Resilient Reducibility in Nuclear Multifragmentation

The resilience to averaging over an initial energy distribution of reducibility and thermal scaling observed in nuclear multifragmentation is studied. Poissonian reducibility and the associated thermal scaling of the mean are shown to be robust. Binomial reducibility and thermal scaling of the elementary probability are robust under a broad range of conditions. The experimental data do not show any indication of deviation due to averaging.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Do phase transitions survive binomial reducibility and thermal scaling?

First order phase transitions are described in terms of the microcanonical and canonical ensemble, with special attention to finite size effects. Difficulties in interpreting a "caloric curve" are discussed. A robust parameter indicating phase coexistence (univariance) or single phase (bivariance) is extracted for charge distributions.Comment: 10 pages, TeX type, psfig, also available at http://csa5.lbl.gov/moretto/ps/lgm.ps, to appear in the Proceedings of the 1st Catania Relativistic Ion Studies: Critical Phenomena and Collective Observables, Acicastello, May 27-31, 199

Graviton as a Goldstone boson: Nonlinear Sigma Model for Tensor Field Gravity

Spontaneous Lorentz invariance violation (SLIV) realized through a nonlinear tensor field constraint H_{}^2=\pm M^2 (M is the proposed scale for Lorentz violation) is considered in tensor field gravity theory, which mimics linearized general relativity in Minkowski space-time. We show that such a SLIV pattern, due to which the true vacuum in the theory is chosen, induces massless tensor Goldstone modes some of which can naturally be associated with the physical graviton. When expressed in terms of the pure Goldstone modes, this theory looks essentially nonlinear and contains a variety of Lorentz and CPT violating couplings. Nonetheless, all SLIV effects turn out to be strictly cancelled in all the lowest order processes considered, provided that the tensor field gravity theory is properly extended to general relativity (GR). So, as we generally argue, the measurable effects of SLIV, induced by elementary vector or tensor fields, are related to the accompanying gauge symmetry breaking rather than to spontaneous Lorentz violation. The latter appears by itself to be physically unobservable, only resulting in a non-covariant gauge choice in an otherwise gauge invariant and Lorentz invariant theory. However, while Goldstonic vector and tensor field theories with exact local invariance are physically indistinguishable from conventional gauge theories, there might appear some principal distinctions if this local symmetry were slightly broken at very small distances controlled by quantum gravity in an explicit, rather than spontaneous, way that could eventually allow one to differentiate between them observationally.Comment: 15 pages, some minor additions mad

Z-dependent Barriers in Multifragmentation from Poissonian Reducibility and Thermal Scaling

We explore the natural limit of binomial reducibility in nuclear multifragmentation by constructing excitation functions for intermediate mass fragments (IMF) of a given element Z. The resulting multiplicity distributions for each window of transverse energy are Poissonian. Thermal scaling is observed in the linear Arrhenius plots made from the average multiplicity of each element. ``Emission barriers'' are extracted from the slopes of the Arrhenius plots and their possible origin is discussed.Comment: 15 pages including 4 .ps figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Letters. Also available at http://csa5.lbl.gov/moretto

The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way

The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not yet well determined. The keys to understanding this structure are to increase the number of reliable spiral tracers and to determine their distances as accurately as possible. HII regions, giant molecular clouds (GMCs), and 6.7-GHz methanol masers are closely related to high mass star formation, and hence they are excellent spiral tracers. We update the catalogs of Galactic HII regions, GMCs, and 6.7-GHz methanol masers, and then outline the spiral structure of the Milky Way. We collected data for more than 2500 known HII regions, 1300 GMCs, and 900 6.7-GHz methanol masers. If the photometric or trigonometric distance was not yet available, we determined the kinematic distance using a Galaxy rotation curve with the current IAU standard, $R_0$ = 8.5 kpc and $\Theta_0$ = 220 km s$^{-1}$, and the most recent updated values of $R_0$ = 8.3 kpc and $\Theta_0$ = 239 km s$^{-1}$, after we modified the velocities of tracers with the adopted solar motions. With the weight factors based on the excitation parameters of HII regions or the masses of GMCs, we get the distributions of these spiral tracers. The distribution of tracers shows at least four segments of arms in the first Galactic quadrant, and three segments in the fourth quadrant. The Perseus Arm and the Local Arm are also delineated by many bright HII regions. The arm segments traced by massive star forming regions and GMCs are able to match the HI arms in the outer Galaxy. We found that the models of three-arm and four-arm logarithmic spirals are able to connect most spiral tracers. A model of polynomial-logarithmic spirals is also proposed, which not only delineates the tracer distribution, but also matches the observed tangential directions.Comment: 22 Pages, 16 Figures, 7 Tables, updated to match the published versio