Dipoles in thin sheets

A flat elastic sheet may contain pointlike conical singularities that carry a metrical "charge" of Gaussian curvature. Adding such elementary defects to a sheet allows one to make many shapes, in a manner broadly analogous to the familiar multipole construction in electrostatics. However, here the underlying field theory is non-linear, and superposition of intrinsic defects is non-trivial as it must respect the immersion of the resulting surface in three dimensions. We consider a "charge-neutral" dipole composed of two conical singularities of opposite sign. Unlike the relatively simple electrostatic case, here there are two distinct stable minima and an infinity of unstable equilibria. We determine the shapes of the minima and evaluate their energies in the thin-sheet regime where bending dominates over stretching. Our predictions are in surprisingly good agreement with experiments on paper sheets.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Physics at Low x

The QCD expectations concerning the deep inelastic lepton - hadron scattering at low $x$ and their phenomenological implications for HERA are summarised. Theoretical predictions for the structure function $F_2(x,Q^2)$ based on the leading log$1/x$ resummation are presented and compared with the results obtained from the Altarelli-Parisi equations. Theoretical predictions are confronted with the recent data from HERA. The role of studying the final states in deep inelastic scattering for revealing the dynamics at low $x$ is emphasised and some dedicated measurements like deep inelastic plus jet events, transverse energy flow and dijet production in deep inelastic scattering are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, review talk presented at the Workshop "QCD94", 7-13 July 1994, Montpellier, France (to appear in the Proceedings of the Workshop), Krak\'ow INP report N0 1681/PH, hard copies of the figures available on request from the author at [email protected]

Fusion of aerial images and sensor data from a ground vehicle for improved semantic mapping

This work investigates the use of semantic information to link ground level occupancy maps and aerial images. A ground level semantic map, which shows open ground and indicates the probability of cells being occupied by walls of buildings, is obtained by a mobile robot equipped with an omnidirectional camera, GPS and a laser range finder. This semantic information is used for local and global segmentation of an aerial image. The result is a map where the semantic information has been extended beyond the range of the robot sensors and predicts where the mobile robot can find buildings and potentially driveable ground

Deep inelastic events containing a forward photon as a probe of small xx dynamics

We calculate the rate of producing deep inelastic events containing an energetic isolated forward photon at HERA. We quantify the enhancement arising from the leading $\log 1/x$ gluon emissions with a view to using such events to identify the underlying dynamics.Comment: 11 pages, Latex, 7 ps figure

Azimuthal decorrelation of forward and backward jets at the Tevatron

We analyse the azimuthal decorrelation of Mueller-Navelet dijets produced in the collisions at Tevatron energies using a BFKL framework which incorporates dominant subleading effects. We show that these effects significantly reduce the decorrelation yet they are still insufficient to give satisfactory description of experimental data. However a good description of the data is obtained after incorporating within formalism the effective rapidity defined by Del Duca and Schmidt.Comment: 1+9 pages, 6 eps figures; the final version to appear in Phys. Lett. B; one reference added, the use of effective rapidity and the need for BFKL resummmation for small azimuthal angles better motivate

Gluon shadowing in the low x region probed by the LHC

Starting from an unintegrated gluon distribution which satisfies a `unified' equation which embodies both BFKL and DGLAP behaviour, we compute the shadowing corrections to the integrated gluon in the small x domain that will be accessible at the LHC. The corrections are calculated via the Korchegov equation, which incorporates the leading ln(1/x) triple-Pomeron vertex, and are approximately resummed using a simple Pade technique. We find that the shadowing corrections to xg(x,Q^2) are rather small in the HERA domain, but lead to a factor of 2 suppression in the region x \sim 10^-6, Q^2 \sim 4 GeV^2 accessible to experiments at the LHC.Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages including 1 figure, second version with extra comments and references, accepted by Physics Letters

On dynamically generated parton distribution functions and their properties

The idea of ``dynamically'' generated parton distribution functions, based on regular initial conditions at low momentum scale, is reanalyzed with particular emphasize paid to its compatibility with the factorization mechanism. Basic consequences of this approach are discussed and compared to those of the conventional approach, employing singular initial distribution functions.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, 5 figures in PS format attache

Small optic suspensions for Advanced LIGO input optics and other precision optical experiments

We report on the design and performance of small optic suspensions developed to suppress seismic motion of out-of-cavity optics in the Input Optics subsystem of the Advanced LIGO interferometric gravitational wave detector. These compact single stage suspensions provide isolation in all six degrees of freedom of the optic, local sensing and actuation in three of them, and passive damping for the other three

Unitarization of the BFKL Pomeron on a Nucleus

We analyze the evolution equation describing all multiple hard pomeron exchanges in a hadronic or nuclear structure functions that was proposed earlier. We construct a perturbation series providing us with an exact solution to the equation outside of the saturation region. The series demonstrates how at moderately high energies the corrections to the single BFKL pomeron exchange contribution which are due to the multiple pomeron exchanges start unitarizing total deep inelastic scattering cross section. We show that as energy increases the scattering cross section of the quark-antiquark pair of a fixed transverse separation on a hadron or nucleus given by the solution of our equation inside of the saturation region unitarizes and becomes independent of energy. The corresponding F_2 structure function also unitarizes and becomes linearly proportional to ln s. We also discuss possible applications of the developed technique to diffraction.Comment: REVTeX, 20 pages, 6 figure

A terrestrial search for dark contents of the vacuum, such as dark energy, using atom interferometry

We describe the theory and first experimental work on our concept for searching on earth for the presence of dark content of the vacuum (DCV) using atom interferometry. Specifically, we have in mind any DCV that has not yet been detected on a laboratory scale, but might manifest itself as dark energy on the cosmological scale. The experimental method uses two atom interferometers to cancel the effect of earth's gravity and diverse noise sources. It depends upon two assumptions: first, that the DCV possesses some space inhomogeneity in density, and second that it exerts a sufficiently strong non-gravitational force on matter. The motion of the apparatus through the DCV should then lead to an irregular variation in the detected matter-wave phase shift. We discuss the nature of this signal and note the problem of distinguishing it from instrumental noise. We also discuss the relation of our experiment to what might be learned by studying the noise in gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO.The paper concludes with a projection that a future search of this nature might be carried out using an atom interferometer in an orbiting satellite. The apparatus is now being constructed