Large multiplicity fluctuations and saturation effects in onium collisions

This paper studies two related questions in high energy onium-onium scattering: the probability of producing an unusually large number of particles in a collision, where it is found that the cross section for producing a central multiplicity proportional to $k$ should decrease exponentially in $\sqrt{k}$. Secondly, the nature of gluon (dipole) evolution when dipole densities become so high that saturation effects due to dipole-dipole interactions become important: measures of saturation are developed to help understand when saturation becomes important, and further information is obtained by exploiting changes of frame, which interchange unitarity and saturation corrections.Comment: 30 pages LaTeX2e, 11 figures included using epsfig. Compressed postscript of whole paper also available at http://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/theory/papers

The DLLA limit of BFKL in the Dipole Picture

In this work we obtain the DLLA limit of BFKL in the dipole picture and compare it with HERA data. We demonstrate that in leading-logarithmic- approximation, where $\alpha_s$ is fixed, a transition between the BFKL dynamics and the DLLA limit can be obtained in the region of $Q^2 \approx 150 GeV^2$. We compare this result with the DLLA predictions obtained with $\alpha_s$ running. In this case a transition is obtained at low $Q^2$ $(\le 5 GeV^2)$. This demonstrates the importance of the next-to-leading order corrections to the BFKL dynamics. Our conclusion is that the $F_2$ structure function is not the best observable for the determination of the dynamics, since there is great freedom in the choice of the parameters used in both BFKL and DLLA predictions.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, Accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

The European Public(s) and its Problems

I present three versions –Grimm, Offe and Streeck—of a general argument that is often used to establish that the EU-institutions meets a legitimacy-disabling condition, the so called “no demos” argument (II), embedding them in the context of the notorious “democratic deficit” suspicions against the legal system and practice of the EU (I). After examining the logical structure behind the no-demos intuition considered as an argument (III), I present principled reasons by Möllers and Habermas that show why the “no demos” argument fails to have bite in discussions of the legitimacy and status of the supranational level in the multi-level EU-architecture. These are complemented by another principled reason arising from John Dewey’s conception of the “public” as a clearer alternative for the “popular” requirement of democratic legitimation (IV). I conclude that all three conceptions together suggest that the hunt after pre-politically existing peoples as foundations of democratic legitimacy expresses no more than methodological nationalism without any footing in the material and conceptual requirements of democratic legitimation. Given the absence of a principled problem with the legitimacy of the priority and interference of supranational EU-law in the national legal and political orders, there are thus also no principled reasons to abandon or discredit the European project in the absence of a European nation or society