Fission Hindrance in hot 216Th: Evaporation Residue Measurements

The fusion evaporation-residue cross section for 32S+184W has been measured at beam energies of E_beam = 165, 174, 185, 196, 205, 215, 225, 236, 246,and 257 MeV using the ATLAS Fragment Mass Analyzer. The data are compared with Statistical Model calculations and it is found that a nuclear dissipation strength, which increases with excitation energy, is required to reproduce the excitation function. A comparison with previously published data show that the dissipation strength depends strongly on the shell structure of the nuclear system.Comment: 15 pages 9 figure

How Well Does AdS/QCD Describe QCD?

AdS/QCD is an extra-dimensional approach to modeling hadronic physics, motivated by the AdS/CFT correspondence in string theory. AdS/QCD models are often more accurate than would have been expected at energies below a few GeV. We address the question of why these models are so successful, and respond to some of the criticisms that have been waged against these models.Comment: To appear in proceedings of Crossing the Boundaries: Gauge Dynamics at Strong Coupling (Shifmania), Minnesota, May 14-17, 2009. 12 pages, 2 eps figure

Latest results from the PHOBOS experiment

Over the past years PHOBOS has continued to analyze the large datasets obtained from the first five runs of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The two main analysis streams have been pursued. The first one aims to obtain a broad and systematic survey of global properties of particle production in heavy ion collisions. The second class includes the study of fluctuations and correlations in particle production. Both type of studies have been performed for a variety of the collision systems, covering a wide range in collision energy and centrality. The uniquely large angular coverage of the PHOBOS detector and its ability to measure charged particles down to very low transverse momentum is exploited. The latest physics results from PHOBOS, as presented at Quark Matter 2008 Conference, are contained in this report.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, presented at the 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, "Quark Matter 2008", Jaipur, India, Feb.4-10, 200

Black Hole Production from High Energy Scattering in AdS/CFT

In this article we show how to set up initial states in ${\cal N} =4$ SYM theory that correspond to high energy graviton collisions, leading to black hole formation in $AdS_5\times S^5$. For this purpose, we study states in the gauge theory that are dual to graviton wavepackets localized at the center of $AdS_5$, and carrying large angular momentum along the $S^5$. These states are created by exciting only the s-wave mode of one of the complex adjoint scalars of SYM. For a single graviton, the state is 1/2 BPS and one can show that it is dual to a linearized 1/2 BPS geometry in the bulk. Exploiting this dictionary, we show how to localize the particle's wavefunciton so that the dual linearized metric has the form of a Aichelburg-Sexl shock wave. One can then put two such shock waves into a head-on collision, which is known to produce a trapped surface. Finally, we discuss the prospect of studying graviton scattering directly at strong coupling in the gauge theory using a reduced model of matrix quantum mechanics.Comment: 11 pages, revtex format, no figure

The Spectrum of Strings on Warped AdS_3 x S^3

String theory on NS-NS AdS_3 x S^3 admits an exactly marginal deformation which breaks the SL(2,R)_R x SL(2,R)_L isometry of AdS_3 down to SL(2,R)_R x U(1)_L. The holographic dual is an exotic and only partially understood type of two-dimensional CFT with a reduced unbroken global conformal symmetry group. In this paper we study the deformed theory on the string worldsheet. It is found to be related by a spectral flow which is nonlocal in spacetime to the undeformed worldsheet theory. An exact formula for the spectrum of massive strings is presented.Comment: 26 pages, no figure

A New and Elementary CP^n Dyonic Magnon

We show that the dressing transformation method produces a new type of dyonic CP^n magnon in terms of which all the other known solutions are either composites or arise as special limits. In particular, this includes the embedding of Dorey's dyonic magnon via an RP^3 subspace of CP^n. We also show how to generate Dorey's dyonic magnon directly in the S^n sigma model via the dressing method without resorting to the isomorphism with the SU(2) principle chiral model when n=3. The new dyon is shown to be either a charged dyon or topological kink of the related symmetric-space sine-Gordon theories associated to CP^n and in this sense is a direct generalization of the soliton of the complex sine-Gordon theory.Comment: 21 pages, JHEP3, typos correcte

Parton picture for the strongly coupled SYM plasma

Deep inelastic scattering off the strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma at finite temperature can be computed within the AdS/CFT correspondence, with results which are suggestive of a parton picture for the plasma. Via successive branchings, essentially all partons cascade down to very small values of the longitudinal momentum fraction x and to transverse momenta smaller than the saturation momentum Q_s\sim T/x. This scale Q_s controls the plasma interactions with a hard probe, in particular, the jet energy loss and its transverse momentum broadening.Comment: 4 pages, Talk given at Quark Matter 2008: 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus Nucleus Collisions (QM 2008), Jaipur, India, 4-10 Feb 200

Asymptotic Bethe equations for open boundaries in planar AdS/CFT

We solve, by means of a nested coordinate Bethe ansatz, the open-boundaries scattering theory describing the excitations of a free open string propagating in $AdS_5\times S^5$, carrying large angular momentum $J=J_{56}$, and ending on a maximal giant graviton whose angular momentum is in the same plane. We thus obtain the all-loop Bethe equations describing the spectrum, for $J$ finite but large, of the energies of such strings, or equivalently, on the gauge side of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the anomalous dimensions of certain operators built using the epsilon tensor of SU(N). We also give the Bethe equations for strings ending on a probe D7-brane, corresponding to meson-like operators in an $\mathcal N=2$ gauge theory with fundamental matter.Comment: 30 pages. v2: minor changes and discussion section added, J.Phys.A version

Small world yields the most effective information spreading

Spreading dynamics of information and diseases are usually analyzed by using a unified framework and analogous models. In this paper, we propose a model to emphasize the essential difference between information spreading and epidemic spreading, where the memory effects, the social reinforcement and the non-redundancy of contacts are taken into account. Under certain conditions, the information spreads faster and broader in regular networks than in random networks, which to some extent supports the recent experimental observation of spreading in online society [D. Centola, Science {\bf 329}, 1194 (2010)]. At the same time, simulation result indicates that the random networks tend to be favorable for effective spreading when the network size increases. This challenges the validity of the above-mentioned experiment for large-scale systems. More significantly, we show that the spreading effectiveness can be sharply enhanced by introducing a little randomness into the regular structure, namely the small-world networks yield the most effective information spreading. Our work provides insights to the understanding of the role of local clustering in information spreading.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, accepted by New J. Phy

Thermal fission rate around super-normal phase transition

Using Langer's $Im F$ method, we discuss the temperature dependence of nuclear fission width in the presence of dissipative environments. We introduce a low cut-off frequency to the spectral density of the environmental oscillators in order to mimic the pairing gap. It is shown that the decay width rapidly decreases at the critical temperature, where the phase transition from super to normal fluids takes place. Relation to the recently observed threshold for the dissipative fission is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, Submitted to Physical Review C for publication, 3 Postscript figures are available by request from [email protected]