Search for heavy antinuclei in the cosmic radiation

The existence of significant amounts of antimatter in the Universe is demonstrated through cosmic radiation. The data from the Danish-French Cosmic Ray Spectrometer on the HEAO-3 satellite offers an opportunity to search for heavy antinuclei, since all the relevant parameters (charge, velocity, arrival direction, and satellite position at the time of arrival) are measured for each recorded nucleus. Using the 22676 positive only events in the data seletion corresponding to L 1.5 as a measure of our exposure factor to heavy antinuclei and noting that no corresponding antinuclei were found, an upper limit (95% confidence) is given to the ratio of antinuclei to nuclei as 1.4 x .0001 for particles with Z 9. The upper limit resulting from this work is compared with previous results of searches for heavy antimatter in the cosmic radiation. It is seen that, if one regards only antiparticles heavier than fluorine, then the present result represents a reduced upper limit over previous data. When taken together, all the available experiment data now push the upper limit for the ratio of antiparticles to particles well below .0001

Book Reviews

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRIME. By David Abrahamsen. BUREAUCRACY ON TRIAL, POLICY MAKING BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. By William W. Boyer

Computer Research

Contains research objectives and report on status of research.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 36-039-AMC-03200(E)National Science Foundation (Grant GP-2495)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496

String attractors : Verification and optimization

String attractors [STOC 2018] are combinatorial objects recently introduced to unify all known dictionary compression techniques in a single theory. A set γ ⊆ [1.n] is a k-attractor for a string S ∈ Σn if and only if every distinct substring of S of length at most k has an occurrence crossing at least one of the positions in γ. Finding the smallest k-attractor is NP-hard for k ≥ 3, but polylogarithmic approximations can be found using reductions from dictionary compressors. It is easy to reduce the k-attractor problem to a set-cover instance where the string's positions are interpreted as sets of substrings. The main result of this paper is a much more powerful reduction based on the truncated suffix tree. Our new characterization of the problem leads to more efficient algorithms for string attractors: we show how to check the validity and minimality of a k-attractor in near-optimal time and how to quickly compute exact solutions. For example, we prove that a minimum 3-attractor can be found in O(n) time when |Σ| ∈ O(3+ϵ√log n) for some constant ϵ > 0, despite the problem being NP-hard for large Σ. © Dominik Kempa, Alberto Policriti, Nicola Prezza, and Eva Rotenberg.Peer reviewe

Faddeev approach to confined three-quark problems

We propose a method that allows for the efficient solution of the three-body Faddeev equations in the presence of infinitely rising confinement interactions. Such a method is useful in calculations of nonrelativistic and especially semirelativistic constituent quark models. The convergence of the partial wave series is accelerated and possible spurious contributions in the Faddeev components are avoided. We demonstrate how the method works with the example of the Goldstone-boson-exchange chiral quark model for baryons.Comment: 6 page

A full vectorial mapping of nanophotonic light fields

Light is a union of electric and magnetic fields, and nowhere is the complex relationship between these fields more evident than in the near fields of nanophotonic structures. There, complicated electric and magnetic fields varying over subwavelength scales are generally present, which results in photonic phenomena such as extraordinary optical momentum, superchiral fields, and a complex spatial evolution of optical singularities. An understanding of such phenomena requires nanoscale measurements of the complete optical field vector. Although the sensitivity of near- field scanning optical microscopy to the complete electromagnetic field was recently demonstrated, a separation of different components required a priori knowledge of the sample. Here, we introduce a robust algorithm that can disentangle all six electric and magnetic field components from a single near-field measurement without any numerical modeling of the structure. As examples, we unravel the fields of two prototypical nanophotonic structures: a photonic crystal waveguide and a plasmonic nanowire. These results pave the way for new studies of complex photonic phenomena at the nanoscale and for the design of structures that optimize their optical behavior