Progress in weakly coupled string phenomenology

The weakly coupled vacuum of $E_8\otimes E_8$ heterotic string theory remains an attractive scenario for particle physics. The particle spectrum and the issue of dilaton stabilization are reviewed. A specific model for hidden sector condensation and supersymmetry breaking, that respects known constraints from string theory, is described, and its phenomenological and cosmological implications are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, full postscript also available from http://phyweb.lbl.gov/theorygroup/papers/48640.p

Life cycle assessment of Swiss organic farming systems

The impacts of organic and integrated farming systems in Switzerland on the environment have been assessed in a comprehensive study by the life cycle assessment method. This paper reports a comparison of the treatments of the DOC experiment. Organic farming showed clear ecological advantages particularly for eco- and human toxicity, resource use and biodiversity. These ecological advantages only partly apply to nutrient losses and are not always found for single products. Per kg of organic product, higher impacts were often found for global warming potential, ozone formation, eutrophication and acidification compared to integrated production. In the same crop rotation with the same amount of organic fertilisers there were no systematic differences in soil quality of organic compared with integrated production. Further improvement of the environmental performance of organic farming should focus on achieving higher yields of good quality – especially in potatoes and cereals - by using inputs more efficiently and minimising nitrogen losses

Long Distance Contribution to KL→ℓ+ℓ−K_L \to \ell^+ \ell^-

We revisit the calculation of the long distance contribution to $K_L \to \mu^+ \mu^-$. We discuss this process within the framework of chiral perturbation theory, and also using simple models for the $K_L \gamma^* \gamma^*$ vertex. We argue that it is unlikely that this mode can be used to extract information on short distance parameters. The process $K_L \to e^+ e^-$ is also long-distance dominated and we find that $B(K_L \to e^+ e^-) \approx 9 \times 10^{-12}$.Comment: References added, one typo corrected. Version to appear in Nuclear Physics

Proton - Lambda correlations in Au-Au Collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV from the STAR experiment

The space-time evolution of the source of particles formed in the collision of nuclei can be studied through particle correlations. The STAR experiment is dedicated to study ultra-relativistic heavy ions collisions and allows to measure non-identical strange particle correlations. The source size can be extracted by studying $p-\Lambda$, $\bar{p}-\bar{\Lambda}$, $\bar{p}-\Lambda$ and $p-\bar{\Lambda}$ correlation functions. Strong interaction potential has been studied for these systems using an analytical model. Final State Interaction (FSI) parameters have been determined and has shown a significant annihilation process present in $\bar{p}-\Lambda$ and $p-\bar{\Lambda}$ systems not present in $p-\Lambda$ and $\bar{p}-\bar{\Lambda}$.Comment: contribution to the 20th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamic

Incident-energy and system-size dependence of directed flow

We present STAR's measurements of directed flow for charged hadrons in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} = 200$ GeV and 62.4 GeV, as a function of pseudorapidity, transverse momentum and centrality. We find that directed flow depends on the incident energy, but not on the system size. We extend the validity of limiting fragmentation hypothesis to different collision systems.Comment: Quark Matter 2006 proceedings, 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to J. Phys.

New approach to nonlinear electrodynamics: dualities as symmetries of interaction

We elaborate on the duality-symmetric nonlinear electrodynamics in a new formulation with auxiliary tensor fields. The Maxwell field strength appears only in bilinear terms of the corresponding generic Lagrangian, while the self-interaction is presented by a function E depending on the auxiliary fields. Two types of dualities inherent in the nonlinear electrodynamics models admit a simple off-shell characterization in terms of this function. In the standard formulation, the continuous U(1) duality symmetry is nonlinearly realized on the Maxwell field strength. In the new setting, the same symmetry acts as linear U(1) transformations of the auxiliary field variables. The nonlinear U(1) duality condition proves to be equivalent to the linear U(1) invariance of the self-interaction E. The discrete self-duality (or self-duality by Legendre transformation) amounts to a weaker reflection symmetry of E. For a class of duality- symmetric Lagrangians we introduce an alternative representation with the auxiliary scalar field and find new explicit examples of such systems.Comment: Latex file, 21 page

Plans for Kaon Physics at BNL

I give an overview of current plans for kaon physics at BNL. The program is centered on the rare decay modes K+ --> pi+ nu nubar and KL --> pi0 nu nubar.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Uses espcrc2.sty. For the proceedings of HIF04: High Intensity Frontier Workshop, La Biodola, Isola D'Elba, June 5-8, 200

Application of the operator product expansion to the short distance behavior of nuclear potentials

We investigate the short distance behavior of nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials defined through Bethe-Salpeter wave functions, by perturbatively calculating anomalous dimensions of 6-quark operators in QCD. Thanks to the asymptotic freedom of QCD, 1-loop computations give certain exact results for the potentials in the zero distance limit. In particular the functional form of the S-state central NN potential at short distance $r$ is predicted to be a little weaker than $r^{-2}$. On the other hand, due to the intriguing character of the anomalous dimension spectrum, perturbative considerations alone can not determine whether this potential is repulsive or attractive at short distances. A crude estimation suggests that the force at short distance is repulsive, as found numerically in lattice QCD. A similar behavior is found for the tensor potential.Comment: 40 pages, no figure

Gaugino Condensation with S-Duality and Field-Theoretical Threshold Corrections

We study gaugino condensation in the presence of an intermediate mass scale in the hidden sector. S-duality is imposed as an approximate symmetry of the effective supergravity theory. Furthermore, we include in the K\"ahler potential the renormalization of the gauge coupling and the one-loop threshold corrections at the intermediate scale. It is shown that confinement is indeed achieved. Furthermore, a new running behaviour of the dilaton arises which we attribute to S-duality. We also discuss the effects of the intermediate scale, and possible phenomenological implications of this model.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, 3 postscript figures include

One-loop Regularization of Supergravity II: The Dilaton and the Superfield Formulation

The on-shell regularization of the one-loop divergences of supergravity theories is generalized to include a dilaton of the type occurring in effective field theories derived from superstring theory, and the superfield structure of the one-loop corrections is given. Field theory anomalies and quantum contributions to soft supersymmetry breaking are discussed. The latter are sensitive to the precise choice of couplings that generate Pauli-Villars masses, which in turn reflect the details of the underlying theory above the scale of the effective cut-off. With a view to the implementation the Green-Schwarz and other mechanisms for canceling field theory anomalies under a U(1) gauge transformation and under the T-duality group of modular transformations, we show that the K\"ahler potential renormalization for the untwisted sector of orbifold compactification can be made invariant under these groups.Comment: 46 pages, full postscript also available from http://phyweb.lbl.gov/theorygroup/papers/43259.p