Small-Size Instanton Corrections to the τ\tau Hadronic Width

We compute the effect of small-size instanton corrections to current-current correlators, for all combinations of axial, vector, and possibly flavour non-diagonal currents. We apply our result to the hadronic decays of the $\tau$ lepton, in order to assess the reliability of the determination of \as from the $\tau$ hadronic width.Comment: 13 pages (LaTeX file), CERN-TH.6787/93 NYU-TH.92/11/0

Superluminality in the Fierz--Pauli massive gravity

We study the propagation of helicity-1 gravitons in the Fierz--Pauli massive gravity in nearly Minkowski backgrounds. We show that, generically, there exist backgrounds consistent with field equations, in which the propagation is superluminal. The relevant distances are much longer than the ultraviolet cutoff length inherent in the Fierz--Pauli gravity, so superluminality occurs within the domain of validity of the effective low energy theory. There remains a possibility that one may get rid of this property by imposing fine tuning relations between the coefficients in the non-linear generalization of the Fierz--Pauli mass term, order by order in non-linearity; however, these relations are not protected by any obvious symmetry. Thus, among others, superluminality is a problematic property to worry about when attempting to construct infrared modifications of General Relativity.Comment: 11 pages, no figure

Domain wall dynamics in a single CrO2_2 grain

Recently we have reported on the magnetization dynamics of a single CrO$_2$ grain studied by micro Hall magnetometry (P. Das \textit{et al.}, Appl. Phys. Lett. \textbf{97} 042507, 2010). For the external magnetic field applied along the grain's easy magnetization direction, the magnetization reversal takes place through a series of Barkhausen jumps. Supported by micromagnetic simulations, the ground state of the grain was found to correspond to a flux closure configuration with a single cross-tie domain wall. Here, we report an analysis of the Barkhausen jumps, which were observed in the hysteresis loops for the external field applied along both the easy and hard magnetization directions. We find that the magnetization reversal takes place through only a few configuration paths in the free-energy landscape, pointing to a high purity of the sample. The distinctly different statistics of the Barkhausen jumps for the two field directions is discussed.Comment: JEMS Conference, to appear in J. Phys. Conf. Se

Complementarity of the Maldacena and Karch-Randall Pictures

We perform a one-loop test of the holographic interpretation of the Karch-Randall model, whereby a massive graviton appears on an AdS_4 brane in an AdS_5 bulk. Within the AdS/CFT framework, we examine the quantum corrections to the graviton propagator on the brane, and demonstrate that they induce a graviton mass in exact agreement with the Karch-Randall result. Interestingly enough, at one loop order, the spin 0, spin 1/2 and spin 1 loops contribute to the dynamically generated (mass)^2 in the same 1: 3: 12 ratio as enters the Weyl anomaly and the 1/r^3 corrections to the Newtonian gravitational potential.Comment: 20 pages, Revtex 3, Discussion on the absence of a scalar ghost clarified; Additional details on the computation give

Superluminality in DGP

We reconsider the issue of superluminal propagation in the DGP model of infrared modified gravity. Superluminality was argued to exist in certain otherwise physical backgrounds by using a particular, physically relevant scaling limit of the theory. In this paper, we exhibit explicit five-dimensional solutions of the full theory that are stable against small fluctuations and that indeed support superluminal excitations. The scaling limit is neither needed nor invoked in deriving the solutions or in the analysis of its small fluctuations. To be certain that the superluminality found here is physical, we analyze the retarded Green's function of the scalar excitations, finding that it is causal and stable, but has support on a widened light-cone. We propose to use absence of superluminal propagation as a method to constrain the parameters of the DGP model. As a first application of the method, we find that whenever the 4D energy density is a pure cosmological constant and a hierarchy of scales exists between the 4D and 5D Planck masses, superluminal propagation unavoidably occurs.Comment: 23 pages. Minor corrections. Version to appear in JHE

Magnetotransport properties of iron microwires fabricated by focused electron beam induced autocatalytic growth

