2D Black Hole and Holographic Renormalization Group

In hep-th/0311177, the Large $N$ renormalization group (RG) flows of a modified matrix quantum mechanics on a circle, capable of capturing effects of nonsingets, were shown to have fixed points with negative specific heat. The corresponding rescaling equation of the compactified matter field with respect to the RG scale, identified with the Liouville direction, is used to extract the two dimensional Euclidean black hole metric at the new type of fixed points. Interpreting the large $N$ RG flows as flow velocities in holographic RG in two dimensions, the flow equation of the matter field around the black hole fixed point is shown to be of the same form as the radial evolution equation of the appropriate bulk scalar coupled to 2D black hole.Comment: 21 page

Two-step melting of the vortex solid in layered superconductors with random columnar pins

We consider the melting of the vortex solid in highly anisotropic layered superconductors with a small concentration of random columnar pinning centers. Using large-scale numerical minimization of a free-energy functional, we find that melting of the low-temperature, nearly crystalline vortex solid (Bragg glass) into a vortex liquid occurs in two steps as the temperature increases: the Bragg glass and liquid phases are separated by an intermediate Bose glass phase. A suitably defined local melting temperature exhibits spatial variation similar to that observed in experiments.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Let

The Qt distribution of the Breit current hemisphere in DIS as a probe of small-x broadening effects

We study the distribution 1/sigma dsigma/dQt, where Qt is the modulus of the transverse momentum vector, obtained by summing over all hadrons, in the current hemisphere of the DIS Breit frame. We resum the large logarithms in the small Qt region, to next-to--leading logarithmic accuracy, including the non-global logarithms involved. We point out that this observable is simply related to the Drell-Yan vector boson and predicted Higgs Qt spectra at hadron colliders. Comparing our predictions to existing HERA data thus ought to be a valuable source of information on the role or absence of small-x (BFKL) effects, neglected in conventional resummations of such quantities.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, uses JHEP3.cl

Melting and structure of the vortex solid in strongly anisotropic layered superconductors with random columnar pins

We study the melting transition of the low-temperature vortex solid in strongly anisotropic layered superconductors with a concentration of random columnar pinning centers small enough so that the areal density of the pins is much less than that of the vortex lines. Both the external magnetic field and the columnar pins are assumed to be oriented perpendicular to the layers Our method, involving numerical minimization of a model free energy functional, yields not only the free energy values at the local minima of the functional but also the detailed density distribution of the system at each minimum: this allows us to study in detail the structure of the different phases. We find that at these pin concentrations and low temperatures, the thermodynamically stable state is a topologically ordered Bragg glass. This nearly crystalline state melts into an interstitial liquid (a liquid in which a small fraction of vortex lines remain localized at the pinning centers) in two steps, so that the Bragg glass and the liquid are separated by a narrow phase that we identify from analysis of its density structure as a polycrystalline Bose glass. Both the Bragg glass to Bose glass and the Bose glass to interstitial liquid transitions are first-order. We also find that a local melting temperature defined using a criterion based on the degree of localization of the vortex lines exhibits spatial variations similar to those observed in recent experiments.Comment: 17 page

Multidimensional persistence behaviour in an Ising system

We consider a periodic Ising chain with nearest-neighbour and $r$-th neighbour interaction and quench it from infinite temperature to zero temperature. The persistence probability $P(t)$, measured as the probability that a spin remains unflipped upto time $t$, is studied by computer simulation for suitable values of $r$. We observe that as time progresses, $P(t)$ first decays as $t^{-0.22}$ (-the {\em first} regime), then the $P(t)-t$ curve has a small slope (in log-log scale) for some time (-the {\em second} regime) and at last it decays nearly as $t^{-3/8}$ (-the {\em third} regime). We argue that in the first regime, the persistence behaviour is the usual one for a two-dimensional system, in the second regime it is like that of a non-interacting (`zero-dimensional') system and in the third regime the persistence behaviour is like that of a one dimensional Ising model. We also provide explanations for such behaviour.Comment: 6 pages, 12 figure