Exact Markovian kinetic equation for a quantum Brownian oscillator

We derive an exact Markovian kinetic equation for an oscillator linearly coupled to a heat bath, describing quantum Brownian motion. Our work is based on the subdynamics formulation developed by Prigogine and collaborators. The space of distribution functions is decomposed into independent subspaces that remain invariant under Liouville dynamics. For integrable systems in Poincar\'e's sense the invariant subspaces follow the dynamics of uncoupled, renormalized particles. In contrast for non-integrable systems, the invariant subspaces follow a dynamics with broken-time symmetry, involving generalized functions. This result indicates that irreversibility and stochasticity are exact properties of dynamics in generalized function spaces. We comment on the relation between our Markovian kinetic equation and the Hu-Paz-Zhang equation.Comment: A few typos in the published version are correcte

The NN scattering 3S1-3D1 mixing angle at NNLO

The 3S1-3D1 mixing angle for nucleon-nucleon scattering, epsilon_1, is calculated to next-to-next-to-leading order in an effective field theory with perturbative pions. Without pions, the low energy theory fits the observed epsilon_1 well for momenta less than $\sim 50$ MeV. Including pions perturbatively significantly improves the agreement with data for momenta up to $\sim 150$ MeV with one less parameter. Furthermore, for these momenta the accuracy of our calculation is similar to an effective field theory calculation in which the pion is treated non-perturbatively. This gives phenomenological support for a perturbative treatment of pions in low energy two-nucleon processes. We explain why it is necessary to perform spin and isospin traces in d dimensions when regulating divergences with dimensional regularization in higher partial wave amplitudes.Comment: 17 pages, journal versio

Molecular Mechanisms of Proteinuria in Minimal Change Disease

Minimal change disease (MCD) is the most common type of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome in childhood and represents about 15% cases in adults. It is characterized by massive proteinuria, edema, hypoalbuminemia, and podocyte foot process effacement on electron microscopy. Clinical and experimental studies have shown an association between MCD and immune dysregulation. Given the lack of inflammatory changes or immunocomplex deposits in the kidney tissue, MCD has been traditionally thought to be mediated by an unknown circulating factor(s), probably released by T cells that directly target podocytes leading to podocyte ultrastructural changes and proteinuria. Not surprisingly, research efforts have focused on the role of T cells and podocytes in the disease process. Nevertheless, the pathogenesis of the disease remains a mystery. More recently, B cells have been postulated as an important player in the disease either by activating T cells or by releasing circulating autoantibodies against podocyte targets. There are also few reports of endothelial injury in MCD, but whether glomerular endothelial cells play a role in the disease remains unexplored. Genome-wide association studies are providing insights into the genetic susceptibility to develop the disease and found a link between MCD and certain human haplotype antigen variants. Altogether, these findings emphasize the complex interplay between the immune system, glomerular cells, and the genome, raising the possibility of distinct underlying triggers and/or mechanisms of proteinuria among patients with MCD. The heterogeneity of the disease and the lack of good animal models of MCD remain major obstacles in the understanding of MCD. In this study, we will review the most relevant candidate mediators and mechanisms of proteinuria involved in MCD and the current models of MCD-like injury

Charge-Dependence of the Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction

Based upon the Bonn meson-exchange-model for the nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interaction, we calculate the charge-independence breaking (CIB) of the $NN$ interaction due to pion-mass splitting. Besides the one-pion-exchange (OPE), we take into account the $2\pi$-exchange model and contributions from three and four irreducible pion exchanges. We calculate the CIB differences in the $^1S_0$ effective range parameters as well as phase shift differences for partial waves up to total angular momentum J=4 and laboratory energies below 300 MeV. We find that the CIB effect from OPE dominates in all partial waves. However, the CIB effects from the $2\pi$ model are noticable up to D-waves and amount to about 40% of the OPE CIB-contribution in some partial waves, at 300 MeV. The effects from 3$\pi$ and 4$\pi$ contributions are negligible except in $^1S_0$ and $^3P_2$.Comment: 12 pages, RevTex, 14 figure

Low Energy Theorems For Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering

