Chiral freedom and electroweak symmetry breaking

Antisymmetric tensor fields with chiral couplings to quarks and leptons may induce spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking in a model without a ``fundamental'' Higgs scalar. No microscopic local mass term for the chiral tensors or ``chirons'' is allowed by the symmetries and our model exhibits only dimensionless couplings. However, the chiral couplings are asymptotically free and therefore generate a mass scale where they grow large. We argue that at this scale mass terms for the chiral tensor fields are generated non-perturbatively - the chirons appear as new massive spin one particles. Furthermore a scalar top-antitop condensate forms, giving mass to the weak gauge bosons and fermions. In this scenario the longstanding gauge hierarchy problem finds a solution similar to the mass generation in QCD. We compute the general form of the effective action for the chiral tensors and sketch several possibilities of their detection at LHC or through precision tests of the electroweak standard model.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figure

Hacking for peace: the case for cyber coercion

Are cyber capabilities a useful method for coercive diplomacy? If so, what conditions favor successful cyber coercion to produce a desired victim response? This research explores how cyber coercion can be used as a tool of statecraft to change an adversary’s behavior and examines two cases over three temporal values. Examining the two cases of North Korea versus Sony and Russia versus Estonia illustrates practical lessons about the constraints and abilities of the employment of cyber coercion as well as how victim responses operate on a spectrum and can change over time. In examining George’s seven factors that favor coercive diplomacy and applying them to these cases, this research reveals four additional factors that ought to be included when addressing the dynamics that contribute to a victim changing their behavior in response to cyber coercion. The difference between a low-level attack (e.g. web defacement) compared with a high-level attack (e.g. paralyzing backbone servers) communicates two vastly different levels of threat to a victim and incurs extremely different costs for the victim. These technical aspects of cyber statecraft and their ramifications for cyber coercion are not covered by George’s earlier works on coercive diplomacy, as few people in the 1990s were even considering cyber as a threat landscape. This research does not provide one generalizable theory of how to conduct cyber coercion; rather, it provides a Utilitarian theory that identifies additional factors that favor cyber coercion and contributes to a conditional generalization. Further, it introduces the idea of examining this change in behavior over time to properly assess the impact of cyber coercion on the totality of the victim’s behavior. Extending the time intervals reveals additional critical data necessary to fully analyze the nature of a cyber coercion dyad. Finally, it provides a hybrid method to attain attribution by fusing social science methodology with cybersecurity techniques. Together, this data and method serve to correct the conventional wisdom on two influential cases; this research traces the process that proves why a correction for each case is warranted; and, it shows how the choices an aggressor makes in its cyber coercive strategy can result in different outcomes for the victims

The grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events

Wetensch. publicatieFaculteit der Lettere

Interactie en oorzakelijkheid: Een Cognitieve Benadering van Causatief-constructies in het Nederlands

Wetensch. publicatieFaculteit der Lettere

Exact Solutions of the Duffin Kemmer Petiau Equation for the Deformed Hulthen Potential

Using the Nikiforov Uvarov method, an application of the relativistic Duffin Kemmer Petiau equation in the presence of a deformed Hulthen potential is presented for spin zero particles. We derived the first order coupled differential radial equations which enable the energy eigenvalues as well as the full wavefunctions to be evaluated by using of the Nikiforov Uvarov method that can be written in terms of the hypergeometric polynomials.Comment: 8 pages. submitted to Physica Script

Exact Solution of Photon Equation in Stationary G\"{o}del-type and G\"{o}del Space-Times

In this work the photon equation (massless Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau equation) is written expilicitly for general type of stationary G\"{o}del space-times and is solved exactly for G\"{o}del-type and G\"{o}del space-times. Harmonic oscillator behaviour of the solutions is discussed and energy spectrum of photon is obtained.Comment: 9 pages,RevTeX, no figure, revised for publicatio

On Equivalence of Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau and Klein-Gordon Equations

A strict proof of equivalence between Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau (DKP) and Klein-Gordon (KG) theories is presented for physical S-matrix elements in the case of charged scalar particles interacting in minimal way with an external or quantized electromagnetic field. First, Hamiltonian canonical approach to DKP theory is developed in both component and matrix form. The theory is then quantized through the construction of the generating functional for Green functions (GF) and the physical matrix elements of S-matrix are proved to be relativistic invariants. The equivalence between both theories is then proved using the connection between GF and the elements of S-matrix, including the case of only many photons states, and for more general conditions - so called reduction formulas of Lehmann, Symanzik, Zimmermann.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, requires macro tcilate

The food additive vanillic acid controls transgene expression in mammalian cells and mice

Trigger-inducible transcription-control devices that reversibly fine-tune transgene expression in response to molecular cues have significantly advanced the rational reprogramming of mammalian cells. When designed for use in future gene- and cell-based therapies the trigger molecules have to be carefully chosen in order to provide maximum specificity, minimal side-effects and optimal pharmacokinetics in a mammalian organism. Capitalizing on control components that enable Caulobacter crescentus to metabolize vanillic acid originating from lignin degradation that occurs in its oligotrophic freshwater habitat, we have designed synthetic devices that specifically adjust transgene expression in mammalian cells when exposed to vanillic acid. Even in mice transgene expression was robust, precise and tunable in response to vanillic acid. As a licensed food additive that is regularly consumed by humans via flavoured convenience food and specific fresh vegetable and fruits, vanillic acid can be considered as a safe trigger molecule that could be used for diet-controlled transgene expression in future gene- and cell-based therapie

Effects due to a scalar coupling on the particle-antiparticle production in the Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau theory

The Duffin-Kemmer-Petiau formalism with vector and scalar potentials is used to point out a few misconceptions diffused in the literature. It is explicitly shown that the scalar coupling makes the DKP formalism not equivalent to the Klein-Gordon formalism or to the Proca formalism, and that the spin-1 sector of the DKP theory looks formally like the spin-0 sector. With proper boundary conditions, scattering of massive bosons in an arbitrary mixed vector-scalar square step potential is explored in a simple way and effects due to the scalar coupling on the particle-antiparticle production and localization of bosons are analyzed in some detail