Symmetry Problems in Low Energy Physics

Some recent experimental and theoretical work on 1) charge symmetry-breaking, 2) parity non-conservation, and 3) searches for breaking of time reversal invariance are reviewed. The examples illustrate the uses of symmetry to learn about underlying dynamics and/or structure.Comment: 15 pages, tex, figures available from [email protected] Talk presented at WEIN'9

Isospin Splitting in the Pion-Nucleon Couplings from QCD Sum Rules

We use QCD sum rules for the three point function of a pseudoscalar and two nucleonic currents in order to estimate the charge dependence of the pion nucleon coupling constant coming from isospin violation in the strong interaction. The effect can be attributed primarily to the difference of the quark condensates and . Assuming that the pi0 is a pure isostate we obtain for the splitting between the coupling of proton and neutron to the neutral pion an interval of [0.008 ; 0.023], the uncertainties coming mainly from the input parameters. In order to obtain the coupling to a physical pi0 we have to take pi - eta mixing into account leading to an interval of [0.012 ; 0.037]. The charged pion nucleon coupling is found to be the average of the two neutral ones. Electromagnetic effects are not included.Comment: contributed talk at CIPANP97 (Big Sky, Montana); 3 pages (aipproc.sty), no figure

Axial current matrix elements and pentaquark decay widths in chiral soliton models

Here I explain why in chiral soliton models the hadronic transition operator of the pentaquark decay cannot be identified from the axial current.Comment: seven pages, note on Delta resonance added, refs updated, version to be published in PR

Temperature-dependent "phason" elasticity in a random tiling quasicrystal

Both ``phason'' elastic constants have been measured from Monte Carlo simulations of a random-tiling icosahedral quasicrystal model with a Hamiltonian. The low-temperature limit approximates the ``canonical-cell'' tiling used to describe several real quasicrystals. The elastic constant K2 changes sign from positive to negative with decreasing temperature; in the ``canonical-cell'' limit, K2/K1 appears to approach -0.7, about the critical value for a phason-mode modulation instability. We compare to the experiments on i-AlPdMn and i-AlCuFe.Comment: 5 pages, 2 Postscript figures, LaTeX, uses revtex4, submitted to PR

Neutrino Properties, Cosmology

Review of neutrino properties; double beta decay; very high energy neutrinos; leptogenesisComment: 10 pages, 3 figures; conference tal

Mesons and the Structure of Nucleons

The role of mesons, particularly the pion, in the structure of nucleons is reviewed and investigated. Since quark-antiquark pairs are likely to ``transform" into mesons at large distances, mesons are expected to contribute to nucleon structure. Their effects on the Gottfried sum rule, on the strangeness content of the nucleon, and on the spin of the nucleon are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, TeX file followed by 3 uuencoded PostScript figures (optional), DOE/ER/40427-08-N9

Combined energy -- diffraction data refinement of decagonal AlNiCo

We incorporate realistic pair potential energies directly into a non-linear least-square fit of diffraction data to quantitatively compare structure models with experiment for the Ni-rich $d$(AlNiCo) quasicrystal. The initial structure models are derived from a few {\it a priori} assumptions (gross features of the Patterson function) and the pair potentials. In place of the common hyperspace approach to the structure refinement of quasicrystals, we use a real-space tile decoration scheme, which does not rely on strict quasiperiodicity, and makes it easy to enforce sensible local arrangements of the atoms. Inclusion of the energies provides information complementary to the diffraction data and protects the fit procedure from converging on spurious solutions. The method pinpoints sites which are likely to break the symmetry of their local environment.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of the Internation Conference on Quasicrystals, Bangalore, India, August 200