452 research outputs found
The small x gluon and b\bar{b} production at the LHC
We study open b\bar{b} production at large rapidity at the LHC in an attempt
to pin down the gluon distribution at very low x. For the LHC energy of 7 TeV,
at next-to-leading order (NLO), there is a large factorization scale
uncertainty. We show that the uncertainty can be greatly reduced if events are
selected in which the transverse momenta of the two B-mesons balance each other
to some accuracy, that is |\vec p_{1T}+\vec p_{2T}| < k_0. This will fix the
scale \mu_F \simeq k_0, and will allow the LHCb experiment, in particular, to
study the x-behaviour of gluon distribution down to x ~ 10^{-5}, at rather low
scales, \mu ~ 2 GeV. We evaluate the expected cross sections using, for
illustrative purposes, various recent sets of Parton Distribution Functions.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure
Spectroscopy of A=12 at High Excitation
Supported by the National Science Foundation and Indiana Universit
Moments of the Virtual Photon Structure Function
The photon structure function is a useful testing ground for QCD. It is
perturbatively computable apart from a contribution from what is usually called
the hadronic component of the photon. There have been many proposals for this
nonperturbative part of the real photon structure function. By studying moments
of the virtual photon structure function, we explore the extent to which these
proposed nonperturbative contributions can be identified experimentally.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages + 14 compressed and uuencoded postscript figures,
UMN-TH-1111/9
Bottom Quark Fragmentation in Top Quark Decay
We study the fragmentation of the b quark in top decay in NLO QCD, within the
framework of perturbative fragmentation, which allows one to resum large
logarithms . We show the b-energy distribution, which
we compare with the exact result for a massive b quark.
We use data from machines in order to describe the b-quark
hadronization and make predictions for the energy spectrum of b-flavoured
hadrons in top decay. We also investigate the effect of NLL soft-gluon
resummation in the initial condition of the perturbative fragmentation function
on parton- and hadron-level energy distributions.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figure
Elastic deformation of a fluid membrane upon colloid binding
When a colloidal particle adheres to a fluid membrane, it induces elastic
deformations in the membrane which oppose its own binding. The structural and
energetic aspects of this balance are theoretically studied within the
framework of a Helfrich Hamiltonian. Based on the full nonlinear shape
equations for the membrane profile, a line of continuous binding transitions
and a second line of discontinuous envelopment transitions are found, which
meet at an unusual triple point. The regime of low tension is studied
analytically using a small gradient expansion, while in the limit of large
tension scaling arguments are derived which quantify the asymptotic behavior of
phase boundary, degree of wrapping, and energy barrier. The maturation of
animal viruses by budding is discussed as a biological example of such
colloid-membrane interaction events.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, REVTeX style, follow-up on cond-mat/021242
Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?
Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance
Next-to-Leading Order Cross Sections for Tagged Reactions
We extend the phase space slicing method of Giele, Glover and Kosower for
performing next-to-leading order jet cross section calculations in two
important ways: we show how to include fragmentation functions and how to
include massive particles. These extensions allow the application of this
method to not just jet cross sections but also to cross sections in which a
particular final state particle, including a or -meson, is tagged.Comment: 36 pages, Latex Small corrections to text. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Measurement precision and evaluation of the diameter profiles of single wool fibers
A recent model of the Single Fiber Analyzer 3001 (SIFAN3001) was firstly employed to obtain the single wool fiber diameter profiles (SfFDPs) at multiple orientations. The results showed that using SIFAN3001 to measure fiber diameter at four orientations for 50 single fibers randomly sub-sampled from each mid-side sample can produce average fiber diameter profiles (AS fFDPs) of fibers within staples. Within the testing regime used, the precision estimates for the total samples were ±1.3 µm for the mean fiber diameter of staples and 1.4 µm for the average fiber diameter of the AS fFDPs at each scanned step in the diameter profile. The mean diameter ratio (ellipticity) obtained from the four orientations was 1.08±0.01, confirming that the Merino wool fibers under review were elliptical rather than circular. The elliptical morphology of wool fibers and the precision of the fiber diameter measurement at each point along a fiber will be considered in the development of a mechanical model of Staple Strength testing.<br /
Features of heavy physics in the CMB power spectrum
The computation of the primordial power spectrum in multi-field inflation
models requires us to correctly account for all relevant interactions between
adiabatic and non-adiabatic modes around and after horizon crossing. One
specific complication arises from derivative interactions induced by the
curvilinear trajectory of the inflaton in a multi-dimensional field space. In
this work we compute the power spectrum in general multi-field models and show
that certain inflaton trajectories may lead to observationally significant
imprints of `heavy' physics in the primordial power spectrum if the inflaton
trajectory turns, that is, traverses a bend, sufficiently fast (without
interrupting slow roll), even in cases where the normal modes have masses
approaching the cutoff of our theory. We emphasise that turning is defined with
respect to the geodesics of the sigma model metric, irrespective of whether
this is canonical or non-trivial. The imprints generically take the form of
damped superimposed oscillations on the power spectrum. In the particular case
of two-field models, if one of the fields is sufficiently massive compared to
the scale of inflation, we are able to compute an effective low energy theory
for the adiabatic mode encapsulating certain relevant operators of the full
multi-field dynamics. As expected, a particular characteristic of this
effective theory is a modified speed of sound for the adiabatic mode which is a
functional of the background inflaton trajectory and the turns traversed during
inflation. Hence in addition, we expect non-Gaussian signatures directly
related to the features imprinted in the power spectrum.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figures, references updated, minor modifications. Version
to appear in JCAP. v4: Equations (4.28) and (4.30) and Figures 5 and 6
correcte
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