Low energy theorems are derived for the coefficients of the effective range expansion in s-wave nucleon-nucleon scattering valid to leading order in an expansion in which both $m_\pi$ and $1/a$ (where $a$ is the scattering length) are treated as small mass scales. Comparisons with phase shift data, however, reveal a pattern of gross violations of the theorems for all coefficients in both the $^1S_0$ and $^3S_1$ channels. Analogous theorems are developed for the energy dependence $\epsilon$ parameter which describes $^3S_1 - ^3D_1$ mixing. These theorems are also violated. These failures strongly suggest that the physical value of $m_\pi$ is too large for the chiral expansion to be valid in this context. Comparisons of $m_\pi$ with phenomenological scales known to arise in the two-nucleon problem support this conjecture.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; appendix added to discuss behavior in chiral limit; minor revisions including revised figure reference to recent work adde

Charge-Asymmetry of the Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction

Based upon the Bonn meson-exchange model for the nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) interaction, we study systematically the charge-symmetry-breaking (CSB) of the $NN$ interaction due to nucleon mass splitting. Particular attention is payed to CSB generated by the $2\pi$-exchange contribution to the $NN$ interaction, $\pi\rho$ diagrams, and other multi-meson-exchanges. We calculate the CSB differences in the $^1S_0$ effective range parameters as well as phase shift differences in $S$, $P$ and higher partial waves up to 300 MeV lab. energy. We find a total CSB difference in the singlet scattering length of 1.6 fm which explains the empirical value accurately. The corresponding CSB phase-shift differences are appreciable at low energy in the $^1S_0$ state. In the other partial waves, the CSB splitting of the phase shifts is small and increases with energy, with typical values in the order of 0.1 deg at 300 MeV in $P$ and $D$ waves.Comment: 11 pages, RevTex, 14 figure

Exhaustive and Efficient Constraint Propagation: A Semi-Supervised Learning Perspective and Its Applications

This paper presents a novel pairwise constraint propagation approach by decomposing the challenging constraint propagation problem into a set of independent semi-supervised learning subproblems which can be solved in quadratic time using label propagation based on k-nearest neighbor graphs. Considering that this time cost is proportional to the number of all possible pairwise constraints, our approach actually provides an efficient solution for exhaustively propagating pairwise constraints throughout the entire dataset. The resulting exhaustive set of propagated pairwise constraints are further used to adjust the similarity matrix for constrained spectral clustering. Other than the traditional constraint propagation on single-source data, our approach is also extended to more challenging constraint propagation on multi-source data where each pairwise constraint is defined over a pair of data points from different sources. This multi-source constraint propagation has an important application to cross-modal multimedia retrieval. Extensive results have shown the superior performance of our approach.Comment: The short version of this paper appears as oral paper in ECCV 201

Four-nucleon contact interactions from holographic QCD

We calculate the low energy constants of four-nucleon interactions in an effective chiral Lagrangian in holographic QCD. We start with a D4-D8 model to obtain meson-nucleon interactions and then integrate out massive mesons to obtain the four-nucleon interactions in 4D. We end up with two low energy constants at the leading order and seven of them at the next leading order, which is consistent with the effective chiral Lagrangian. The values of the low energy constants are evaluated with the first five Kaluza-Klein resonances.Comment: 28 page

QED on Curved Background and on Manifolds with Boundaries: Unitarity versus Covariance

Some recent results show that the covariant path integral and the integral over physical degrees of freedom give contradicting results on curved background and on manifolds with boundaries. This looks like a conflict between unitarity and covariance. We argue that this effect is due to the use of non-covariant measure on the space of physical degrees of freedom. Starting with the reduced phase space path integral and using covariant measure throughout computations we recover standard path integral in the Lorentz gauge and the Moss and Poletti BRST-invariant boundary conditions. We also demonstrate by direct calculations that in the approach based on Gaussian path integral on the space of physical degrees of freedom some basic symmetries are broken.Comment: 29 pages, LaTEX, no figure

Power Counting in Dimensionally Regularized NRQCD

We present a scheme for calculating in NRQCD with consistent power counting in the heavy quark velocity v. As an example, we perform the systematic matching of an external current onto NRQCD at subleading order in v, a calculation relevant for the process e^+e^- -> hadrons near threshold. Consistent velocity power counting in dimensional regularization is achieved by including two distinct gluon fields, one corresponding to gluon radiation and one corresponding to an instantaneous potential. In this scheme power counting is manifest in any gauge, and also holds for non-gauge interactions. The matching conditions for an external vector current in NRQCD are calculated to O(g^2 v^2) and the cancellation of infrared divergences in the matching conditions is shown to require both gluon fields. Some subtleties arising in the matching conditions at subleading order are addressed.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, revte