Casimir experiments showing saturation effects

We address several different Casimir experiments where theory and experiment disagree. First out is the classical Casimir force measurement between two metal half spaces; here both in the form of the torsion pendulum experiment by Lamoreaux and in the form of the Casimir pressure measurement between a gold sphere and a gold plate as performed by Decca et al.; theory predicts a large negative thermal correction, absent in the high precision experiments. The third experiment is the measurement of the Casimir force between a metal plate and a laser irradiated semiconductor membrane as performed by Chen et al.; the change in force with laser intensity is larger than predicted by theory. The fourth experiment is the measurement of the Casimir force between an atom and a wall in the form of the measurement by Obrecht et al. of the change in oscillation frequency of a 87 Rb Bose-Einstein condensate trapped to a fused silica wall; the change is smaller than predicted by theory. We show that saturation effects can explain the discrepancies between theory and experiment observed in all these cases.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Competition between Phase Separation and Spin Density Wave or Charge Density Wave Order: Role of Long-Range Interactions

Recent studies of pairing and charge order in materials such as FeSe, SrTiO$_3$, and 2H-NbSe$_2$ have suggested that momentum dependence of the electron-phonon coupling plays an important role in their properties. Initial attempts to study Hamiltonians which either do not include or else truncate the range of Coulomb repulsion have noted that the resulting spatial non-locality of the electron-phonon interaction leads to a dominant tendency to phase separation. Here we present Quantum Monte Carlo results for such models in which we incorporate both on-site and intersite electron-electron interactions. We show that these can stabilize phases in which the density is homogeneous and determine the associated phase boundaries. As a consequence, the physics of momentum dependent electron-phonon coupling can be determined outside of the trivial phase separated regime.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

QCD Evolution of the Sivers Asymmetry

We study the QCD evolution of the Sivers effect in both semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) and Drell-Yan production (DY). We pay close attention to the non-perturbative spin-independent Sudakov factor in the evolution formalism and find a universal form which can describe reasonably well the experimental data on the transverse momentum distributions in SIDIS, DY lepton pair and $W/Z$ production. With this Sudakov factor at hand, we perform a global fitting of all the experimental data on the Sivers asymmetry in SIDIS from HERMES, COMPASS and Jefferson Lab. We then make predictions for the Sivers asymmetry in DY lepton pair and $W$ production that can be compared to the future experimental measurements to test the sign change of the Sivers functions between SIDIS and DY processes and constrain the sea quark Sivers functions.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, published version in PR

New perspective on space and time from Lorentz violation

I present a brief review on space and time in different periods of physics, and then talk on the nature of space and time from physical arguments. I discuss the ways to test such a new perspective on space and time through searching for Lorentz violation in some physical processes. I also make an introduce to a newly proposed theory of Lorentz violation from basic considerations.Comment: 10 latex pages. Plenary talk at First LeCosPA Symposium: Towards Ultimate Understanding of the Universe (LeCosPA2012), National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, February 6-9, 201