Reply to "Comment on 'Light-Front Schwinger Model at Finite Temperature'"

In hep-th/0310278, Blankleider and Kvinikhidze propose an alternate thermal propagator for the fermions in the light-front Schwinger model. We show that such a propagator does not describe correctly the thermal behavior of fermions in this theory and, as a consequence, the claims made in their paper are not correct.Comment: 3pages, version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Existence of a Semiclassical Approximation in Loop Quantum Gravity

We consider a spherical symmetric black hole in the Schwarzschild metric and apply Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization to determine the energy levels. The canonical partition function is then computed and we show that the entropy coincides with the Bekenstein-Hawking formula when the maximal number of states for the black hole is the same as computed in loop quantum gravity, proving in this case the existence of a semiclassical limit and obtaining an independent derivation of the Barbero-Immirzi parameter.Comment: 6 pages, no figures. Final version accepted for publication in General Relativity and Gravitatio

Skyrmion Dynamics and NMR Line Shapes in QHE Ferromagnets

The low energy charged excitations in quantum Hall ferromagnets are topological defects in the spin orientation known as skyrmions. Recent experimental studies on nuclear magnetic resonance spectral line shapes in quantum well heterostructures show a transition from a motionally narrowed to a broader `frozen' line shape as the temperature is lowered at fixed filling factor. We present a skyrmion diffusion model that describes the experimental observations qualitatively and shows a time scale of $\sim 50 \mu{\rm sec}$ for the transport relaxation time of the skyrmions. The transition is characterized by an intermediate time regime that we demonstrate is weakly sensitive to the dynamics of the charged spin texture excitations and the sub-band electronic wave functions within our model. We also show that the spectral line shape is very sensitive to the nuclear polarization profile along the z-axis obtained through the optical pumping technique.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Absolute Stability Limit for Relativistic Charged Spheres

We find an exact solution for the stability limit of relativistic charged spheres for the case of constant gravitational mass density and constant charge density. We argue that this provides an absolute stability limit for any relativistic charged sphere in which the gravitational mass density decreases with radius and the charge density increases with radius. We then provide a cruder absolute stability limit that applies to any charged sphere with a spherically symmetric mass and charge distribution. We give numerical results for all cases. In addition, we discuss the example of a neutral sphere surrounded by a thin, charged shell.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure 1 June 07: Replaced with added citations to prior work along same line

Algebraic approach to quantum black holes: logarithmic corrections to black hole entropy

The algebraic approach to black hole quantization requires the horizon area eigenvalues to be equally spaced. As shown previously, for a neutral non-rotating black hole, such eigenvalues must be $2^{n}$-fold degenerate if one constructs the black hole stationary states by means of a pair of creation operators subject to a specific algebra. We show that the algebra of these two building blocks exhibits $U(2)\equiv U(1)\times SU(2)$ symmetry, where the area operator generates the U(1) symmetry. The three generators of the SU(2) symmetry represent a {\it global} quantum number (hyperspin) of the black hole, and we show that this hyperspin must be zero. As a result, the degeneracy of the $n$-th area eigenvalue is reduced to $2^{n}/n^{3/2}$ for large $n$, and therefore, the logarithmic correction term $-3/2\log A$ should be added to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. We also provide a heuristic approach explaining this result, and an evidence for the existence of {\it two} building blocks.Comment: 15 pages, Revtex, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Matter-induced vertices for photon splitting in a weakly magnetized plasma

We evaluate the three-photon vertex functions at order $B$ and $B^{2}$ in a weak constant magnetic field at finite temperature and density with on shell external lines. Their application to the study of the photon splitting process leads to consider high energy photons whose dispersion relations are not changed significantly by the plasma effects. The absorption coefficient is computed and compared with the perturbative vacuum result. For the values of temperature and density of some astrophysical objects with a weak magnetic field, the matter effects are negligible.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in PR

The Effects of Disorder on the ν=1\nu=1 Quantum Hall State

A disorder-averaged Hartree-Fock treatment is used to compute the density of single particle states for quantum Hall systems at filling factor $\nu=1$. It is found that transport and spin polarization experiments can be simultaneously explained by a model of mostly short-range effective disorder. The slope of the transport gap (due to quasiparticles) in parallel field emerges as a result of the interplay between disorder-induced broadening and exchange, and has implications for skyrmion localization.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figure

Canted phase in double quantum dots

We perform a Hartree-Fock calculation in order to describe the ground state of a vertical double quantum dot in the absence of magnetic fields parallel to the growth direction. Intra- and interdot exchange interactions determine the singlet or triplet character of the system as the tunneling is tuned. At finite Zeeman splittings due to in-plane magnetic fields, we observe the continuous quantum phase transition from ferromagnetic to symmetric phase through a canted antiferromagnetic state. The latter is obtained even at zero Zeeman energy for an odd electron number.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Parity Violating Bosonic Loops at Finite Temperature

The finite temperature parity-violating contributions to the polarization tensor are computed at one loop in a system without fermions. The system studied is a Maxwell-Chern-Simons-Higgs system in the broken phase, for which the parity-violating terms are well known at zero temperature. At nonzero temperature the static and long-wavelength limits of the parity violating terms have very different structure, and involve non-analytic log terms depending on the various mass scales. At high temperature the boson loop contribution to the Chern-Simons term goes like T in the static limit and like T log T in the long-wavelength limit, in contrast to the fermion loop contribution which behaves like 1/T in the static limit and like log T/T in the long wavelength limit.Comment: 10 pp, 1 fig, revte

Broken-Symmetry States in Quantum Hall Superlattices

We argue that broken-symmetry states with either spatially diagonal or spatially off-diagonal order are likely in the quantum Hall regime, for clean multiple quantum well (MQW) systems with small layer separations. We find that for MQW systems, unlike bilayers, charge order tends to be favored over spontaneous interlayer coherence. We estimate the size of the interlayer tunneling amplitude needed to stabilize superlattice Bloch minibands by comparing the variational energies of interlayer-coherent superlattice miniband states with those of states with charge order and states with no broken symmetries. We predict that when coherent miniband ground states are stable, strong interlayer electronic correlations will strongly enhance the growth-direction tunneling conductance and promote the possibility of Bloch oscillations.Comment: 9 pages LaTeX, 4 figures EPS, to be published in PR