The U(1) phase transition on toroidal and spherical lattices

We have studied the properties of the phase transition in the U(1) compact pure gauge model paying special atention to the influence of the topology of the boundary conditions. From the behavior of the energy cumulants and the observation of an effective \nu -> 1/d on toroidal and spherical lattices, we conclude that the transition is first order.Comment: LATTICE98(gauge

Instanton dominance of topological charge fluctuations in QCD?

We consider the local chirality of near-zero eigenvectors from Wilson-Dirac and clover improved Wilson-Dirac lattice operators as proposed recently by Horv\'ath et al. We studied finer lattices and repaired for the loss of orthogonality due to the non-normality of the Wilson-Dirac matrix. As a result we do see a clear double peak structure on lattices with resolutions higher than 0.1 fm. We found that the lattice artifacts can be considerably reduced by exploiting the biorthogonal system of left and right eigenvectors. We conclude that the dominance of instantons on topological charge fluctuations is not ruled out by local chirality measurements.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

The Consequences of Non-Normality

The non-normality of Wilson-type lattice Dirac operators has important consequences - the application of the usual concepts from the textbook (hermitian) quantum mechanics should be reconsidered. This includes an appropriate definition of observables and the refinement of computational tools. We show that the truncated singular value expansion is the optimal approximation to the inverse operator D^{-1} and we prove that due to the gamma_5-hermiticity it is equivalent to gamma_5 times the truncated eigenmode expansion of the hermitian Wilson-Dirac operator

The Quest for Light Sea Quarks: Algorithms for the Future

As part of a systematic algorithm study, we present first results on a performance comparison between a multibosonic algorithm and the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm as employed by the SESAM collaboration. The standard Wilson fermion action is used on 32*16^3 lattices at beta=5.5.Comment: LaTeX, 3 pages, Lattice2001(algorithms

Light hadron spectroscopy in two-flavor QCD with small sea quark masses

We extend the study of the light hadron spectrum and the quark mass in two-flavor QCD to smaller sea quark mass, corresponding to $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.60$--0.35. Numerical simulations are carried out using the RG-improved gauge action and the meanfield-improved clover quark action at $\beta=1.8$ ($a = 0.2$ fm from $\rho$ meson mass). We observe that the light hadron spectrum for small sea quark mass does not follow the expectation from chiral extrapolations with quadratic functions made from the region of $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.80$--0.55. Whereas fits with either polynomial or continuum chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) fails, the Wilson ChPT (WChPT) that includes $a^2$ effects associated with explicit chiral symmetry breaking successfully fits the whole data: In particular, WChPT correctly predicts the light quark mass spectrum from simulations for medium heavy quark mass, such as m_{PS}/m_V \simgt 0.5. Reanalyzing the previous data %at $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.80$--0.55 with the use of WChPT, we find the mean up and down quark mass being smaller than the previous result from quadratic chiral extrapolation by approximately 10%, $m_{ud}^{\bar{\rm MS}}(\mu=2 {GeV}) = 3.11(17)$ [MeV] in the continuum limit.Comment: 33 page

RF-plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition of nitrogen-doped SrTiO3 thin films

Perovskite-type nitrogen substituted SrTiO3 thin films were deposited with a one-step process by RF-plasma assisted pulsed laser deposition from a SrTiO3 target using a N2 plasma, while deposition with a NH3 plasma yields films with almost no incorporated nitrogen. The deposited films exhibit a cubic perovskite-type crystal structure and reveal oriented growth on MgO(100) substrates. The unit cell parameters of the studied N-doped SrTiO3 films range within 3.905<a<3.918Å, which is slightly larger than for SrTiO3 (a=3.905Å). The nitrogen content in the deposited films varies from 0.2 to 0.7atom%. The amount of incorporated nitrogen in the films decreases with increasing RF-power, while the N2 flow rate does not have any pronounced influence on the N content. Nitrogen incorporation results in an increased optical absorption at 400-600nm, which is associated with N(2p) energy states that have a higher energy level than the valence band in strontium titanate. The optical band gap energies in the studied N-doped SrTiO3 films are at 3.2-3.3eV, which is very similar to that of pure strontium titanate (∼3.2eV). Films deposited with NH3 for the RF-plasma exhibit a lower degree of crystallinity and reveal almost no nitrogen incorporation into the crystal lattic

Spectra of heavy-light and heavy-heavy mesons containing charm quarks, including higher spin states for Nf=2+1N_f=2+ 1

We study the spectra of heavy-light and heavy-heavy mesons containing charm quarks, including higher spin states. We use two sets of $N_f = 2 + 1$ gauge configurations, one set from QCDSF using the SLiNC action, and the other configurations from the Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal collaboration, using the HEX smeared clover action. To extract information about the excited states, we choose a suitable basis of operators to implement the variational method.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Talk presented at the XXIX International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Lattice2011, July 11-16, 2011, The Village at Squaw Valley, California, US

One-step preparation of N-doped strontium titanate films by pulsed laser deposition

Perovskite-type oxynitrides exhibit promising electrical and optical properties and can possibly be used in the future as functional materials for electrical, photo-, and electrochemical applications. Continuous heterovalent substitution of oxygen ions by nitrogen ions allows tuning of the desired optical and/or electronic properties to the application specifications. In the present work deposition of SrTiO3:N films by pulsed reactive crossed beam laser ablation was studied in order to examine the influence of different deposition parameters on the film crystallinity and composition. The deposited films exhibit a perovskite-type crystal structure and reveals epitaxial growth on MgO(100) substrates. The unit cell parameters of the deposited SrTiO3:N films range within $3.9\underline{11}<a<3.9\underline{19}$ , which is slightly larger than for polycrystalline SrTiO3 (a=3.905). The studied films reveal an oxygen content in the range of (2.70-2.98)±0.15. The relative N content (vs. O) can be tuned within the range of 1.0-3.0% by adjusting the deposition parameters. The N:O concentration ratio increases with increasing laser fluence and target-to-substrate distances, while the substrate temperature has a more complex influence on the nitrogen concentration. In the range of 580-650°C the [N]/[O] ratio increases while further heating results in a gradual decrease of the N conten

Critical Behaviour of Non-Equilibrium Phase Transitions to Magnetically Ordered States

We describe non-equilibrium phase transitions in arrays of dynamical systems with cubic nonlinearity driven by multiplicative Gaussian white noise. Depending on the sign of the spatial coupling we observe transitions to ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic ordered states. We discuss the phase diagram, the order of the transitions, and the critical behaviour. For global coupling we show analytically that the critical exponent of the magnetization exhibits a transition from the value 1/2 to a non-universal behaviour depending on the ratio of noise strength to the magnitude of the spatial coupling.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Magnetic effects in a holographic Fermi-like liquid

We explore the magnetic properties of the Fermi-like liquid represented by the D3-D7' system. The system exhibits interesting magnetic properties such as ferromagnetism and an anomalous Hall effect, which are due to the Chern-Simons term in the effective gravitational action. We investigate the spectrum of quasi-normal modes in the presence of a magnetic field and show that the magnetic field mitigates the instability towards a striped phase. In addition, we find a critical magnetic field above which the zero sound mode becomes massive.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figure