170 research outputs found
Longitudinally Polarized Photoproduction of Inclusive Hadrons at Fixed-Target Experiments
We present a detailed phenomenological study of spin-dependent
single-inclusive high-p_T hadron photoproduction with particular emphasis on
the kinematics relevant for the Compass and Hermes fixed-target experiments. We
carefully examine the theoretical uncertainties associated with the only
moderate transverse momenta accessible in such measurements and analyze the
sensitivity of the relevant spin asymmetries to the gluon polarization in the
nucleon as well as to the completely unknown parton content of circularly
polarized photons.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures; final version to appear in EPJC; comparison to
E155 data and references adde
A round table discussion on forensic science in Australia
This manuscript is an edited transcript of a round table discussion held during the Australian New Zealand Forensic Science Society International Symposium held in Sydney in 2010. The discussants covered a variety of topics, including the management of science, the handling of quality issues, and the report on forensic science from the U.S. National Academies of Science National Research Council. This discussion offers a frank account of the current state of Australian forensic service providers. These views are then considered in the context of recent events unfolding in the United Kingdom and in a broader international context. It poses the question, are there lessons to be learned from the Australian experience that would have relevance to other parts of the world
Deployment of spatial attention towards locations in memory representations: an EEG study
Recalling information from visual short-term memory (VSTM) involves the same neural mechanisms as attending to an actually perceived scene. In particular, retrieval from VSTM has been associated with orienting of visual attention towards a location within a spatially-organized memory representation. However, an open question concerns whether spatial attention is also recruited during VSTM retrieval even when performing the task does not require access to spatial coordinates of items in the memorized scene. The present study combined a visual search task with a modified, delayed central probe protocol, together with EEG analysis, to answer this question. We found a temporal contralateral negativity (TCN) elicited by a centrally presented go-signal which was spatially uninformative and featurally unrelated to the search target and informed participants only about a response key that they had to press to indicate a prepared target-present vs. -absent decision. This lateralization during VSTM retrieval (TCN) provides strong evidence of a shift of attention towards the target location in the memory representation, which occurred despite the fact that the present task required no spatial (or featural) information from the search to be encoded, maintained, and retrieved to produce the correct response and that the go-signal did not itself specify any information relating to the location and defining feature of the target
Warped Higgsless Models with IR--Brane Kinetic Terms
We examine a warped Higgsless model
in 5-- with IR(TeV)--brane kinetic terms. It is shown that adding a brane
term for the gauge field does not affect the scale (
TeV) where perturbative unitarity in is violated.
This term could, however, enhance the agreement of the model with the precision
electroweak data. In contrast, the inclusion of a kinetic term corresponding to
the custodial symmetry of the theory delays the unitarity violation
in scattering to energy scales of TeV for a significant
fraction of the parameter space. This is about a factor of 4 improvement
compared to the corresponding scale of unitarity violation in the Standard
Model without a Higgs. We also show that null searches for extra gauge bosons
at the Tevatron and for contact interactions at LEP II place non-trivial bounds
on the size of the IR-brane terms.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure
Casimir effect due to a single boundary as a manifestation of the Weyl problem
The Casimir self-energy of a boundary is ultraviolet-divergent. In many cases
the divergences can be eliminated by methods such as zeta-function
regularization or through physical arguments (ultraviolet transparency of the
boundary would provide a cutoff). Using the example of a massless scalar field
theory with a single Dirichlet boundary we explore the relationship between
such approaches, with the goal of better understanding the origin of the
divergences. We are guided by the insight due to Dowker and Kennedy (1978) and
Deutsch and Candelas (1979), that the divergences represent measurable effects
that can be interpreted with the aid of the theory of the asymptotic
distribution of eigenvalues of the Laplacian discussed by Weyl. In many cases
the Casimir self-energy is the sum of cutoff-dependent (Weyl) terms having
geometrical origin, and an "intrinsic" term that is independent of the cutoff.
The Weyl terms make a measurable contribution to the physical situation even
when regularization methods succeed in isolating the intrinsic part.
Regularization methods fail when the Weyl terms and intrinsic parts of the
Casimir effect cannot be clearly separated. Specifically, we demonstrate that
the Casimir self-energy of a smooth boundary in two dimensions is a sum of two
Weyl terms (exhibiting quadratic and logarithmic cutoff dependence), a
geometrical term that is independent of cutoff, and a non-geometrical intrinsic
term. As by-products we resolve the puzzle of the divergent Casimir force on a
ring and correct the sign of the coefficient of linear tension of the Dirichlet
line predicted in earlier treatments.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, minor changes to the text, extra references
added, version to be published in J. Phys.
How Chaotic is the Stadium Billiard? A Semiclassical Analysis
The impression gained from the literature published to date is that the
spectrum of the stadium billiard can be adequately described, semiclassically,
by the Gutzwiller periodic orbit trace formula together with a modified
treatment of the marginally stable family of bouncing ball orbits. I show that
this belief is erroneous. The Gutzwiller trace formula is not applicable for
the phase space dynamics near the bouncing ball orbits. Unstable periodic
orbits close to the marginally stable family in phase space cannot be treated
as isolated stationary phase points when approximating the trace of the Green
function. Semiclassical contributions to the trace show an - dependent
transition from hard chaos to integrable behavior for trajectories approaching
the bouncing ball orbits. A whole region in phase space surrounding the
marginal stable family acts, semiclassically, like a stable island with
boundaries being explicitly -dependent. The localized bouncing ball
states found in the billiard derive from this semiclassically stable island.
The bouncing ball orbits themselves, however, do not contribute to individual
eigenvalues in the spectrum. An EBK-like quantization of the regular bouncing
ball eigenstates in the stadium can be derived. The stadium billiard is thus an
ideal model for studying the influence of almost regular dynamics near
marginally stable boundaries on quantum mechanics.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, submitted to J. Phys.
Vortices, Instantons and Branes
The purpose of this paper is to describe a relationship between the moduli
space of vortices and the moduli space of instantons. We study charge k
vortices in U(N) Yang-Mills-Higgs theories and show that the moduli space is
isomorphic to a special Lagrangian submanifold of the moduli space of k
instantons in non-commutative U(N) Yang-Mills theories. This submanifold is the
fixed point set of a U(1) action on the instanton moduli space which rotates
the instantons in a plane. To derive this relationship, we present a D-brane
construction in which the dynamics of vortices is described by the Higgs branch
of a U(k) gauge theory with 4 supercharges which is a truncation of the
familiar ADHM gauge theory. We further describe a moduli space construction for
semi-local vortices, lumps in the CP(N) and Grassmannian sigma-models, and
vortices on the non-commutative plane. We argue that this relationship between
vortices and instantons underlies many of the quantitative similarities shared
by quantum field theories in two and four dimensions.Comment: 32 Pages, 4 Figure
- …