5,916 research outputs found

    Duality Symmetries and Noncommutative Geometry of String Spacetime

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    We examine the structure of spacetime symmetries of toroidally compactified string theory within the framework of noncommutative geometry. Following a proposal of Frohlich and Gawedzki, we describe the noncommutative string spacetime using a detailed algebraic construction of the vertex operator algebra. We show that the spacetime duality and discrete worldsheet symmetries of the string theory are a consequence of the existence of two independent Dirac operators, arising from the chiral structure of the conformal field theory. We demonstrate that these Dirac operators are also responsible for the emergence of ordinary classical spacetime as a low-energy limit of the string spacetime, and from this we establish a relationship between T-duality and changes of spin structure of the target space manifold. We study the automorphism group of the vertex operator algebra and show that spacetime duality is naturally a gauge symmetry in this formalism. We show that classical general covariance also becomes a gauge symmetry of the string spacetime. We explore some larger symmetries of the algebra in the context of a universal gauge group for string theory, and connect these symmetry groups with some of the algebraic structures which arise in the mathematical theory of vertex operator algebras, such as the Monster group. We also briefly describe how the classical topology of spacetime is modified by the string theory, and calculate the cohomology groups of the noncommutative spacetime. A self-contained, pedagogical introduction to the techniques of noncommmutative geometry is also included.Comment: 70 pages, Latex, No Figures. Typos and references corrected. Version to appear in Communications in Mathematical Physic

    Analysis of X-ray spectra emitted from laser-produced plasmas of uranium

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    In this paper, we used the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock method to generate theoretical X-ray spectra for Co-, Ni-, Cu-, Zn-, Ga-, Ge-, As-, Se-, Br-, Kr-, and Rb-like uranium ions. Using the distribution of these ions in a laser-produced plasma, for different plasma temperatures, we generate theoretical spectra, which are compared to experimental data

    Matrix Sigma-models for Multi D-brane Dynamics

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    We describe a dynamical worldsheet origin for the Lagrangian describing the low-energy dynamics of a system of parallel D-branes. We show how matrix-valued collective coordinate fields for the D-branes naturally arise as couplings of a worldsheet sigma-model, and that the quantum dynamics require that these couplings be mutually noncommutative. We show that the low-energy effective action for the sigma-model couplings describes the propagation of an open string in the background of the multiple D-brane configuration, in which all string interactions between the constituent branes are integrated out and the genus expansion is taken into account, with a matrix-valued coupling. The effective field theory is governed by the non-abelian Born-Infeld target space action which leads to the standard one for D-brane field theory.Comment: 14 pages LaTeX, 1 encapsulated postscript figure; uses epsf.te

    The Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap : a mass spectrometer of infinite mass range

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    We study the ions dynamics inside an Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap (EIBT) and show that the stability of the trapping is ruled by a Hill's equation. This unexpectedly demonstrates that an EIBT, in the reference frame of the ions works very similar to a quadrupole trap. The parallelism between these two kinds of traps is illustrated by comparing experimental and theoretical stability diagrams of the EIBT. The main difference with quadrupole traps is that the stability depends only on the ratio of the acceleration and trapping electrostatic potentials, not on the mass nor the charge of the ions. All kinds of ions can be trapped simultaneously and since parametric resonances are proportional to the square root of the charge/mass ratio the EIBT can be used as a mass spectrometer of infinite mass range
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