Ways of Living: An Ethical Realism in the Prose of Gottfried Keller

My dissertation, Ways of Living: An Ethical Realism in the Prose of Gottfried Keller, takes as its focus the extensive discourse in mid-nineteenth century German letters on what constitutes a properly “realist” work of literature. My study examines three major works by Gottfried Keller: Der grüne Heinrich, the Leute von Seldwyla cycle, and the political satire Martin Salander. I consider these prose works as a response firstly to the call by critics like Julian Schmidt and Gustav Freytag for a return to das Reale, as they called it, and secondly to the contemporaneous developments in the French and English novel. Keller, I argue, is less interested in offering a comprehensive social portrait of his native Switzerland than he is in exploring contrasting ethics, or modes of disposition towards the world: resentment and affirmation, parsimoniousness and wastefulness, sensuality and renunciation. To this end, Keller uses the familiar structures of Realist prose, like the construction of characters as types, the extensive description of physical objects, or the use of narrative topoi like the marriage plot, to dramatize conflicts between various Lebensarten: self-sacrifice in service of an unattainable ideal or fleeting happiness in the here and now, for example. For Keller, then, the “objectivity” championed by the Realists is above all a way of directing the reader’s attention towards the crises of value underpinning the most unremarkable of people and the most mundane of occupations. In Keller’s prose, I conclude, Realism is less an aesthetic program than a way of comporting oneself, a survival mechanism by means of which the hard truths of life, above all the vanity of human endeavor and the painful renunciations demanded by the world of work, are poeticized in order to make them bearable

Framework for Identification of Neutral B Mesons

We introduce a method for the study of CP-violating asymmetries in tagged states of neutral $B$ mesons with arbitrary coherence properties. A set of time-dependent measurements is identified which completely specifies the density matrix of the initial state in a two-component space with basis vectors $B^0$ and $\overline B^0$, and permits a determination of phases in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. For a given tagging configuration, the measurement of decays both to flavor eigenstates and to CP eigenstates provides the necessary information.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Letters. 8 pages, LaTeX, Technion-PH-93-31 / EFI 93-3

U-Spin Symmetry in Doubly Cabibbo-Suppressed Charmed Meson Decays

We prove a U-spin amplitude triangle relation among doubly Cabibbo-suppressed (DCS) charmed meson decays, $D^0\to K^+\pi^-, D^0 \to K^0\pi^0$ and $D^+_s \to K^0 K^+$, congruent to an isospin relation among corresponding Cabibbo-favored (CF) decays. U-spin breaking in relative phases between CF and DCS amplitudes affects time-dependent studies of D^0-\od mixing. Comparison of final state phase patterns in DCS and CF amplitude triangles, which can shed some light on these phases, is carried out in a phenomenological framework incorporating resonance contributions.Comment: Two references updated, to appear in Phys. Lett.

Correlated Wave Packet treatment of Neutrino and Neutral Meson Oscillations

A quantum wave packet treatment of neutrino and neutral K and B meson oscillations is presented which incorporates the recoil particle in the production process, and includes the effect of the localization and lifetime of the source assumed to be a resonance or unstable particle. This approach removes the ambiguities in the conventional single particle treatment of these oscillations with the recoil particle. A fundamental connection between the stochastic decay time of the source and the space-time coordinates of the correlated final state particles is derived.Comment: 13 page

Precision Tests of Flavor and CP violation in B Decays

Isospin and flavor SU(3) set stringent bounds on penguin pollution in $B^0(t)\to \rho^+\rho^-$, providing a theoretically precise determination of $\alpha\equiv \phi_2$, $\alpha = (91\pm 7_{\rm exp}\pm 3_{\rm th})^\circ$. Isospin breaking in a sum rule for $B\to K\pi$ rates is shown to be suppressed. A similar sum rule holds for CP asymmetries in $B\to K\pi$. Violation of these sum rules would be evidence for an anomalous $\Delta I=1$ piece in ${\cal H}_{\rm eff}$.Comment: Reference added; Invited talk presented at the First Workshop on Theory, Phenomenology and Experiments in Heavy Flavor Physics, Anacapri, Italy, 29-31 200

Suppression of flavor symmetry breaking in B decay sum rules

While flavor symmetries are useful for studying hadronic B decays, symmetry relations for amplitudes and decay rates are usually violated by first order symmetry breaking corrections. We point out two cases in which first order symmetry breaking is suppressed by a small ratio of amplitudes: (1) An isospin sum rule for four $B\to K\pi$ decays, where isospin breaking is shown to be negligible. (2) An SU(3) sum rule for pairs of $B\to K\pi$ and $B\to K\eta_8$, generalized to pairs of $B\to K\pi, B\to K\eta$ and $B\to K\eta'$.Comment: 11 pages, small corrections, one reference added, submitted to Physics Letters

Large Penguin effects in the CP Asymmetry of B0d ->pi+pi-

Penguin effects in the CP asymmetries of $B^0_d\rightarrow \pi^+\pi^-$ , \bd\rightarrow\rho^{\pm}\pi^{\mp} and \bd\rightarrow a^{\pm}_1 \pi^{\mp} are studied as function of the CKM unitarity triangle $\alpha$. Despite a fairly small penguin amplitude, it leads to quite sizable uncertainties in the determination of $\sin(2\alpha)$ from all but very large asymmetries. This effect is maximal for vanishing final state interaction phases, for which it can cause, for instance, an asymmetry of 40\%\ if $\alpha=\pi/2$.Comment: (14 pages, PHYZZX, 1 figure, available upon request), SLAC-PUB-591

Novel Borna Virus in Psittacine Birds with Proventricular Dilatation Disease

Pyrosequencing of cDNA from brains of parrots with proventricular dilatation disease (PDD), an unexplained fatal inflammatory central, autonomic, and peripheral nervous system disease, showed 2 strains of a novel Borna virus. Real-time PCR confirmed virus presence in brain, proventriculus, and adrenal gland of 3 birds with PDD but not in 4 unaffected birds

Implications of a J^PC exotic

Recent experimental data from BNL on the isovector J^PC =1^-+ exotic at 1.6 GeV in \rho\pi indicate the existence of a non-quarkonium state consistent with lattice gauge theory predictions. We discuss how further experiments can strengthen this conclusion. We show that the \rho\pi, \eta'\pi and \eta\pi couplings of this state qualitatively support the hypothesis that it is a hybrid meson, although other interpretations cannot be eliminated.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, minor numerical correction