Reionization by Hard Photons: I. X-rays from the First Star Clusters

Observations of the Ly-alpha forest at z~3 reveal an average metallicity Z~0.01 Z_solar. The high-redshift supernovae that polluted the IGM also accelerated relativistic electrons. Since the energy density of the CMB scales as (1+z)^4, at high redshift these electrons cool via inverse Compton scattering. Thus, the first star clusters emit X-rays. Unlike stellar UV ionizing photons, these X-rays can escape easily from their host galaxies. This has a number of important physical consequences: (i) Due to their large mean free path, these X-rays can quickly establish a universal ionizing background and partially reionize the universe in a gradual, homogeneous fashion. If X-rays formed the dominant ionizing background, the universe would have more closely resembled a single-phase medium, rather than a two-phase medium. (ii) X-rays can reheat the universe to higher temperatures than possible with UV radiation. (iii) X-rays counter the tendency of UV radiation to photo-dissociate H2, an important coolant in the early universe, by promoting gas phase H2 formation. The X-ray production efficiency is calibrated to local observations of starburst galaxies, which imply that ~10% of the supernova energy is converted to X-rays. While direct detection of sources in X-ray emission is difficult, the presence of relativistic electrons at high redshift and thus a minimal level of X-ray emission may be inferred by synchrotron emission observations with the Square Kilometer Array. These sources may constitute a significant fraction of the unresolved hard X-ray background, and can account for both the shape and amplitude of the gamma-ray background. This paper discusses the existence and observability of high-redshift X-ray sources, while a companion paper models the detailed reionization physics and chemistry.Comment: Final version accepted by ApJ. 32 pages, 3 figure

Polarization enhancement in d⃗(p⃗\vec{d}(\vec{p},2^2He)n reaction: Nuclear teleportation

I show that an experimental technique used in nuclear physics may be successfully applied to quantum teleportation (QT) of spin states of massive matter. A new non-local physical effect the `quantum-teleportation-effect' is discovered for the nuclear polarization measurement. Enhancement of the neutron polarization is expected in the proposed experiment for QT that discriminates {\it only} one of the Bell states.Comment: 3 pages, accepted for publication in J. Phys.

K*{\Lambda}(1116) photoproduction and nucleon resonances

In this presentation, we report our recent studies on the $K^*\Lambda(1116)$ photoproduction off the proton target, using the tree-level Born approximation, via the effective Lagrangian approach. In addition, we include the nine (three- or four-star confirmed) nucleon resonances below the threshold $\sqrt{s}_\mathrm{th}\approx2008$ MeV, to interpret the discrepancy between the experiment and previous theoretical studies, in the vicinity of the threshold region. From the numerical studies, we observe that the $S_{11}(1535)$ and $S_{11}(1650)$ play an important role for the cross-section enhancement near the $\sqrt{s}_\mathrm{th}$. It also turns out that, in order to reproduce the data, we have the vector coupling constants $g_{K^*S_{11}(1535)\Lambda}=(7.0\sim9.0)$ and $g_{K^*S_{11}(1650)\Lambda}=(5.0\sim6.0)$.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, talk given at International Conference on the structure of baryons, BARYONS'10, Dec. 7-11, 2010, Osaka, Japa

Determination of the CP Phase γ\gamma with Possibility of New Physics

We propose a new method to extract the CP violating weak phase $\gamma$ in the CKM paradigm of the Standard Model, using $B^- \to D^0 \pi^- \to f \pi^-$ and $B^- \to \bar D^0 \pi^- \to f \pi^-$ decays, where $f$ are final states such as $K^+ \pi^-$, $K^+ \rho^-$, $K \pi\pi$, {\it etc.} We also study the experimental feasibility of our new method. With possibility of new phases in the CKM matrix, we re-examine some of the previously proposed methods to determine $\gamma$, and find that it would be in principle possible to identify $\gamma$ and a new phase angle $\theta$ separately.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX; Using two-column style file (ltwol.sty); To be published in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on B Physics and CP Violation, Ise-Shima, Japan, February 18 - 23, 200