QCD Interactions of Heavy Mesons with Pions by Light-Cone Sum Rules

Light-cone QCD sum rules are employed to compute the strong coupling constants: g_{B^* B^* pi}, g_{B_1 B_0 pi} and g_{B_1 B^* pi}, where (B,B^*) and (B_0,B_1) are negative and positive parity (0^-,1^-) and (0^+,1^+) \bar qQ doublets. The couplings are calculated both for finite values of the heavy quark mass and in the infinite heavy quark mass limit, deriving sum rules for m_Q \to \infty.Comment: Latex, 23 pages, 6 figures. Revised version to appear in Z. Phys.

A City-Scale ITS-G5 Network for Next-Generation Intelligent Transportation Systems: Design Insights and Challenges

As we move towards autonomous vehicles, a reliable Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication framework becomes of paramount importance. In this paper we present the development and the performance evaluation of a real-world vehicular networking testbed. Our testbed, deployed in the heart of the City of Bristol, UK, is able to exchange sensor data in a V2X manner. We will describe the testbed architecture and its operational modes. Then, we will provide some insight pertaining the firmware operating on the network devices. The system performance has been evaluated under a series of large-scale field trials, which have proven how our solution represents a low-cost high-quality framework for V2X communications. Our system managed to achieve high packet delivery ratios under different scenarios (urban, rural, highway) and for different locations around the city. We have also identified the instability of the packet transmission rate while using single-core devices, and we present some future directions that will address that.Comment: Accepted for publication to AdHoc-Now 201

Interest Rate Co-movements, Global Factors and the Long End of the Term Spread

The disconnect between rising short and low long interest rates has been a distinctive feature of the 2000s. Both research and policy circles have argued that international forces, such as global monetary policy (e.g. Rogoff, 2006); international business cycles (e.g. Borio and Filardo, 2007); or a global savings glut (e.g Bernanke, 2005) may be responsible. In this paper, we employ recent advances in panel data econometrics to document the disconnect and link it explicitly to the existence of a global latent factor that dominates the long end of the term spread for the recent period; the saving glut story emerges as the most likely contender for the global factor.Short and Long Interest Rates, Financial Globalization, Panel Data, Factor Models

The Global Side of the Investments-Savings Puzzle

In this paper we re-examine the long standing and puzzling correlation between national savings and investment in industrial countries. We apply an econometric methodology that allows us to separate idiosyncratic correlation at the country level from correlation at the global level. In a major break with the existing literature, we find no evidence of a long run relationship in the idiosyncratic components of savings and investment. We also find that the global components in savings and investments commove, indicating that they react to shocks of a global nature.Savings, Investment, Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle, Panel Nonstationarity, Principal Components.

Puzzles in charm spectroscopy

We briefly analyze aspects of open and hidden charm resonances, discussing in particular the mesons $D_{sJ}(2860)$ and X(3872).Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Invited talk given at the YKIS Seminar on New Frontiers in QCD: Exotic Hadrons and Hadronic Matter, Kyoto, Japan, 20 Nov. - 8 Dec. 200

On thermalization of a boost-invariant non Abelian plasma

Using a holographic method, we further investigate the relaxation towards the hydrodynamic regime of a boost-invariant non-Abelian plasma taken out-of-equilibrium. In the dual description, the system is driven out-of-equilibrium by boundary sourcing, a deformation of the boundary metric, as proposed by Chesler and Yaffe. The effects of several deformation profiles on the bulk geometry are investigated by the analysis of the corresponding solutions of the Einstein equations. The time of restoration of the hydrodynamic regime is investigated: setting the effective temperature of the system at the end of the boundary quenching to $T_{eff}(\tau^*)=500$ MeV, the hydrodynamic regime is reached after a lapse of time of ${\cal O}$(1 fm/c).Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures. Improved numerical analysis, one more appendix, two new figures. To appear in JHE