Chiral Extrapolation of Lattice Data for Heavy Meson Hyperfine Splittings

We investigate the chiral extrapolation of the lattice data for the light-heavy meson hyperfine splittings D^*-D and B^*-B to the physical region for the light quark mass. The chiral loop corrections providing non-analytic behavior in m_\pi are consistent with chiral perturbation theory for heavy mesons. Since chiral loop corrections tend to decrease the already too low splittings obtained from linear extrapolation, we investigate two models to guide the form of the analytic background behavior: the constituent quark potential model, and the covariant model of QCD based on the ladder-rainbow truncation of the Dyson-Schwinger equations. The extrapolated hyperfine splittings remain clearly below the experimental values even allowing for the model dependence in the description of the analytic background.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, typos corrected, presentation clarifie

K_{l3} transition form factors

The rainbow truncation of the quark Dyson-Schwinger equation is combined with the ladder Bethe-Salpeter equation for the meson bound state amplitudes and the dressed quark-W vertex in a manifestly covariant calculation of the K_{l3} transition form factors and decay width in impulse approximation. With model gluon parameters previously fixed by the chiral condensate, the pion mass and decay constant, and the kaon mass, our results for the K_{l3} form factors and the kaon semileptonic decay width are in good agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Revte

Pseudoscalar and vector mesons as q\bar{q} bound states

Two-body bound states such as mesons are described by solutions of the Bethe-Salpeter equation. We discuss recent results for the pseudoscalar and vector meson masses and leptonic decay constants, ranging from pions up to c\bar{c} bound states. Our results are in good agreement with data. Essential in these calculation is a momentum-dependent quark mass function, which evolves from a constituent-quark mass in the infrared region to a current-quark mass in the perturbative region. In addition to the mass spectrum, we review the electromagnetic form factors of the light mesons. Electromagnetic current conservation is manifest and the influence of intermediate vector mesons is incorporated self-consistently. The results for the pion form factor are in excellent agreement with experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 6 .eps figures, contribution to the proceedings of the first meeting of the APS Topical Group on Hadron Physics, Fermilab, Oct. 200

Aspects and consequences of a dressed-quark-gluon vertex

Features of the dressed-quark-gluon vertex and their role in the gap and Bethe-Salpeter equations are explored. It is argued that quenched lattice data indicate the existence of net attraction in the colour-octet projection of the quark-antiquark scattering kernel. This attraction affects the uniformity with which solutions of truncated equations converge pointwise to solutions of the complete gap and vertex equations. For current-quark masses less than the scale set by dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, the dependence of the dressed-quark-gluon vertex on the current-quark mass is weak. The study employs a vertex model whose diagrammatic content is explicitly enumerable. That enables the systematic construction of a vertex-consistent Bethe-Salpeter kernel and thereby an exploration of the consequences for the strong interaction spectrum of attraction in the colour-octet channel. With rising current-quark mass the rainbow-ladder truncation is shown to provide an increasingly accurate estimate of a bound state's mass. Moreover, the calculated splitting between vector and pseudoscalar meson masses vanishes as the current-quark mass increases, which argues for the mass of the pseudoscalar partner of the \Upsilon(1S) to be above 9.4 GeV. The absence of colour-antitriplet diquarks from the strong interaction spectrum is contingent upon the net amount of attraction in the octet projected quark-antiquark scattering kernel. There is a window within which diquarks appear. The amount of attraction suggested by lattice results is outside this domain.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figure

How Aromatic Fluorination Exchanges the Interaction Role of Pyridine with Carbonyl Compounds: The Formaldehyde Adduct