We have prepared iron microwires in a combination of focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) and autocatalytic growth from the iron pentacarbonyl, Fe(CO)5, precursor gas under UHV conditions. The electrical transport properties of the microwires were investigated and it was found that the temperature dependence of the longitudinal resistivity (rhoxx) shows a typical metallic behaviour with a room temperature value of about 88 micro{\Omega} cm. In order to investigate the magnetotransport properties we have measured the isothermal Hall-resistivities in the range between 4.2 K and 260 K. From these measurements positive values for the ordinary and the anomalous Hall coefficients were derived. The relation between anomalous Hall resistivity (rhoAN) and longitudinal resistivity is quadratic, rhoAN rho^2 xx, revealing an intrinsic origin of the anomalous Hall effect. Finally, at low temperature in the transversal geometry a negative magnetoresistance of about 0.2 % was measured

The open string pair-production rate enhancement by a magnetic flux

We extend the amplitude calculations of \cite{Lu:2009yx} to exhaust the remaining cases for which one set of D$_p$ branes carrying a flux (electric or magnetic) is placed parallel at separation to the other set carrying also a flux but with the two fluxes sharing at most one common field-strength index. We then find that the basic structure of amplitudes remains the same when the two fluxes share at least one common index but it is more general when the two fluxes share no common index. We discuss various properties of the amplitudes such as the large separation limit, the onset of various instabilities and the open string pair production. In particular, when one flux is electric and weak and the other is magnetic and fixed, we find that the open string pair production rate is greatly enhanced by the presence of this magnetic flux when the two fluxes share no common field-strength index and this rate becomes significant when the separation is on the order of string scale.Comment: 33 pages, no figures, a few points refined to the published version JHEP09(2009)09

Higher-Spin Fermionic Gauge Fields and Their Electromagnetic Coupling

We study the electromagnetic coupling of massless higher-spin fermions in flat space. Under the assumptions of locality and Poincare invariance, we employ the BRST-BV cohomological methods to construct consistent parity-preserving off-shell cubic 1-s-s vertices. Consistency and non-triviality of the deformations not only rule out minimal coupling, but also restrict the possible number of derivatives. Our findings are in complete agreement with, but derived in a manner independent from, the light-cone-formulation results of Metsaev and the string-theory-inspired results of Sagnotti-Taronna. We prove that any gauge-algebra-preserving vertex cannot deform the gauge transformations. We also show that in a local theory, without additional dynamical higher-spin gauge fields, the non-abelian vertices are eliminated by the lack of consistent second-order deformations.Comment: 44 pages; references added, minor changes made, to appear in JHE

Tree-Level Unitarity Constraints on the Gravitational Couplings of Higher-Spin Massive Fields

We analyse the high-energy behavior of tree-level graviton Compton amplitudes for particles of mass m and arbitrary spin, concentrating on a combination of forward amplitudes that will be unaffected by eventual cross- couplings to other, higher spins. We first show that for any spin larger than 2, tree-level unitarity is already violated at energies well below the Planck scale M, if m << M. We then restore unitarity to this amplitude up to M by adding non-minimal couplings that depend on the curvature and its derivatives, and modify the minimal description - including particle gravitational quadrupole moments - at scales O(1/m).Comment: 12 pages (Latex file, needs FEYNMAN macros), IASSNS-HEP-94/63, NYU-TH-94/05/01, CERN-TH.7388/9

Dynamics of (SUSY) AdS Space Isometry Breaking

Actions governing the dynamics of the Nambu-Goldstone modes resulting from the spontaneous breaking of the SO(4,2) and $SU(2,2|1)$ isometries of five dimensional anti-de Sitter space ($AdS_{5}$) and SUSY $AdS_{5}\times S_1$ spaces respectively due to a restriction of the motion to embedded four dimensional $AdS_{4}$ space and four dimensional Minkowski space ($M_4$) probe branes are presented. The dilatonic Nambu-Goldstone mode governing the motion of the $M_4$ space probe brane into the covolume of the SUSY $AdS_5\times S_1$ space is found to be unstable. No such instablility appears in the other cases. Gauging these symmetries leads to an Einstein-Hilbert action containing, in addition to the gravitational vierbein, a massive Abelian vector field coupled to gravity.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures, to appear in Proceedings of IRGAC 2006: 2nd International Conference on Quantum Theories and Renormalization Group in Gravity and Cosmology, Barcelon