The AyA_y Puzzle and the Nuclear Force

The nucleon-deuteron analyzing power $A_y$ in elastic nucleon-deuteron scattering poses a longstanding puzzle. At energies $E_{lab}$ below approximately 30 MeV $A_y$ cannot be described by any realistic NN force. The inclusion of existing three-nucleon forces does not improve the situation. Because of recent questions about the $^3P_J$ NN phases, we examine whether reasonable changes in the NN force can resolve the puzzle. In order to do this we investigate the effect on the $^3P_J$ waves produced by changes in different parts of the potential (viz., the central force, tensor force, etc.), as well as on the 2-body observables and on $A_y$. We find that it is not possible with reasonable changes in the NN potential to increase the 3-body $A_y$ and at the same time to keep the 2-body observables unchanged. We therefore conclude that the $A_y$ puzzle is likely to be solved by new three-nucleon forces, such as those of spin-orbit type, which have not yet been taken into account.Comment: 35 pages in REVTeX, 1 figure in postscript and 3 figures in PiCTe

Parton Distributions for the Octet and Decuplet Baryons

We calculate the parton distributions for both polarized and unpolarized octet and decuplet baryons, using the MIT bag, dressed by mesons. We show that the hyperfine interaction responsible for the $\Delta - N$ and $\Sigma^0 - \Lambda$ splittings leads to large deviations from SU(3) and SU(6) predictions. For the $\Lambda$ we find significant polarized, non-strange parton distributions which lead to a sizable $\Lambda$ polarization in polarized, semi-inclusive $ep$ scattering. We also discuss the flavour symmetry violation arising from the meson-cloud associated with the chiral structure of baryons.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figure

Therapeutic and educational objectives in robot assisted play for children with autism

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/ROMAN.2009.5326251This article is a methodological paper that describes the therapeutic and educational objectives that were identified during the design process of a robot aimed at robot assisted play. The work described in this paper is part of the IROMEC project (Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions) that recognizes the important role of play in child development and targets children who are prevented from or inhibited in playing. The project investigates the role of an interactive, autonomous robotic toy in therapy and education for children with special needs. This paper specifically addresses the therapeutic and educational objectives related to children with autism. In recent years, robots have already been used to teach basic social interaction skills to children with autism. The added value of the IROMEC robot is that play scenarios have been developed taking children's specific strengths and needs into consideration and covering a wide range of objectives in children's development areas (sensory, communicational and interaction, motor, cognitive and social and emotional). The paper describes children's developmental areas and illustrates how different experiences and interactions with the IROMEC robot are designed to target objectives in these areas.Final Published versio

Charge symmetry violation in the parton distributions of the nucleon

We point out that charge symmetry violation in both the valence and sea quark distributions of the nucleon has a non-perturbative source. We calculate this non-perturbative charge symmetry violation using the meson cloud model, which has earlier been successfully applied to both the study of SU(2) flavour asymmetry in the nucleon sea and quark-antiquark asymmetry in the nucleon. We find that the charge symmetry violation in the valence quark distribution is well below 1%, which is consistent with most low energy tests but significantly smaller than the quark model prediction about 5%-10%. Our prediction for the charge symmetry violation in the sea quark distribution is also much smaller than the quark model calculation.Comment: RevTex, 26 pages, 6 PostScript figure

Soft-core hyperon-nucleon potentials

A new Nijmegen soft-core OBE potential model is presented for the low-energy YN interactions. Besides the results for the fit to the scattering data, which largely defines the model, we also present some applications to hypernuclear systems using the G-matrix method. An important innovation with respect to the original soft-core potential is the assignment of the cut-off masses for the baryon-baryon-meson (BBM) vertices in accordance with broken SU(3)$_F$, which serves to connect the NN and the YN channels. As a novel feature, we allow for medium strong breaking of the coupling constants, using the $^3P_0$ model with a Gell-Mann--Okubo hypercharge breaking for the BBM coupling. We present six hyperon-nucleon potentials which describe the available YN cross section data equally well, but which exhibit some differences on a more detailed level. The differences are constructed such that the models encompass a range of scattering lengths in the $\Sigma N$ and $\Lambda N$ channels. For the scalar-meson mixing angle we obtained values $\theta_S=37$ to 40 degrees, which points to almost ideal mixing angles for the scalar $q\bar{q}$ states. The G-matrix results indicate that the remarkably different spin-spin terms of the six potentials appear specifically in the energy spectra of $\Lambda$ hypernuclei.Comment: 37 pages, 4 figure

An isotopic effect in phi photoproduction at a few GeV

A distinct isotopic effect in phi photoproduction at 2-5 GeV region is identified by examining the production amplitudes due to Pomeron-exchange and meson-exchange mechanisms. This effect is mainly caused by the pi-eta interference constrained by SU(3) symmetry and the isotopic structure of the gamma NN coupling in the direct phi-radiation amplitude. It can be tested experimentally by measuring differences in the polarization observables between the gamma-p and gamma-n reactions.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Nuclear Sizes and the Isotope Shift

Darwin-Foldy nuclear-size corrections in electronic atoms and nuclear radii are discussed from the nuclear-physics perspective. Interpretation of precise isotope-shift measurements is formalism dependent, and care must be exercised in interpreting these results and those obtained from relativistic electron scattering from nuclei. We strongly advocate that the entire nuclear-charge operator be used in calculating nuclear-size corrections in atoms, rather than relegating portions of it to the non-radiative recoil corrections. A preliminary examination of the intrinsic deuteron radius obtained from isotope-shift measurements suggests the presence of small meson-exchange currents (exotic binding contributions of relativistic order) in the nuclear charge operator, which contribute approximately 1/2%.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 1 figure -- Submitted to Phys. Rev. A -- epsfig.sty require

Direct response of twin-slot antenna-coupled hot-electron bolometer mixers designed for 2.5 THz radiation detection

We measure the direct response of a Nb diffusion-cooled hot-electron bolometer mixer in a frequency range between 0.5 and 3.5 THz. The mixer consists essentially of a twin-slot antenna, a co-planar waveguide transmission line and a Nb superconducting bridge. It is designed for use in receivers with astronomical and atmospherical applications around 2.5 THz. We calculate the impedance of the antenna, the transmission line, and the bridge separately using models which are developed for frequencies below 1 THz and predict the direct response of the mixer. We demonstrate that these models can be applied to much higher frequencies. However, the measured central frequency is 10%-15% lower than predicted. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)02022-2]