Heavy Meson Physics: What have we learned in Twenty Years?

I give a personal account of the development of the field of heavy quarks. After reviewing the experimental discovery of charm and bottom quarks, I describe how the field's focus shifted towards determination of CKM elements and how this has matured into a precision science.Comment: This talk was presented during the ceremony awarding the Medalla 2003 of the Division of Particles and Fields of The Mexican Phsyical Society, at the IX Mexican Workshop on Particles and Fields; submitted for proceedings; 9 pages, 9 figures; replacement: fix multiple typo

The CP asymmetry in B^0(t) -> K_S \pi^0 \gamma in the Standard Model

The time-dependent CP asymmetry in exclusive B^0(t) -> K^{*0}\gamma decays has been proposed as a probe of new physics in B decays. Recently, this method was extended to radiative decays into multibody hadronic final states such as B^0(t)-> K_S\pi^0\gamma and B^0(t)-> \pi^+\pi^-\gamma. The CP asymmetry in these decays vanishes to the extent that the photon is completely polarized. In the Standard Model, the photon emitted in b-> s\gamma has high left-handed polarization, but right-handed contamination enters already at leading order in \Lambda/m_b even for vanishing light quark masses. We compute here the magnitude of this effect and the time dependent CP asymmetry parameter S_{K_S \pi^0\gamma}. We find that the Standard Model can easily accomodate values of S as large as 10%, but a precise value cannot be obtained at present because of strong interactions uncertainties.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Final version to appear in Physical Review

Comment on ``Self-organized criticality and absorbing states: Lessons from the Ising model"

According to Pruessner and Peters [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 73}, 025106(R) (2006)], the finite size scaling exponents of the order parameter in sandpile models depend on the tuning of driving and dissipation rates with system size. We point out that the same is not true for {\em avalanches} in the slow driving limit.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Magnetic Wormholes and Vertex Operators

We consider wormhole solutions in $2+1$ Euclidean dimensions. A duality transformation is introduced to derive a new action from magnetic wormhole action of Gupta, Hughes, Preskill and Wise. The classical solution is presented. The vertex operators corresponding to the wormhole are derived. Conformally coupled scalars and spinors are considered in the wormhole background and the vertex operators are computed. ( To be published in Phys. Rev. D15)Comment: 18 pages of RevTex, preprint IP/BBSR/94-2

EWPD Constraints on Flavor Symmetric Vector Fields

Electroweak precision data constraints on flavor symmetric vector fields are determined. The flavor multiplets of spin one that we examine are the complete set of fields that couple to quark bi-linears at tree level while not initially breaking the quark global flavor symmetry group. Flavor safe vector masses proximate to, and in some cases below, the electroweak symmetry breaking scale are found to be allowed. Many of these fields provide a flavor safe mechanism to explain the t tbar forward backward anomaly, and can simultaneously significantly raise the allowed values of the Standard Model Higgs mass consistent with electroweak precision data.Comment: Matches version published in JHE

Systems with Multiplicative Noise: Critical Behavior from KPZ Equation and Numerics

We show that certain critical exponents of systems with multiplicative noise can be obtained from exponents of the KPZ equation. Numerical simulations in 1d confirm this prediction, and yield other exponents of the multiplicative noise problem. The numerics also verify an earlier prediction of the divergence of the susceptibility over an entire range of control parameter values, and show that the exponent governing the divergence in this range varies continuously with control parameter.Comment: Four pages (In Revtex format) with 4 figures (in Postcript

Strong Couplings of X(3872)_{J=1,2} and a New Look at J/psi Suppression in Heavy Ion Collisions

We define and compute from data the strong couplings of the X(3872) with both of the possible quantum numbers assignments J^{PC}=1^{++},2^{-+}. We use these to compute cross sections for J/psi resonance scattering into D Dbar*. As an application of the results obtained we revise the calculation of the J/psi absorption in a hot hadron gas to confront with recent RHIC observations in Au-Au collisions.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures, 4 table

Phase separation in systems with absorbing states

We study the problem of phase separation in systems with a positive definite order parameter, and in particular, in systems with absorbing states. Owing to the presence of a single minimum in the free energy driving the relaxation kinetics, there are some basic properties differing from standard phase separation. We study analytically and numerically this class of systems; in particular we determine the phase diagram, the growth laws in one and two dimensions and the presence of scale invariance. Some applications are also discussed.Comment: Submitted to Europhysics Let