The Outburst of the Blazar AO 0235+164 in 2006 December: Shock-in-Jet Interpretation

We present the results of polarimetric ($R$ band) and multicolor photometric ($BVRIJHK$) observations of the blazar AO 0235+16 during an outburst in 2006 December. The data reveal a short timescale of variability (several hours), which increases from optical to near-IR wavelengths; even shorter variations are detected in polarization. The flux density correlates with the degree of polarization, and at maximum degree of polarization the electric vector tends to align with the parsec-scale jet direction. We find that a variable component with a steady power-law spectral energy distribution and very high optical polarization (30-50%) is responsible for the variability. We interpret these properties of the blazar withina model of a transverse shock propagating down the jet. In this case a small change in the viewing angle of the jet, by $\lesssim 1^o$, and a decrease in the shocked plasma compression by a factor of $\sim$1.5 are sufficient to account for the variability.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, accepted for Ap

Unification of the Soluble Two-dimensional vector coupling models

The general theory of a massless fermion coupled to a massive vector meson in two dimensions is formulated and solved to obtain the complete set of Green's functions. Both vector and axial vector couplings are included. In addition to the boson mass and the two coupling constants, a coefficient which denotes a particular current definition is required for a unique specification of the model. The resulting four parameter theory and its solution are shown to reduce in appropriate limits to all the known soluble models, including in particular the Schwinger model and its axial vector variant.Comment: 10 page

Soluble field theory with a massless gauge invariant limit

It is shown that there exists a soluble four parameter model in (1+1) dimensions all of whose propagators can be determined in terms of the corresponding known propagators of the vector coupling theory. Unlike the latter case, however, the limit of zero bare mass is nonsingular and yields a nontrivial theory with a rigorously unbroken gauge invariance.Comment: 7 pages, revtex, no figure

Global-in-time solutions for the isothermal Matovich-Pearson equations

In this paper we study the Matovich-Pearson equations describing the process of glass fiber drawing. These equations may be viewed as a 1D-reduction of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations including free boundary, valid for the drawing of a long and thin glass fiber. We concentrate on the isothermal case without surface tension. Then the Matovich-Pearson equations represent a nonlinearly coupled system of an elliptic equation for the axial velocity and a hyperbolic transport equation for the fluid cross-sectional area. We first prove existence of a local solution, and, after constructing appropriate barrier functions, we deduce that the fluid radius is always strictly positive and that the local solution remains in the same regularity class. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first global existence and uniqueness result for this important system of equations

Pion-less effective field theory for atomic nuclei and lattice nuclei

We compute the medium-mass nuclei $^{16}$O and $^{40}$Ca using pionless effective field theory (EFT) at next-to-leading order (NLO). The low-energy coefficients of the EFT Hamiltonian are adjusted to experimantal data for nuclei with mass numbers $A=2$ and $3$, or alternatively to results from lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at an unphysical pion mass of 806 MeV. The EFT is implemented through a discrete variable representation in the harmonic oscillator basis. This approach ensures rapid convergence with respect to the size of the model space and facilitates the computation of medium-mass nuclei. At NLO the nuclei $^{16}$O and $^{40}$Ca are bound with respect to decay into alpha particles. Binding energies per nucleon are 9-10 MeV and 30-40 MeV at pion masses of 140 MeV and 806 MeV, respectively.Comment: 26 page

Supersymmetry and the Chiral Schwinger Model

We have constructed the N=1/2 supersymmetric general Abelian model with asymmetric chiral couplings. This leads to a N=1/2 supersymmetrization of the Schwinger model. We show that the supersymmetric general model is plagued with problems of infrared divergence. Only the supersymmetric chiral Schwinger model is free from such problems and is dynamically equivalent to the chiral Schwinger model because of the peculiar structure of the N=1/2 multiplets.Comment: one 9 pages Latex file, one ps file with one figur