Dust in Interstellar Clouds, Evolved Stars and Supernovae

Outflows of pre-main-sequence stars drive shocks into molecular material within 0.01 - 1 pc of the young stars. The shock-heated gas emits infrared, millimeter and submillimeter lines of many species including. Dust grains are important charge carriers and play a large role in coupling the magnetic field and flow of neutral gas. Some effects of the dust on the dynamics of oblique shocks began to emerge in the 1990s. However, detailed models of these shocks are required for the calculation of the grain sputtering contribution to gas phase abundances of species producing observed emissions. We are developing such models. Some of the molecular species introduced into the gas phase by sputtering in shocks or by thermally driven desorption in hot cores form on grain surfaces. Recently laboratory studies have begun to contribute to the understanding of surface reactions and thermally driven desorption important for the chemistry of star forming clouds. Dusty plasmas are prevalent in many evolved stars just as well as in star forming regions. Radiation pressure on dust plays a significant role in mass loss from some post-main-sequence stars. The mechanisms leading to the formation of carbonaceous dust in the stellar outflows are similar to those important for soot formation in flames. However, nucleation in oxygen-rich outflows is less well understood and remains a challenging research area. Dust is observed in supernova ejecta that have not passed through the reverse shocks that develop in the interaction of ejecta with ambient media. Dust is detected in high redshift galaxies that are sufficiently young that the only stars that could have produced the dust were so massive that they became supernovae. Consequently, the issue of the survival of dust in strong supernova shocks is of considerable interest.Comment: 4 pages, to be published in the proceedings of Fifth International Conference on Physics of Dusty Plasma

Pyramidal micromirrors for microsystems and atom chips

Concave pyramids are created in the (100) surface of a silicon wafer by anisotropic etching in potassium hydroxide. High quality micromirrors are then formed by sputtering gold onto the smooth silicon (111) faces of the pyramids. These mirrors show great promise as high quality optical devices suitable for integration into micro-optoelectromechanical systems and atom chips. We have shown that structures of this shape can be used to laser-cool and hold atoms in a magneto-optical trap

QED vertex form factors at two loops

We present the closed analytic expression of the form factors of the two-loop QED vertex amplitude for on-shell electrons of finite mass $m$ and arbitrary momentum transfer $S=-Q^2$. The calculation is carried out within the continuous $D$-dimensional regularization scheme, with a single continuous parameter $D$, the dimension of the space-time, which regularizes at the same time UltraViolet (UV) and InfraRed (IR) divergences. The results are expressed in terms of 1-dimensional harmonic polylogarithms of maximum weight 4.Comment: 53 pages, 3 figure

Master Integrals for the 2-loop QCD virtual corrections to the Forward-Backward Asymmetry

We present the Master Integrals needed for the calculation of the two-loop QCD corrections to the forward-backward asymmetry of a quark-antiquark pair produced in electron-positron annihilation events. The abelian diagrams entering in the evaluation of the vector form factors were calculated in a previous paper. We consider here the non-abelian diagrams and the diagrams entering in the computation of the axial form factors, for arbitrary space-like momentum transfer Q^2 and finite heavy quark mass m. Both the UV and IR divergences are regularized in the continuous D-dimensional scheme. The Master Integrals are Laurent-expanded around D=4 and evaluated by the differential equation method; the coefficients of the expansions are expressed as 1-dimensional harmonic polylogarithms of maximum weight 4.Comment: 38 pages, 6 figures, typos corrected, version accepted by Nucl. Phys.

Vertex diagrams for the QED form factors at the 2-loop level

We carry out a systematic investigation of all the 2-loop integrals occurring in the electron vertex in QED in the continuous $D$-dimensional regularization scheme, for on-shell electrons, momentum transfer $t=-Q^2$ and finite squared electron mass $m_e^2=a$. We identify all the Master Integrals (MI's) of the problem and write the differential equations in $Q^2$ which they satisfy. The equations are expanded in powers of $\epsilon = (4-D)/2$ and solved by the Euler's method of the variation of the constants. As a result, we obtain the coefficients of the Laurent expansion in $\epsilon$ of the MI's up to zeroth order expressed in close analytic form in terms of Harmonic Polylogarithms.Comment: A few misprints have been corrected. The results are now available at http://pheno.physik.uni-freiburg.de/~bhabha, as FORM input file

The Active Traveling Wave in the Cochlea

A sound stimulus entering the inner ear excites a deformation of the basilar membrane which travels along the cochlea towards the apex. It is well established that this wave-like disturbance is amplified by an active system. Recently, it has been proposed that the active system consists of a set of self-tuned critical oscillators which automatically operate at an oscillatory instability. Here, we show how the concepts of a traveling wave and of self-tuned critical oscillators can be combined to describe the nonlinear wave in the cochlea.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

QCD Sum Rule Calculation of Twist-3 Contributions to Polarized Nucleon Structure Functions

Using the framework of QCD sum rules we predict the twist-3 contribution to the second moment of the polarized nucleon structure function $g_2(x)$. As the relevant local operator depends explicitely on the gluon field, we employ a recently studied interpolating nucleon current which contains three quark field and one gluon field operator. Despite the fact that our calculation is based on the analysis of a completely different correlation function, our estimates are consitent with those of Balitsky, Braun and Kolesnichenko who used a three-quark current.Comment: 16pp. , 2 figures (uuencoded eps-files), LateX. Some misprints corrected, results unchange

Bed Material Sampling Error in Sand Bed Rivers

A total of 468 bed material samples were collected at cross sections of the sand bed of the South Saskatchewan River at Saskatoon to assess the random and systematic errors in the results from four commonly used samplers. Statistically significant differences in particle size distribution occur between the results obtained from different samplers at the same location, in part due to variability in retention of the small particles. The differences are greatest in silty sand and least in well-sorted, medium sand. The precision of results from repetitive samples at the same location using the same sampler depends on both the sampler and the composition of the bed material. Except in well-sorted, medium sand, a single sample at a vertical is inadequate to determine the particle size of a given size fraction to within 10% with a probability of error of 0.1. In some cases 10 or more samples may be required. The magnitude of these statistical errors at a given location is generally less than the within-reach variability in bed material particle size, and therefore the appropriate choice of sample location is critical

Decays of Scalar and Pseudoscalar Higgs Bosons into Fermions: Two-loop QCD Corrections to the Higgs-Quark-Antiquark Amplitude

As a first step in the aim of arriving at a differential description of neutral Higgs boson decays into heavy quarks, $h \to Q {\bar Q}X$, to second order in the QCD coupling $\alpha_S$, we have computed the $hQ{\bar Q}$ amplitude at the two-loop level in QCD for a general neutral Higgs boson which has both scalar and pseudoscalar couplings to quarks. This amplitude is given in terms of a scalar and a pseudoscalar vertex form factor, for which we present closed analytic expressions in terms of one-dimensional harmonic polylogarithms of maximum weight 4. The results hold for arbitrary four-momentum squared, $q^2$, of the Higgs boson and of the heavy quark mass, $m$. Moreover we derive the approximate expressions of these form factors near threshold and in the asymptotic regime $m^2/q^2 \ll 1$.Comment: 56 pages, 2 figure