Precision Determination of the Top Quark Mass

The CDF and D0 collaborations have updated their measurements of the mass of the top quark using proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96TeV produced at the Tevatron. The uncertainties in each of the of top-antitop decay channels have been reduced. The new Tevatron average for the mass of the top quark based on about 1/fb of data per experiment is 170.9+-1.8GeV/c^2.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures; LaTeX2e, 8 .eps files, uses LaThuileFPSpro.sty (included). To appear in the proceedings of the 21st Rencontres des Physique de la Vallee d'Aoste, La Thuile, March 4-10, 200

The concentration-compactness principle for variable exponent spaces and applications

In this paper we extend the well-known concentration -- compactness principle of P.L. Lions to the variable exponent case. We also give some applications to the existence problem for the $p(x)-$Laplacian with critical growth

Effects of percentage of blockage and flameholder downstream counterbores on lean combustion limits of premixed, prevaporized propane-air mixture

Lean combustion limits were determined for a premixed prevaporized propane air mixture with flat plate flame stabilizers. Experiments were conducted in a constant area flame tube combustor utilizing flameholders of varying percentages of blockage and downstream counterbores. Combustor inlet air velocity at ambient conditions was varied from 4 to 9 meters per second. Flameholders with a center hole and four half holes surrounding it were tested with 63, 73, and 85 percent blockage and counterbore diameters of 112 and 125 percent of the thru hole diameter, in addition to the no counterbore configuration. Improved stability was obtained by using counterbore flameholders and higher percentages of blockage. Increases in mixture velocity caused the equivalence ratio at blowout to increase in all cases

Impact of single-particle compressibility on the fluid-solid phase transition for ionic microgel suspensions

We study ionic microgel suspensions composed of swollen particles for various single-particle stiffnesses. We measure the osmotic pressure $\pi$ of these suspensions and show that it is dominated by the contribution of free ions in solution. As this ionic osmotic pressure depends on the volume fraction of the suspension $\phi$, we can determine $\phi$ from $\pi$, even at volume fractions so high that the microgel particles are compressed. We find that the width of the fluid-solid phase coexistence, measured using $\phi$, is larger than its hard-sphere value for the stiffer microgels that we study and progressively decreases for softer microgels. For sufficiently soft microgels, the suspensions are fluid-like, irrespective of volume fraction. By calculating the dependence on $\phi$ of the mean volume of a microgel particle, we show that the behavior of the phase-coexistence width correlates with whether or not the microgel particles are compressed at the volume fractions corresponding to fluid-solid coexistence.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Unconventional critical activated scaling of two-dimensional quantum spin-glasses

We study the critical behavior of two-dimensional short-range quantum spin glasses by numerical simulations. Using a parallel tempering algorithm, we calculate the Binder cumulant for the Ising spin glass in a transverse magnetic field with two different short-range bond distributions, the bimodal and the Gaussian ones. Through an exhaustive finite-size scaling analysis, we show that the universality class does not depend on the exact form of the bond distribution but, most important, that the quantum critical behavior is governed by an infinite randomness fixed point.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Electromagnetic fields and transport coefficients in a hot pion gas

We present recent results on finite temperature electromagnetic form factors and the electrical conductivity in a pion gas. The standard Chiral Perturbation Theory power counting needs to be modified for transport coefficients. We pay special attention to unitarity and to possible applications for dilepton and photon production.Comment: 4pp, 2 figures, talk given at "Strong and Electroweak Matter 2006", BNL, May 200