The rotational spectrum of the weakly bound complex pentafluoropyridine⋅⋅⋅formaldehyde has been investigated using Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. From the analysis of the rotational parameters of the parent species and of the 13C and 15N isotopologues, the structural arrangement of the adduct has been unambiguously established. The full ring fluorination of pyridine has a dramatic effect on its binding properties: It alters the electron density distribution at the π-cloud of pyridine creating a π-hole and changing its electron donor-acceptor capabilities. In the complex, formaldehyde lies above the aromatic ring with one of the oxygen lone pairs, as conventionally envisaged, pointing toward its centre. This lone pair⋅⋅⋅π-hole interaction, reinforced by a weak C−H⋅⋅⋅N interaction, indicates an exchange of the electron-acceptor roles of both molecules when compared to the pyridine⋅⋅⋅formaldehyde adduct. Tunnelling doublets due to the internal rotation of formaldehyde have also been observed and analysed leading to a discussion on the competition between lone pair⋅⋅⋅π-hole and π⋅⋅⋅π stacking interactions

Dynamical Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Unquenched QED3{QED}_3

We investigate dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in unquenched ${QED}_3$ using the coupled set of Dyson--Schwinger equations for the fermion and photon propagators. For the fermion-photon interaction we employ an ansatz which satisfies its Ward--Green--Takahashi identity. We present self-consistent analytical solutions in the infrared as well as numerical results for all momenta. In Landau gauge, we find a phase transition at a critical number of flavours of $N_f^{\mathrm crit} \approx 4$. In the chirally symmetric phase the infrared behaviour of the propagators is described by power laws with interrelated exponents. For $N_f=1$ and $N_f=2$ we find small values for the chiral condensate in accordance with bounds from recent lattice calculations. We investigate the Dyson--Schwinger equations in other linear covariant gauges as well. A comparison of their solutions to the accordingly transformed Landau gauge solutions shows that the quenched solutions are approximately gauge covariant, but reveals a significant amount of violation of gauge covariance for the unquenched solutions.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, reference added, version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Survey of J=0,1 mesons in a Bethe-Salpeter approach

The Bethe-Salpeter equation is used to comprehensively study mesons with J=0,1 and equal-mass constituents for quark masses from the chiral limit to the b-quark mass. The survey contains masses of the ground states in all corresponding J^{PC} channels including those with "exotic" quantum numbers. The emphasis is put on each particular state's sensitivity to the low- and intermediate-momentum, i.e., long-range part of the strong interaction.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

A systematic approach to the Planck LFI end-to-end test and its application to the DPC Level 1 pipeline

The Level 1 of the Planck LFI Data Processing Centre (DPC) is devoted to the handling of the scientific and housekeeping telemetry. It is a critical component of the Planck ground segment which has to strictly commit to the project schedule to be ready for the launch and flight operations. In order to guarantee the quality necessary to achieve the objectives of the Planck mission, the design and development of the Level 1 software has followed the ESA Software Engineering Standards. A fundamental step in the software life cycle is the Verification and Validation of the software. The purpose of this work is to show an example of procedures, test development and analysis successfully applied to a key software project of an ESA mission. We present the end-to-end validation tests performed on the Level 1 of the LFI-DPC, by detailing the methods used and the results obtained. Different approaches have been used to test the scientific and housekeeping data processing. Scientific data processing has been tested by injecting signals with known properties directly into the acquisition electronics, in order to generate a test dataset of real telemetry data and reproduce as much as possible nominal conditions. For the HK telemetry processing, validation software have been developed to inject known parameter values into a set of real housekeeping packets and perform a comparison with the corresponding timelines generated by the Level 1. With the proposed validation and verification procedure, where the on-board and ground processing are viewed as a single pipeline, we demonstrated that the scientific and housekeeping processing of the Planck-LFI raw data is correct and meets the project requirements.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures; this paper is part of the Prelaunch status LFI papers published on JINST: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.proc5/jins

Anomaly in the stability limit of liquid helium 3

We propose that the liquid-gas spinodal line of helium 3 reaches a minimum at 0.4 K. This feature is supported by our cavitation measurements. We also show that it is consistent with extrapolations of sound velocity measurements. Speedy [J. Phys. Chem. 86, 3002 (1982)] previously proposed this peculiar behavior for the spinodal of water and related it to a change in sign of the expansion coefficient alpha, i. e. a line of density maxima. Helium 3 exhibits such a line at positive pressure. We consider its extrapolation to negative pressure. Our discussion raises fundamental questions about the sign of alpha in a Fermi liquid along its spinodal.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure