Rethinking the Properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma at T∼TcT\sim T_c

We argue that although at asymptotically high temperatures the QGP in bulk behaves as a gas of weakly interacting quasiparticles (modulo long-range magnetism), at temperatures up to few times the critical temperature $T_c$ it displays different properties. If the running of the QCD coupling constant continues in the Coulomb phase till the screening length scale, it reaches the strong coupling treshold $\alpha_s(m_D)\sim 1$. As a result, the Coulomb phase supports weakly bound Coulombic s-wave $\bar c c$, light quark and even $gg$ states. The existence of shallow bound states dramatically increases the quasiparticle rescattering at low energies, reducing the viscosity and thereby explaining why heavy ion collisions at RHIC exhibit robust collective phenomena. In conformal gauge theories at finite temperature the Coulomb binding persists further in the strong coupling regime, as found for ${\cal N}=4$ SUSY YM in the Maldacena regime.Comment: v2 version have one more figure and one more reference, v3 is the same as v2 except a double-page format (the v2 had corrupted last lines on the page

Two-vibron bound states in alpha-helix proteins : the interplay between the intramolecular anharmonicity and the strong vibron-phonon coupling

The influence of the intramolecular anharmonicity and the strong vibron-phonon coupling on the two-vibron dynamics in an $\alpha$-helix protein is studied within a modified Davydov model. The intramolecular anharmonicity of each amide-I vibration is considered and the vibron dynamics is described according to the small polaron approach. A unitary transformation is performed to remove the intramolecular anharmonicity and a modified Lang-Firsov transformation is applied to renormalize the vibron-phonon interaction. Then, a mean field procedure is realized to obtain the dressed anharmonic vibron Hamiltonian. It is shown that the anharmonicity modifies the vibron-phonon interaction which results in an enhancement of the dressing effect. In addition, both the anharmonicity and the dressing favor the occurrence of two different bound states which the properties strongly depend on the interplay between the anharmonicity and the dressing. Such a dependence was summarized in a phase diagram which characterizes the number and the nature of the bound states as a function of the relevant parameters of the problem. For a significant anharmonicity, the low frequency bound states describe two vibrons trapped onto the same amide-I vibration whereas the high frequency bound states refer to the trapping of the two vibrons onto nearest neighbor amide-I vibrations.Comment: may 2003 submitted to Phys. Rev.

Spin-Spin and Spin-Orbit Interactions in Strongly Coupled Gauge Theories

We evaluate the spin-orbit and spin-spin interaction between two fermions in strongly coupled gauge theories in their Coulomb phase. We use the quasi-instantaneous character of Coulomb's law at strong coupling to resum a class of ladder diagrams. For ${\cal N}=4$ SYM we derive both weak and strong coupling limits of the the spin-orbit and spin-spin interactions, and find that in the latter case these interactions are subleading corrections and do not seriously affect the deeply bound Coulomb states with large angular momentum, pointed out in our previous paper. The results are important for understanding of the regime of intermediate coupling, which is the case for QCD somewhat above the chiral transition temperature

Inorganic Chemistry in the Mountain Critical Zone : Are the mountain water towers of contemporary society under threat by trace contaminants ?

Potentially harmful trace elements (PHTEs) do not accumulate homogeneously over mountainous area. Generally, highland areas receive more wet deposition, aerosols, and ions than surrounding lowlands ones, mainly due to orographic enhancement. Within mountainous areas, however, the accumulation of PHTEs is much more complex. Direct cloud deposition of contaminants could act as an important pathway of deposition either from a regional low-altitude, cloud level, orographic clouds, or haze whose frequency of occurrence is much higher than surrounding lowlands areas. The accumulation legacy of PHTEs from local human activities should also be considered when investigating PHTE distribution in mountainous areas. Combined with other phenomena, the PHTE accumulation patterns could be highly variable depending on local topography, dominant winds, and vegetation cover, as well as present and past local practices. Despite their remoteness, mountain ecosystems are highly sensitive to PHTEs loadings

Real Time Correlators in Hot (2+1)d QCD

We use dimensional reduction techniques to relate real time finite T correlation functions in (2+1) dimensional QCD to bound state parameters in a generalized 't Hooft model with an infinite number of heavy quark and adjoint scalar fields. While static susceptibilities and correlation functions of the DeTar type can be calculated using only the light (static) gluonic modes, the dynamical correlators require the inclusion of the heavy modes. In particular we demonstrate that the leading T perturbative result can be understood in terms of the bound states of the 2d model and that consistency requires bound state trajectories composed of both quarks and adjoint scalars. We also propose a non-perturbative expression for the dynamical DeTar correlators at small spatial momenta.Comment: 21 pages, Latex, uses axodra

Computing Quantiles in Markov Reward Models

Probabilistic model checking mainly concentrates on techniques for reasoning about the probabilities of certain path properties or expected values of certain random variables. For the quantitative system analysis, however, there is also another type of interesting performance measure, namely quantiles. A typical quantile query takes as input a lower probability bound p and a reachability property. The task is then to compute the minimal reward bound r such that with probability at least p the target set will be reached before the accumulated reward exceeds r. Quantiles are well-known from mathematical statistics, but to the best of our knowledge they have not been addressed by the model checking community so far. In this paper, we study the complexity of quantile queries for until properties in discrete-time finite-state Markov decision processes with non-negative rewards on states. We show that qualitative quantile queries can be evaluated in polynomial time and present an exponential algorithm for the evaluation of quantitative quantile queries. For the special case of Markov chains, we show that quantitative quantile queries can be evaluated in time polynomial in the size of the chain and the maximum reward.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure; typo in example correcte

On the temperature dependence of correlation functions in the space like direction in hot QCD

We study the temperature dependence of quark antiquark correlations in the space like direction. In particular, we predict the temperature dependence of space like Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes using recent Lattice gauge data for the space like string potential. We also investigate the effect of the space like string potential on the screening mass and discuss possible corrections which may arise when working with point sources.Comment: 15 pages 8 figures (not included, will be sent on request), (SUNY-NTG-94-3