Chiral Symmetry in Charmonium - Pion Cross Section

We perform a non-perturbative calculation of the $J/\Psi-\pi$ cross section using a $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ effective Lagrangian. Our results differ from those of previous calculations, specially in the description of vertices involving pions.Comment: 6 pages, RevTeX including 2 figures in eps file

Duality cascades and duality walls

We recast the phenomenon of duality cascades in terms of the Cartan matrix associated to the quiver gauge theories appearing in the cascade. In this language, Seiberg dualities for the different gauge factors correspond to Weyl reflections. We argue that the UV behavior of different duality cascades depends markedly on whether the Cartan matrix is affine ADE or not. In particular, we find examples of duality cascades that can't be continued after a finite energy scale, reaching a "duality wall", in terminology due to M. Strassler. For these duality cascades, we suggest the existence of a UV completion in terms of a little string theory.Comment: harvmac, 24 pages, 4 figures. v2: references added. v3: reference adde

Phases and geometry of the N=1 A_2 quiver gauge theory and matrix models

We study the phases and geometry of the N=1 A_2 quiver gauge theory using matrix models and a generalized Konishi anomaly. We consider the theory both in the Coulomb and Higgs phases. Solving the anomaly equations, we find that a meromorphic one-form sigma(z)dz is naturally defined on the curve Sigma associated to the theory. Using the Dijkgraaf-Vafa conjecture, we evaluate the effective low-energy superpotential and demonstrate that its equations of motion can be translated into a geometric property of Sigma: sigma(z)dz has integer periods around all compact cycles. This ensures that there exists on Sigma a meromorphic function whose logarithm sigma(z)dz is the differential. We argue that the surface determined by this function is the N=2 Seiberg-Witten curve of the theory.Comment: 41 pages, 2 figures, JHEP style. v2: references adde

J/psi couplings to charmed resonances and to pi

We present an evaluation of the strong couplings JD^(*)D^(*) and JD^(*)D^(*)pi by an effective field theory of quarks and mesons. These couplings are necessary to calculate pi+J/psi --> D^(*)+barD^(*) cross sections, an important background to the J/psi suppression signal in the quark-gluon plasma. We write down the general effective lagrangian and compute the relevant couplings in the soft pion limit and beyond.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 reference added and minor comments, style changed to RevTe

Quasars as Probes of Late Reionization and Early Structure Formation

Observations of QSOs at z ~ 5.7 - 6.4 show the appearance of Gunn-Peterson troughs around z ~ 6, and a change in the slope of the IGM optical depth tau(z) near z ~ 5.5. These results are interpreted as a signature of the end of the reionization era, which probably started at considerably higher redshifts. However, there also appears to be a substantial cosmic variance in the transmission of the IGM, both along some lines of sight, and among different lines of sight, in this intriguing redshift regime. We suggest that this is indicative of a spatially uneven reionization, possibly caused by the bias-driven primordial clustering of the reionization sources. There is also some independent evidence for a strong clustering of QSOs at z ~ 4 - 5 and galaxies around them, supporting the idea of the strong biasing of the first luminous sources at these redshifts. Larger samples of high-z QSOs are needed in order to provide improved, statistically significant constraints for the models of these phenomena. We expect that the Palomar-Quest (PQ) survey will soon provide a new set of QSOs to be used as cosmological probes in this redshift regime.Comment: To appear in proceedings of UC Irvine May 2005 workshop on "First Light & Reionization", eds. E. Barton & A. Cooray, New Astronomy Reviews, in pres

(Anti)symmetric matter and superpotentials from IIB orientifolds

We study the IIB engineering of N=1 gauge theories with unitary gauge group and matter in the adjoint and (anti)symmetric representations. We show that such theories can be obtained as Z2 orientifolds of Calabi-Yau A2 fibrations, and discuss the explicit T-duality transformation to an orientifolded Hanany-Witten construction. The low energy dynamics is described by a geometric transition of the orientifolded background. Unlike previously studied cases, we show that the orientifold 5-`plane' survives the transition, thus bringing a nontrivial contribution to the effective superpotential. We extract this contribution by using matrix model results and compare with geometric data. A Higgs branch of our models recovers the engineering of SO/Sp theories with adjoint matter through an O5-`plane' T-dual to an O6-plane. We show that the superpotential agrees with that produced by engineering through an O5-`plane' dual to an O4-plane, even though the orientifold of this second construction is replaced by fluxes after the transition.Comment: 40 page

Quivers via anomaly chains

We study quivers in the context of matrix models. We introduce chains of generalized Konishi anomalies to write the quadratic and cubic equations that constrain the resolvents of general affine and non-affine quiver gauge theories, and give a procedure to calculate all higher-order relations. For these theories we also evaluate, as functions of the resolvents, VEV's of chiral operators with two and four bifundamental insertions. As an example of the general procedure we explicitly consider the two simplest quivers A2 and A1(affine), obtaining in the first case a cubic algebraic curve, and for the affine theory the same equation as that of U(N) theories with adjoint matter, successfully reproducing the RG cascade result.Comment: 32 pages, latex; typos corrected, published versio

Orbiting Membranes in M-theory on AdS_7 x S^4 Background

We study classical solutions describing rotating and boosted membranes on AdS_7 x S^4 background in M-theory. We find the dependence of the energy on the spin and R-charge of these solutions. In the flat space limit we get E ~ S^{2/3}, while for AdS at leading order E-S grows as S^{1/3}. The membranes on AdS_4 x S^7 background have briefly been studied as well.Comment: 13 pages, latex, v2: a note and refs. added, some typos correcte

Progress in the determination of the J/ψ−πJ/\psi-\pi cross section

Improving previous calculations, we compute the $J/\psi \pi\to {charmed mesons}$ cross section using QCD sum rules. Our sum rules for the $J/\psi \pi\to \bar{D} D^*$, $D \bar{D}^*$, ${\bar D}^* D^*$ and ${\bar D} D$ hadronic matrix elements are constructed by using vaccum-pion correlation functions, and we work up to twist-4 in the soft-pion limit. Our results suggest that, using meson exchange models is perfectly acceptable, provided that they include form factors and that they respect chiral symmetry. After doing a thermal average we get $\sim 0.3$ mb at T=150\MeV.Comment: 22 pages, RevTeX4 including 7 figures in ps file

Chiral field theories, Konishi anomalies and matrix models

We study a chiral N=1, U(N) field theory in the context of the Dijkgraaf-Vafa correspondence. Our model contains one adjoint, one conjugate symmetric and one antisymmetric chiral multiplet, as well as eight fundamentals. We compute the generalized Konishi anomalies and compare the chiral ring relations they induce with the loop equations of the (intrinsically holomorphic) matrix model defined by the tree-level superpotential of the field theory. Surprisingly, we find that the matrix model is well-defined only if the number of flavors equals two! Despite this mismatch, we show that the 1/N expansion of the loop equations agrees with the generalized Konishi constraints. This indicates that the matrix model - gauge theory correspondence should generally be modified when applied to theories with net chirality. We also show that this chiral theory produces the same gaugino superpotential as a nonchiral SO(N) model with a single symmetric multiplet and a polynomial superpotential.Comment: 43 page