Physical results from 2+1 flavor Domain Wall QCD

We review recent results for the chiral behavior of meson masses and decay constants and the determination of the light quark masses by the RBC and UKQCD collaborations. We find that one-loop SU(2) chiral perturbation theory represents the behavior of our lattice data better than one-loop SU(3) chiral perturbation theory in both the pion and kaon sectors. The simulations have been performed using the Iwasaki gauge action at two different lattice spacings with the physical spatial volume held approximately fixed at (2.7 fm)^3. The Domain Wall fermion formulation was used for the 2+1 dynamical quark flavors: two (mass degenerate) light flavors with masses as light as roughly 1/5 the mass of the physical strange quark mass and one heavier quark flavor at approximately the value of the physical strange quark mass. On the ensembles generated with the coarser lattice spacing, we obtain for the physical average up- and down-quark and strange quark masses m_ud(MSbar,2GeV)=3.72(0.16)_stat(0.33)_ren(0.18)_syst MeV and m_s(MSbar,2GeV)=107.3(4.4)_stat(9.7)_ren(4.9)_syst MeV, respectively, while we find for the pion and kaon decay constants f_pi=124.1(3.6)_stat(6.9)_syst MeV, f_K=149.6(3.6)_stat(6.3)_syst MeV. The analysis for the finer lattice spacing has not been fully completed yet, but we already present some first (preliminary) results.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, talk presented at the XXVI International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, 14-19 July 2008, Williamsburg, VA, US

Minimizers for the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov Theory of Neutron Stars and White Dwarfs

We prove the existence of minimizers for Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) energy functionals with attractive two-body interactions given by Newtonian gravity. This class of HFB functionals serves as model problem for self-gravitating relativistic Fermi systems, which are found in neutron stars and white dwarfs. Furthermore, we derive some fundamental properties of HFB minimizers such as a decay estimate for the minimizing density. A decisive feature of the HFB model in gravitational physics is its failure of weak lower semicontinuity. This fact essentially complicates the analysis compared to the well-studied Hartree-Fock theories in atomic physics.Comment: 43 pages. Third and final version. Section 5 revised and main result extended. To appear in Duke Math. Journal

Perturbative operator approach to high-precision light-pulse atom interferometry

Light-pulse atom interferometers are powerful quantum sensors, however, their accuracy for example in tests of the weak equivalence principle is limited by various spurious influences like magnetic stray fields or blackbody radiation. Pushing the accuracy therefore requires a detailed assessment of the size of such deleterious effects. Here, we present a systematic operator expansion to obtain phase shifts and contrast analytically in powers of the perturbation. The result can either be employed for robust straightforward order-of-magnitude estimates or for rigorous calculations. Together with general conditions for the validity of the approach, we provide a particularly useful formula for the phase including wave-packet effects

A Lax Pair Structure for the Half-Wave Maps Equation

We consider the half-wave maps equation $$\partial_t \vec{S} = \vec{S} \wedge |\nabla| \vec{S},$$ where $\vec{S}= \vec{S}(t,x)$ takes values on the two-dimensional unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ and $x \in \mathbb{R}$ (real line case) or $x \in \mathbb{T}$ (periodic case). This an energy-critical Hamiltonian evolution equation recently introduced in \cite{LS,Zh}, which formally arises as an effective evolution equation in the classical and continuum limit of Haldane-Shastry quantum spin chains. We prove that the half-wave maps equation admits a Lax pair and we discuss some analytic consequences of this finding. As a variant of our arguments, we also obtain a Lax pair for the half-wave maps equation with target $\mathbb{H}^2$ (hyperbolic plane).Comment: Included an explicit calculation of the Lax operator for a single speed soliton. Corrected some minor typo

Blowup for Biharmonic NLS

We consider the Cauchy problem for the biharmonic (i.\,e.~fourth-order) NLS with focusing nonlinearity given by $i \partial_t u = \Delta^2 u - \mu \Delta u -|u|^{2 \sigma} u$ for $(t,x) \in [0,T) \times \mathbb{R}^d$, where $0 < \sigma <\infty$ for $d \leq 4$ and $0 < \sigma \leq 4/(d-4)$ for $d \geq 5$; and $\mu \in \mathbb{R}$ is some parameter to include a possible lower-order dispersion. In the mass-supercritical case $\sigma > 4/d$, we prove a general result on finite-time blowup for radial data in $H^2(\mathbb{R}^d)$ in any dimension $d \geq 2$. Moreover, we derive a universal upper bound for the blowup rate for suitable $4/d < \sigma < 4/(d-4)$. In the mass-critical case $\sigma=4/d$, we prove a general blowup result in finite or infinite time for radial data in $H^2(\mathbb{R}^d)$. As a key ingredient, we utilize the time evolution of a nonnegative quantity, which we call the (localized) Riesz bivariance for biharmonic NLS. This construction provides us with a suitable substitute for the variance used for classical NLS problems. In addition, we prove a radial symmetry result for ground states for the biharmonic NLS, which may be of some value for the related elliptic problem.Comment: Revised version. Corrected some minor typos, added some remarks and included reference [12

Empirical risk minimization in inverse problems

We study estimation of a multivariate function $f:\mathbf{R}^d\to\mathbf{R}$ when the observations are available from the function $Af$, where $A$ is a known linear operator. Both the Gaussian white noise model and density estimation are studied. We define an $L_2$-empirical risk functional which is used to define a $\delta$-net minimizer and a dense empirical risk minimizer. Upper bounds for the mean integrated squared error of the estimators are given. The upper bounds show how the difficulty of the estimation depends on the operator through the norm of the adjoint of the inverse of the operator and on the underlying function class through the entropy of the class. Corresponding lower bounds are also derived. As examples, we consider convolution operators and the Radon transform. In these examples, the estimators achieve the optimal rates of convergence. Furthermore, a new type of oracle inequality is given for inverse problems in additive models.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS726 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org