Absorptive part of meson--baryon scattering amplitude and baryon polarization in chiral perturbation theory

We compute the spin asymmetry and polarization of the final-state baryon in its rest frame in two-body meson--baryon low-energy scattering with unpolarized initial state, to lowest non-trivial order in BChPT. The required absorptive amplitudes are obtained analytically at one-loop level. We discuss the polarization results numerically for several meson--baryon processes. Even at low energies above threshold, where BChPT can reasonably be expected to be applicable, sizable values of polarization are found for some processes

Fermion masses in noncommutative geometry

Recent indications of neutrino oscillations raise the question of the possibility of incorporating massive neutrinos in the formulation of the Standard Model (SM) within noncommutative geometry (NCG). We find that the NCG requirement of Poincare duality constrains the numbers of massless quarks and neutrinos to be unequal unless new fermions are introduced. Possible scenarios in which this constraint is satisfied are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX; typos are corrected in (19), "Possible Solutions" and "Conclusion" are modified; additional calculational details are included; references are update

On the Ultraviolet Behaviour of Newton's constant

We clarify a point concerning the ultraviolet behaviour of the Quantum Field Theory of gravity, under the assumption of the existence of an ultraviolet Fixed Point. We explain why Newton's constant should to scale like the inverse of the square of the cutoff, even though it is technically inessential. As a consequence of this behaviour, the existence of an UV Fixed Point would seem to imply that gravity has a built-in UV cutoff when described in Planck units, but not necessarily in other units.Comment: 8 pages; CQG class; minor changes and rearrangement

Weak Hyperon Decays: Quark Sea and SU(3) Symmetry Breaking

An explanation of the difference in the values of the apparent $f/d$ ratios for the S- and P- wave amplitudes of nonleptonic hyperon decays is proposed. The argument is formulated in the framework of the standard pole model with $(56,0^{+})$ ground-state and $(70,1^{-})$ excited baryons as intermediate states for the P- and S- waves respectively. Under the assumption that the dominant part of the deviation of $(f/d)_{P-wave}$ from $-1$ is due to large quark sea effects, $SU(3)$ symmetry breaking in energy denominators is shown to lead to a prediction for $(f/d)_{S-wave}$ which is in excellent agreement with experiment. This corroborates our previous unitarity calculations which indicated that the matrix elements $$ of the parity conserving weak Hamiltonian between the ground-state baryons are characterized by $f_{0}/d_{0} \approx -1.6$ or more. A brief discussion of the problem of the relative size of S- and P- wave amplitudes is given. Finally, implications for weak radiative hyperon decays are also discussed.Comment: 26 pages, LATEX, 1647/PH IFJ Krako

Deconfinement in Matrix Models about the Gross--Witten Point

We study the deconfining phase transition in SU(N) gauge theories at nonzero temperature using a matrix model of Polyakov loops. The most general effective action, including all terms up to two spatial derivatives, is presented. At large N, the action is dominated by the loop potential: following Aharony et al., we show how the Gross--Witten model represents an ultra-critical point in this potential. Although masses vanish at the Gross--Witten point, the transition is of first order, as the fundamental loop jumps only halfway to its perturbative value. Comparing numerical analysis of the N=3 matrix model to lattice simulations, for three colors the deconfining transition appears to be near the Gross--Witten point. To see if this persists for N >= 4, we suggest measuring within a window ~1/N^2 of the transition temperature.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures; revtex4. A new Fig. 2 illustrates a strongly first order transition away from the GW point; discussion added to clarify relation to hep-th/0310285. Conclusions include a discussion of recent lattice data for N>3, hep-lat/0411039 and hep-lat/050200

The π−\pi-Gluon Exchange Interaction Between Constituent Quarks

The interaction mediated by irreducible pion and gluon exchange between constituent quarks is calculated and shown to have a strong tensor component, which tends to cancel the pion exchange tensor interaction between quarks. Its spin-spin component is somewhat weaker than the pion exchange spin-spin interaction, while its central and spin-orbit components are small in comparison to the corresponding single gluon exchange interactions. The combination of the $\pi-$gluon exchange interaction with the single pion exchange interaction and a weak gluon exchange interaction between constituent quarks has the qualitative features required for understanding the hyperfine splittings of the spectra of the nucleon and the $\Delta$ resonances.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 5 Postscript figure

Annihilation, Rescattering, and CP Asymmetries in B Meson Decays

A number of $B$ meson decays may proceed only through participation of the spectator quark, whether through amplitudes proportional to $f_B/m_B$ or via rescattering from other less-suppressed amplitudes. An expected hierarchy of amplitudes in the absence of rescattering will be violated by rescattering corrections. Such violations could point the way toward channels in which final-state interactions could be important. Cases in which final state phases can lead to large CP asymmetries are pointed out.Comment: 9 page

Detailed analysis of the gluonic excitation in the three-quark system in lattice QCD

We study the excited-state potential and the gluonic excitation in the static three-quark (3Q) system using SU(3) lattice QCD with $16^3\times 32$ at $\beta$=5.8 and 6.0 at the quenched level. For about 100 different patterns of spatially-fixed 3Q systems, we accurately extract the excited-state potential $V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm e.s.}$ together with the ground-state potential $V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm g.s.}$ by diagonalizing the QCD Hamiltonian in the presence of three quarks. The gluonic excitation energy $\Delta E_{\rm 3Q} \equiv V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm e.s.}-V_{\rm 3Q}^{\rm g.s.}$ is found to be about 1 GeV at the typical hadronic scale. This large gluonic-excitation energy is conjectured to give a physical reason of the success of the quark model for low-lying hadrons even without explicit gluonic modes. We investigate the functional form of $\Delta E_{\rm 3Q}$ in terms of the 3Q location. The lattice data of $\Delta E_{\rm 3Q}$ are relatively well reproduced by the ``inverse Mercedes Ansatz'' with the ``modified Y-type flux-tube length'', which indicates that the gluonic-excitation mode is realized as a complicated bulk excitation of the whole 3Q system.Comment: 13pages, 13figure

Spatial gradients in the cosmological constant

It is possible that there may be differences in the fundamental physical parameters from one side of the observed universe to the other. I show that the cosmological constant is likely to be the most sensitive of the physical parameters to possible spatial variation, because a small variation in any of the other parameters produces a huge variation of the cosmological constant. It therefore provides a very powerful {\em indirect} evidence against spatial gradients or temporal variation in the other fundamental physical parameters, at least 40 orders of magnitude more powerful than direct experimental constraints. Moreover, a gradient may potentially appear in theories where the variability of the cosmological constant is connected to an anthropic selection mechanism, invoked to explain the smallness of this parameter. In the Hubble damping mechanism for anthropic selection, I calculate the possible gradient. While this mechanism demonstrates the existence of this effect, it is too small to be seen experimentally, except possibly if inflation happens around the Planck scale.Comment: 12 page

Color-flavor locked strange matter

We analyze how the CFL states in dense matter work in the direction of enhancing the parameter space for absolutely stable phases (strange matter). We find that the "CFL strange matter" phase can be the true ground state of hadronic matter for a much wider range of the parameters of the model (the gap of the QCD Cooper pairs $\Delta$, the strange quark mass $m_s$ and the Bag Constant $B$) than the state without any pairing, and derive a full equation of state and an accurate analytic approximation to the lowest order in $\Delta$ and $m_{s}$ which may be directly used for applications. The effects of pairing on the equation of state are found to be small (as previously expected) but not negligible and may be relevant for astrophysics.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure