837 research outputs found
Virtual learning environments in action
In this workshop Paul and Patricia demonstrated the webcast lectures developed at Glasgow Graduate School of Law as part of a learning environment where students can take control of their own learning experience. They outlined the practical benefits of such a learning environment for both professional and undergraduate legal education, and discussed the theoretical implications of this approach for the pedagogy of legal education
Electromagnetic Deflection of Spinning Particles
We show that it is possible to obtain self-consistent and physically
acceptable relativistic classical equations of motion for a point-like
spin-half particle possessing an electric charge and a magnetic dipole moment,
directly from a manifestly covariant Lagrangian, if the classical degrees of
freedom are appropriately chosen. It is shown that the equations obtained
encompass the well-tested Lorentz force and Thomas--Bargmann--Michel--Telegdi
spin equations, as well as providing a definite specification of the classical
_magnetic_dipole_ force_, whose exact form has been the subject of recent
debate. Radiation reaction---the force and torque on an accelerated particle
due to its self-interaction---is neglected at this stage.Comment: 18 pp. (latex, uses revtex 3), UM-P-92/9
The Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation
The Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation of the Dirac Hamiltonian is generally
taught as simply a mathematical trick that allows one to obtain a two-component
theory in the low-energy limit. It is not often emphasized that the transformed
representation is the only one in which one can take a meaningful *classical
limit*, in terms of particles and antiparticles. We briefly review the history
and physics of this transformation.Comment: Standard LaTeX, 6 page
CP violation in Higgs decays
We study CP violation in fermion pair decays of Higgs boson. We idenfy some
CP odd observables related to the tree level decay amplitude. We find that a
few thousand Higgs boson decay events can already provide important information
about CP violation. If the Higgs boson is produced, such an analysis could be
carried out at the SSC, LHC and NLC.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, UM-P-93/11, OZ-93/
Construction and analysis of a simplified many-body neutrino model
In dense neutrino systems, such as found in the early Universe, or near a
supernova core, neutrino flavor evolution is affected by coherent
neutrino-neutrino scattering. It has been recently suggested that many-particle
quantum entanglement effects may play an essential role in these systems,
potentially invalidating the traditional description in terms of a set of
single-particle evolution equations. We model the neutrino system by a system
of interacting spins, following an earlier work which showed that such a spin
system can in some cases be solved exactly. We extend this work by constructing
an exact analytical solution to a more general spin system, including initial
states with asymmetric spin distribution and, moreover, not necessarily aligned
along the same axis. Our solution exhibits a rich set of behaviors, including
coherent oscillations and dephasing and a transition from the classical to
quantum regimes. We argue that the classical evolution of the spin system
captures the entire coherent behavior of the neutrino system, while the quantum
effects in the spin system capture some, but not all, of the neutrino
incoherent evolution. By comparing the spin and neutrino systems, we find no
evidence for the violation of the accepted one-body description, though the
argument involves some subtleties not appreciated before. The analysis in this
paper may apply to other two-state systems beyond the neutrino field.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
Direct Improvement of Hamiltonian Lattice Gauge Theory
We demonstrate that a direct approach to improving Hamiltonian lattice gauge
theory is possible. Our approach is to correct errors in the Kogut-Susskind
Hamiltonian by incorporating additional gauge invariant terms. The coefficients
of these terms are chosen so that the order classical errors vanish. We
conclude with a brief discussion of tadpole improvement in Hamiltonian lattice
gauge theory.Comment: 9 page
Epoch Dependent Dark Energy
We present a model in which the equation of state parameter w approaches -1
near a particular value of z, and has significant negative values in a
restricted range of z. For example, one can have w ~ -1 near z = 1, and w >
-0.2 from z = 0 to z = 0.3, and for z > 9. The ingredients of the model are
neutral fermions (which may be neutrinos, neutralinos, etc) which are very
weakly coupled to a light scalar field. This model emphasises the importance of
the proposed studies of the properties of dark energy into the region z > 1.Comment: 7pp., 2 figs. Invited talk at the 5th Int'l. Wkshp. on the Dark Side
of the Universe, 1-5 June 2009 Melbourne, DSU09; to appear in the proceeding
MSW-like Enhancements without Matter
We study the effects of a scalar field, coupled only to neutrinos, on
oscillations among weak interaction current eigenstates. The effect of a real
scalar field appears as effective masses for the neutrino mass eigenstates, the
same for \nbar as for \n. Under some conditions, this can lead to a
vanishing of , giving rise to MSW-like effects. We discuss some
examples and show that it is possible to resolve the apparent discrepancy in
spectra required by r-process nucleosynthesis in the mantles of supernovae and
by Solar neutrino solutions.Comment: 9 pages, latex, 1 figur
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