The Use of the Scattering Phase Shift in Resonance Physics

The scattering phase shift encodes a good amount of physical information which can be used to study resonances from scattering data. Among others, it can be used to calculate the continuum density of states and the collision time in a resonant process. Whereas the first information can be employed to examine the evolution of unstable states directly from scattering data, the second one serves as a tool to detect resonances and their properties. We demonstrate both methods concentrating in the latter case on 'exotic' resonances in pi-pi and pi-K scattering.Comment: Talk given at the International Workshop PENTAQUARK04, July 20-23 at Spring-8, Japan (new references added

Faraday's law in the presence of magnetic monopoles

We show that if we consider the full statement of Faraday's law for a closed physical circuit, the standard Maxwell's equations in the presence of electric and magnetic charges have to include in their integral form a mixed term of the form $\rho_m {\bf v}_e^{\perp}$ where $\rho_m$ is the magnetic charge density and ${\bf v}_e^{\perp}$ the perpendicular component of the velocity ${\bf v}_e$ of the electric charge.Comment: 9 page

Pentaquark Resonances from Collision Times

Having successfully explored the existing relations between the S-matrix and collision times in scattering reactions to study the conventional baryon and meson resonances, the method is now extended to the exotic sector. To be specific, the collision time in various partial waves of K+ N elastic scattering is evaluated using phase shifts extracted from the K+ N --> K+ N data as well as from model dependent T-matrix solutions. We find several pentaquark resonances including some low-lying ones around 1.5 to 1.6 GeV in the P_01, P_03 and D_03 partial waves of K+ N elastic scattering.Comment: Talk given at the International Workshop PENTAQUARK04, July 20-23 at Spring-8, Japa

Extraction of the proton charge radius from experiments

Static properties of hadrons such as their radii and other moments of the electric and magnetic distributions can only be extracted using theoretical methods and not directly measured from experiments. As a result, discrepancies between the extracted values from different precision measurements can exist. The proton charge radius, $r_p$, which is either extracted from electron proton elastic scattering data or from hydrogen atom spectroscopy seems to be no exception. The value $r_p = 0.84087(39)$ fm extracted from muonic hydrogen spectroscopy is about 4% smaller than that obtained from electron proton scattering or standard hydrogen spectroscopy. The resolution of this so called proton radius puzzle has been attempted in many different ways over the past six years. The present article reviews these attempts with a focus on the methods of extracting the radius.Comment: Mini review, 14 pages, 1 figur

Scales Set by the Cosmological Constant

The cosmological constant sets certain scales important in cosmology. We show that Lambda in conjunction with other parameters like the Schwarzschild radius leads to scales relevant not only for cosmological but also for astrophysical applications. Of special interest is the extension of orbits and velocity of test particles traveling over Mpc distances. We will show that there exists a lower and an upper cut-off on the possible velocities of test particles. For a test body moving in a central gravitational field Lambda enforces a maximal value of the angular momentum if we insist on bound orbits of the test body which move at a distance larger than the Schwarzschild radius.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; one reference adde