Frustration of tilts and A-site driven ferroelectricity in KNbO_3-LiNbO_3 alloys

Density functional calculations for K_{0.5}Li_{0.5}NbO_3 show strong A-site driven ferroelectricity, even though the average tolerance factor is significantly smaller than unity and there is no stereochemically active A-site ion. This is due to the frustration of tilt instabilities by A-site disorder. There are very large off-centerings of the Li ions, which contribute strongly to the anisotropy between the tetragonal and rhombohedral ferroelectric states, yielding a tetragonal ground state even without strain coupling.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Two-hadron interference fragmentation functions. Part I: general framework

We investigate the properties of interference fragmentation functions measurable from the distribution of two hadrons produced in the same jet in the current fragmentation region of a hard process. We discuss the azimuthal angular dependences in the leading order cross section of two-hadron inclusive lepton-nucleon scattering as an example how these interference fragmentation functions can be addressed separately.Comment: RevTeX, 7 figures, first part of a work split in two, second part forthcoming in few day

The Theory of the Nucleon Spin

I discuss two topics of current interest in the study of the spin structure of the nucleon. First, I discuss whether there is a sum rule for the components of the nucleon's angular moments. Second, I discuss the measurement of the nucleon's transversity distribution in light of recent results reported by the HERMES collaboration at DESY.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, LaTeX using rspublic.cls and BoxedEPS macros; as submitted to Phil Trans A of the Royal Society for forthcoming volume: The Quark Structure of Matter; email correspondence to [email protected]

Reflection above the barrier as tunneling in momentum space

Quantum mechanics predicts an exponentially small probability that a particle with energy greater than the height of a potential barrier will nevertheless reflect from the barrier in violation of classical expectations. This process can be regarded as tunneling in momentum space, leading to a simple derivation of the reflection probability.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to American Journal of Physics. Version 2: MIT preprint number added, typographical error in caption to Figure 2 correcte

Bounds on transverse momentum dependent distribution and fragmentation functions

We give bounds on the distribution and fragmentation functions that appear at leading order in deep inelastic 1-particle inclusive leptoproduction or in Drell-Yan processes. These bounds simply follow from positivity of the defining matrix elements and are an important guidance in estimating the magnitude of the azimuthal and spin asymmetries in these processes.Comment: 5 pages, Revtex, 3 Postscript figures, version with minor changes, to be published in Physical Review Letter

Quark Masses: An Environmental Impact Statement

We investigate worlds that lie on a slice through the parameter space of the Standard Model over which quark masses vary. We allow as many as three quarks to participate in nuclei, while fixing the mass of the electron and the average mass of the lightest baryon flavor multiplet. We classify as "congenial" worlds that satisfy the environmental constraint that the quark masses allow for stable nuclei with charges one, six, and eight, making organic chemistry possible. Whether a congenial world actually produces observers depends on a multitude of historical contingencies, beginning with primordial nucleosynthesis, which we do not explore. Such constraints may be independently superimposed on our results. Environmental constraints such as the ones we study may be combined with information about the a priori distribution of quark masses over the landscape of possible universes to determine whether the measured values of the quark masses are determined environmentally, but our analysis is independent of such an anthropic approach. We estimate baryon masses as functions of quark masses and nuclear masses as functions of baryon masses. We check for the stability of nuclei against fission, strong particle emission, and weak nucleon emission. For two light quarks with charges 2/3 and -1/3, we find a band of congeniality roughly 29 MeV wide in their mass difference. We also find another, less robust region of congeniality with one light, charge -1/3 quark, and two heavier, approximately degenerate charge -1/3 and 2/3 quarks. No other assignment of light quark charges yields congenial worlds with two baryons participating in nuclei. We identify and discuss the region in quark-mass space where nuclei would be made from three or more baryon species.Comment: 40 pages, 16 figures (in color), 4 tables. See paper for a more detailed abstract. v4: Cleaning up minor typo