Nucleon excited states on the lattice

We study the pion-nucleon system in s-wave in the framework of lattice QCD in order to gain new information on the nucleon excited states. We perform simulations for $n_f =2$ mass degenerate light quarks at a pion mass of 266 MeV. The results show that including the two-particle states drastically changes the energy levels. The variational analysis and the distillation approach play an important role in the extraction of the energy levels. The phase shift analysis allows to extract information on the resonance nature of the observed states.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, talk presented at Excited QCD 2013, Bjelasnica Mountain, Sarajev

Effects of electron coupling to intra- and inter-molecular vibrational modes on the transport properties of single crystal organic semiconductors

Electron coupling to intra- and inter-molecular vibrational modes is investigated in models appropriate to single crystal organic semiconductors, such as oligoacenes. Focus is on spectral and transport properties of these systems beyond perturbative approaches. The interplay between different couplings strongly affects the temperature band renormalization that is the result of a subtle equilibrium between opposite tendencies: band narrowing due to interaction with local modes, band widening due to electron coupling to non local modes. The model provides an accurate description of the mobility as function of temperature: indeed, it has the correct order of magnitude, at low temperatures, it scales as a power-law $T^{-\delta}$ with the exponent $\delta$ larger than unity, and, at high temperatures, shows an hopping behavior with a small activation energy.Comment: 3 Figures, Submitte

Photon-Photon Collisions with SuperChic

The SuperChic Monte Carlo generator provides a common platform for QCD-mediated, photoproduction and photon-induced Central Exclusive Production (CEP), with a fully differential treatment of soft survival effects. In these proceedings we summarise the processes generated, before discussing in more detail those due to photon-photon collisions, paying special attention to the correct treatment of the survival factor. We briefly consider the light-by-light scattering process as an example, before discussing planned extensions and refinements for the generator.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to proceedings of the PHOTON 2017 conferenc

Coherent-feedback quantum control with a dynamic compensator

I present an experimental realization of a coherent-feedback control system that was recently proposed for testing basic principles of linear quantum stochastic control theory [M. R. James, H. I. Nurdin and I. R. Petersen, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (2008), arXiv:quant-ph/0703150v2]. For a dynamical plant consisting of an optical ring-resonator, I demonstrate ~ 7 dB broadband disturbance rejection of injected laser signals via all-optical feedback with a tailored dynamic compensator. Comparison of the results with a transfer function model pinpoints critical parameters that determine the coherent-feedback control system's performance.Comment: 4 pages, 4 EPS figure

Effect of phospholipids and bile acids on cholesterol nucleation time and vesicular/micellar cholesterol in gallbladder bile of patients with cholesterol stones

Supersaturation and rapid nucleation of cholesterol in bile are of key importance in the pathogenesis of cholesterol gallstones. While the effects of bile acids and phospholipids on cholesterol saturation of bile have been extensively studied, their influence on the cholesterol nucleation time has not been compared. We, therefore, investigated whether increases of bile acid or phospholipid concentrations in bile by in vitro supplementation affect the cholesterol nucleation time. Bile samples were obtained at surgery from patients with cholesterol gallstones. Prior to the nucleation assay the bile samples were divided into 0.5-ml aliquots and supplemented with 1.25, 2.5, 5.0, and 10.0 mumol/ml of different phosphatidylcholines (PC-dimyristoyl, PC- dipalmitoyl, PC-distearoyl, and extracted biliary PCs) or with 5.0, 10.0, and 20.0 mumol/ml of bile acids (glycine or taurine conjugates of cholic acid, deoxycholic acid, or chenodeoxycholic acid). The increase of phosphatidylcholine or bile acid concentration decreased the mean cholesterol saturation index to a similar extent (PC: 0.1-0.3; BA: 0.1- 0.2). Supplementations of bile with increasing amounts of synthetic or biliary PCs caused a marked prolongation of the nucleation time in bile from 1.5 +/- 0.2 up to > or = 21 days or 2.5 +/- 0.7 up to > or = 21 days. Concurrently, biliary cholesterol was shifted from vesicles to mixed micelles and the cholesterol/phospholipid ratio of the remaining vesicles was progressively lowered. In contrast, the addition of bile acids to gallbladder bile did not affect the cholesterol nucleation time (2.2 +/- 0.3 days), the percentage of vesicular cholesterol, or the cholesterol/phospholipid ratio of vesicles and micelles

Towards a quantum field theory of primitive string fields

We denote generating functions of massless even higher spin fields "primitive string fields" (PSF's). In an introduction we present the necessary definitions and derive propagators and currents of these PDF's on flat space. Their off-shell cubic interaction can be derived after all off-shell cubic interactions of triplets of higher spin fields have become known [2],[3]. Then we discuss four-point functions of any quartet of PSF's. In subsequent sections we exploit the fact that higher spin field theories in $AdS_{d+1}$ are determined by AdS/CFT correspondence from universality classes of critical systems in $d$ dimensional flat spaces. The O(N) invariant sectors of the O(N) vector models for $1\leq N \leq \infty$ play for us the role of "standard models", for varying $N$, they contain e.g. the Ising model for N=1 and the spherical model for $N=\infty$. A formula for the masses squared that break gauge symmetry for these O(N) classes is presented for d = 3. For the PSF on $AdS$ space it is shown that it can be derived by lifting the PSF on flat space by a simple kernel which contains the sum over all spins. Finally we use an algorithm to derive all symmetric tensor higher spin fields. They arise from monomials of scalar fields by derivation and selection of conformal (quasiprimary) fields. Typically one monomial produces a multiplet of spin $s$ conformal higher spin fields for all $s \geq 4$, they are distinguished by their anomalous dimensions (in $CFT_3$) or by their mass (in $AdS_4$). We sum over these multiplets and the spins to obtain "string type fields", one for each such monomial.Comment: 16 pages,Late

Energy-gap dynamics of superconducting NbN thin films studied by time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy

Using time-domain Terahertz spectroscopy we performed direct studies of the photoinduced suppression and recovery of the superconducting gap in a conventional BCS superconductor NbN. Both processes are found to be strongly temperature and excitation density dependent. The analysis of the data with the established phenomenological Rothwarf-Taylor model enabled us to determine the bare quasiparticle recombination rate, the Cooper pair-breaking rate and the electron-phonon coupling constant, \lambda = 1.1 +/- 0.1, which is in excellent agreement with theoretical estimates.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; final version, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let