence of the mass function and the ultra-violet property of the composite operators.Comment: 19 pages, LaTex, 6 ps figure files(uuencoded in seperate file

The puzzle of 90 degree reorientation in the vortex lattice of borocarbide superconductors

We explain 90 degree reorientation in the vortex lattice of borocarbide superconductors on the basis of a phenomenological extension of the nonlocal London model that takes full account of the symmetry of the system. We propose microscopic mechanisms that could generate the correction terms and point out the important role of the superconducting gap anisotropy.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figure

Dynamical Symmetry Breaking in Models with the Yukawa Interaction

We discuss models with a massless fermion and a self-interacting massive scalar field with the Yukawa interaction. The chiral condensate and the fermion mass are calculated analytically. It is shown that the models have a phase transition as a function of the squared mass of the scalar field.Comment: 7 pages, no figures, in Eqs. (7) and (11) one coefficient was change