Exclusive electroproduction of J/psi mesons

A nonperturbative calculation of elastic electroproduction of the J/psi meson is presented and compared to the experimental data. Our model describes well the observed dependences of the cross sections on the photon virtuality Q2 and on the energy, and the measured ratio R of longitudinal to transverse cross sections.Comment: Five *.eps figure

Nonperturbative QCD treatment of J/ψJ/\psi photoproduction

We present a nonperturbative QCD calculation of elastic $J/\psi$ meson production in photon-proton scattering at high energies. Using light cone wave functions of the photon and vector mesons, and the framework of the model of the stochastic QCD vacuum, we calculate the differential and integrated elastic cross sections for \gamma p \goto J/\psi p . With an energy dependence following the two-pomeron model we are able to give a consistent description of the integrated cross sections and the differential cross sections at low $|t|$ in the range from 20 GeV up to the highest HERA energies. We discuss different approaches to introduce saturation and find no specific effects up to energies presently available. We also calculate and compare to experiments the cross section for $\upsilon$ photoproduction.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, 4 table

Ultra-Light Scalar Fields and the Growth of Structure in the Universe

Ultra-light scalar fields, with masses of between m=10^{-33} eV and m=10^{-22} eV, can affect the growth of structure in the Universe. We identify the different regimes in the evolution of ultra-light scalar fields, how they affect the expansion rate of the universe and how they affect the growth rate of cosmological perturbations. We find a number of interesting effects, discuss how they might arise in realistic scenarios of the early universe and comment on how they might be observed.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

Direct and indirect exciton mixing in a slightly asymmetric double quantum well

We studied, theoretically, the optical absorption spectra for a slightly asymmetric double quantum well (DQW), in the presence of electric and magnetic fields. Recent experimental results for a 10.18/3.82/9.61 nm GaAs Al(_{.33} )Ga(_{.67})As DQW show clearly the different behavior in the luminescence peaks for the indirect exciton (IX) and left direct exciton (DX) as a function of the external electric field. We show that the presence of a peak near the (DX) peak, attributed to an impurity bound left (DX) in the experimental results, could be a consequence of the non-trivial mixing between excitonic states.Comment: 8 pages and 8 figure

Quintessence in a quandary: prior dependence in dark energy models

The archetypal theory of dark energy is quintessence: a minimally coupled scalar field with a canonical kinetic energy and potential. By studying random potentials we show that quintessence imposes a restricted set of priors on the equation of state of dark energy. Focusing on the commonly-used parametrisation, $w(a)\approx w_0+w_a(1-a)$, we show that there is a natural scale and direction in the $(w_0, w_a)$ plane that distinguishes quintessence as a general framework. We calculate the expected information gain for a given survey and show that, because of the non-trivial prior information, it is a function of more than just the figure of merit. This allows us to make a quantitative case for novel survey strategies. We show that the scale of the prior sets target observational requirements for gaining significant information. This corresponds to a figure of merit FOM$\gtrsim 200$, a requirement that future galaxy redshift surveys will meet.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. For the busy reader, Fig. 1 is the money plot. v2: Minor changes, matches published version. Code open source at gitorious.org/random-quintessenc