1,001 research outputs found
Inferential knowledge, externalism and self-knowledge.
Privileged self-knowledge says, roughly, that we have non-empirical knowledge of our own thoughts. Externalism about mental content says, roughly, that our mental states are determined at least in part by our environment. It has been alleged that jointly assuming externalism about mental content and privileged self-knowledge are true has the consequence that any subject can have non-empirical knowledge of her own environment and this is intuitively absurd. The thesis investigates in various ways the problem arises and focuses on the following principle: Knowledge Transmission Principle: For any subject S and any proposition P and any proposition Q: if S has a certain kind of knowledge that P and S knows that P entails Q, then S knows that Q by way of S's certain kind of knowledge that P and S's knowledge that P entails Q. After investigating the ways of denying the principle with a view to upholding the compatibility of privileged self-knowledge and externalism about mental content the thesis reaches the following conditional conclusions: If we allow that the knowledge transmission principle is unrestrictedly true or if we allow for the possibility of so called 'illusions about mental content', then the consequence that a subject can have non-empirical knowledge of her own environment is not absurd. If on the other hand certain other conditions are in place, then the relevant instance of the transmission principle fails, then we can jointly assume externalism about mental content and privileged self-knowledge are true without them having the absurd consequence that we have non-empirical knowledge of our environment as a result of this joint assumption
On the chirality of quark modes
A model for the QCD vacuum based on a domainlike structured background gluon
field with definite duality attributed to the domains has been shown elsewhere
to give confinement of static quarks, a reasonable value for the topological
susceptibility and indications that chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken. In
this paper we study in detail the eigenvalue problem for the Dirac operator in
such a gluon mean field. A study of the local chirality parameter shows that
the lowest nonzero eigenmodes possess a definite mean chirality correlated with
the duality of a given domain. A probability distribution of the local
chirality qualitatively reproduces histograms seen in lattice simulations.Comment: RevTeX4, 5 figures, 14 page
Cold Feedback in Cooling-Flow Galaxy Clusters
We put forward an alternative view to the Bondi-driven feedback between
heating and cooling of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) in cooling flow galaxies
and clusters. We adopt the popular view that the heating is due to an active
galactic nucleus (AGN), i.e. a central black hole accreting mass and launching
jets and/or winds. We propose that the feedback occurs with the entire cool
inner region (5-30 kpc). A moderate cooling flow does exist here, and
non-linear over-dense blobs of gas cool fast and are removed from the ICM
before experiencing the next major AGN heating event. Some of these blobs may
not accrete on the central black hole, but may form stars and cold molecular
clouds. We discuss the conditions under which the dense blobs may cool to low
temperatures and feed the black hole.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, to appear in the Proceedings of "Heating vs.
Cooling in Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies", August 2006, Garching
(Germany
Spontaneous emission between an unusual pair of plates
We compute the modification in the spontaneous emission rate for a two-level
atom when it is located between two parallel plates of different nature: a
perfectly conducting plate and an infinitely permeable
one . We also discuss the case of two infinitely permeable
plates. We compare our results with those found in the literature for the case
of two perfectly conducting plates.Comment: latex file 4 pages, 4 figure
Monopole characteristics in various Abelian gauges
Renormalization group (RG) smoothing is employed on the lattice to
investigate and to compare the monopole structure of the SU(2) vacuum as seen
in different gauges (maximally Abelian (MAG), Polyakov loop (PG) and Laplacian
gauge (LG)). Physically relevant types of monopoles (LG and MAG) are
distinguished by their behavior near the deconfining phase transition. For the
LG, Abelian projection reproduces well the gauge independent monopole structure
encoded in an auxiliary Higgs field. Density and localization properties of
monopoles, their non-Abelian action and topological charge are studied. Results
are presented confirming the Abelian dominance with respect to the
non-perturbative static potential for all gauges considered.Comment: 36 pages, 12 figure
Sunflower population, row width and row direction
This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information
available from Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station. http://www.maes.umn.ed
Two-loop scalar self-energies in a general renormalizable theory at leading order in gauge couplings
I present results for the two-loop self-energy functions for scalars in a
general renormalizable field theory, using mass-independent renormalization
schemes based on dimensional regularization and dimensional reduction. The
results are given in terms of a minimal set of loop-integral basis functions,
which are readily evaluated numerically by computers. This paper contains the
contributions corresponding to the Feynman diagrams with zero or one vector
propagator lines. These are the ones needed to obtain the pole masses of the
neutral and charged Higgs scalar bosons in supersymmetry, neglecting only the
purely electroweak parts at two-loop order. A subsequent paper will present the
results for the remaining diagrams, which involve two or more vector lines.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figures, revtex4, axodraw.sty. Version 2: sentence after
eq. (A.13) corrected, references added. Version 3: typos in eqs. (5.17),
(5.20), (5.21), (5.32) are corrected. Also, the MSbar versions of eqs. (5.32)
and (5.33) are now include
Confinement and Chiral Symmetry Breaking via Domain-Like Structures in the QCD Vacuum
A qualitative mechanism for the emergence of domain structured background
gluon fields due to singularities in gauge field configurations is considered,
and a model displaying a type of mean field approximation to the QCD partition
function based on this mechanism is formulated. Estimation of the vacuum
parameters (gluon condensate, topological susceptibility, string constant and
quark condensate) indicates that domain-like structures lead to an area law for
the Wilson loop, nonzero topological susceptibility and spontaneous breakdown
of chiral symmetry. Gluon and ghost propagators in the presence of domains are
calculated explicitly and their analytical properties are discussed. The
Fourier transforms of the propagators are entire functions and thus describe
confined dynamical fields.Comment: RevTeX, 48 pages (32 pages + Appendices A-E), new references added
[1,2,4,5] and minor formulae corrected for typographical error
Reexamination of the long-range Potts model: a multicanonical approach
We investigate the critical behavior of the one-dimensional q-state Potts
model with long-range (LR) interaction , using a multicanonical
algorithm. The recursion scheme initially proposed by Berg is improved so as to
make it suitable for a large class of LR models with unequally spaced energy
levels. The choice of an efficient predictor and a reliable convergence
criterion is discussed. We obtain transition temperatures in the first-order
regime which are in far better agreement with mean-field predictions than in
previous Monte Carlo studies. By relying on the location of spinodal points and
resorting to scaling arguments, we determine the threshold value
separating the first- and second-order regimes to two-digit precision within
the range . We offer convincing numerical evidence supporting
$\sigma_c(q)Comment: 18 pages, 18 figure
Global Fluctuation Spectra in Big Crunch/Big Bang String Vacua
We study Big Crunch/Big Bang cosmologies that correspond to exact world-sheet
superconformal field theories of type II strings. The string theory spacetime
contains a Big Crunch and a Big Bang cosmology, as well as additional
``whisker'' asymptotic and intermediate regions. Within the context of free
string theory, we compute, unambiguously, the scalar fluctuation spectrum in
all regions of spacetime. Generically, the Big Crunch fluctuation spectrum is
altered while passing through the bounce singularity. The change in the
spectrum is characterized by a function , which is momentum and
time-dependent. We compute explicitly and demonstrate that it arises
from the whisker regions. The whiskers are also shown to lead to
``entanglement'' entropy in the Big Bang region. Finally, in the Milne orbifold
limit of our superconformal vacua, we show that and, hence, the
fluctuation spectrum is unaltered by the Big Crunch/Big Bang singularity. We
comment on, but do not attempt to resolve, subtleties related to gravitational
backreaction and light winding modes when interactions are taken into account.Comment: 68 pages, 1 figure; typos correcte
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