Expanded Quantum Cryptographic Entangling Probe

The paper [Howard E. Brandt, "Quantum Cryptographic Entangling Probe," Phys. Rev. A 71, 042312 (2005)] is generalized to include the full range of error rates for the projectively measured quantum cryptographic entangling probe.Comment: 4 page

NSV 11749: Symbiotic Nova, Not a Born-Again Red Giant

NSV 11749 is a little-studied variable star, discovered by W. J. Luyten, which had a long-duration outburst around the year 1903, reaching blue magnitude 12.5 at maximum. Following the outburst, it has apparently been quiescent at about blue magnitude 17 for the past century. It was recently suggested that NSV 11749 may have been a low- or intermediate-mass star that underwent a final helium shell flash, making it temporarily a "born-again" red giant. If so, it would be only the fourth known member of this class, along with V605 Aql, FG Sge, and V4334 Sgr. However, our newly obtained optical and near-IR spectra of the object show that it is instead a symbiotic binary, with strong Balmer and He I-II emission lines, combined with a cool red-giant companion of spectral type M1-2 III. The 1903 outburst was most likely a symbiotic nova event, of which less than a dozen are known at present.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in PAS

Irrelevant Exceptional Divisors for Curves on a Smooth Surface

Given a singular curve on a smooth surface, we determine which exceptional divisors on the minimal resolution of that curve contribute toward its jumping numbers.Comment: Added reference to Favre & Jonsson and a slight extension of the comment immediately following Definition 2.

Generalizations of the St\"ormer Problem for Dust Grain Orbits

We consider the generalized St\"ormer Problem that includes the electromagnetic and gravitational forces on a charged dust grain near a planet. For dust grains a typical charge to mass ratio is such that neither force can be neglected. Including the gravitational force gives rise to stable circular orbits that encircle that plane entirely above/below the equatorial plane. The effects of the different forces are discussed in detail. A modified 3rd Kepler's law is found and analyzed for dust grains.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX, 12 figure

Preserving the validity of the Two-Higgs Doublet Model up to the Planck scale

We examine the constraints on the two Higgs doublet model (2HDM) due to the stability of the scalar potential and absence of Landau poles at energy scales below the Planck scale. We employ the most general 2HDM that incorporates an approximately Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson with a flavor aligned Yukawa sector to eliminate potential tree-level Higgs-mediated flavor changing neutral currents. Using basis independent techniques, we exhibit robust regimes of the 2HDM parameter space with a 125 GeV SM-like Higgs boson that is stable and perturbative up to the Planck scale. Implications for the heavy scalar spectrum are exhibited.Comment: 36 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables (Version 3: typographical error in eq. (A.28) corrected