Local CP-violation and electric charge separation by magnetic fields from lattice QCD

We study local CP-violation on the lattice by measuring the local correlation between the topological charge density and the electric dipole moment of quarks, induced by a constant external magnetic field. This correlator is found to increase linearly with the external field, with the coefficient of proportionality depending only weakly on temperature. Results are obtained on lattices with various spacings, and are extrapolated to the continuum limit after the renormalization of the observables is carried out. This renormalization utilizes the gradient flow for the quark and gluon fields. Our findings suggest that the strength of local CP-violation in QCD with physical quark masses is about an order of magnitude smaller than a model prediction based on nearly massless quarks in domains of constant gluon backgrounds with topological charge. We also show numerical evidence that the observed local CP-violation correlates with spatially extended electric dipole structures in the QCD vacuum.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures. Additional lattice results about the induced electric dipole structure, extended model description, specified terminology. Version published in JHE

Alternativity and reciprocity in the Cayley-Dickson algebra

We calculate the eigenvalue \rho of the multiplication mapping R on the Cayley-Dickson algebra A_n. If the element in A_n is composed of a pair of alternative elements in A_{n-1}, half the eigenvectors of R in A_n are still eigenvectors in the subspace which is isomorphic to A_{n-1}. The invariant under the reciprocal transformation A_n \times A_{n} \ni (x,y) -> (-y,x) plays a fundamental role in simplifying the functional form of \rho. If some physical field can be identified with the eigenspace of R, with an injective map from the field to a scalar quantity (such as a mass) m, then there is a one-to-one map \pi: m \mapsto \rho. As an example, the electro-weak gauge field can be regarded as the eigenspace of R, where \pi implies that the W-boson mass is less than the Z-boson mass, as in the standard model.Comment: To be published in J. Phys. A: Mathematical and Genera

Thermodynamic properties of QCD in external magnetic fields

We consider the effect of strong external electromagnetic fields on thermodynamic observables in QCD, through lattice simulations with 1+1+1 flavors of staggered quarks at physical quark masses. Continuum extrapolated results are presented for the light quark condensates and for their tensor polarizations, as functions of the temperature and the magnetic field. We find the light condensates to undergo inverse magnetic catalysis in the transition region, in a manner that the transition temperature decreases with growing magnetic field. We also compare the results to other approaches and lattice simulations. Furthermore, we relate the tensor polarization to the spin part of the magnetic susceptibility of the QCD vacuum, and show that this contribution is diamagnetic.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, talks presented by FB and GE at Xth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, 8-12 October 2012, TUM Campus Garching, Munich, German

Carrier and Light Trapping in Graded Quantum Well Laser Structures

We investigated the carrier and light trapping in GaInAs/AlGaAs single quantum well laser structures by means of time resolved photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy. The influence of the shape and depth of the confinement potential and of the cavity geometry was studied by using different AlGaAs/GaAs short-period superlattices as barriers. Our results show that grading the optical cavity improves considerably both carrier and light trapping in the quantum well, and that the trapping efficiency is enhanced by increasing the graded confining potential.Comment: PDF-format, 15 pages (including 4 figures), Applied Physics Letters (June 2000

QCD quark condensate in external magnetic fields

We present a comprehensive analysis of the light condensates in QCD with 1+1+1 sea quark flavors (with mass-degenerate light quarks of different electric charges) at zero and nonzero temperatures of up to 190 MeV and external magnetic fields B<1 GeV^2/e. We employ stout smeared staggered fermions with physical quark masses and extrapolate the results to the continuum limit. At low temperatures we confirm the magnetic catalysis scenario predicted by many model calculations, while around the crossover the condensate develops a complex dependence on the external magnetic field, resulting in a decrease of the transition temperature.Comment: slight changes in the text, version accepted for publication in PRD. 5 pages, 5 figure

Comparison of techniques for handling missing covariate data within prognostic modelling studies: a simulation study

Background: There is no consensus on the most appropriate approach to handle missing covariate data within prognostic modelling studies. Therefore a simulation study was performed to assess the effects of different missing data techniques on the performance of a prognostic model. Methods: Datasets were generated to resemble the skewed distributions seen in a motivating breast cancer example. Multivariate missing data were imposed on four covariates using four different mechanisms; missing completely at random (MCAR), missing at random (MAR), missing not at random (MNAR) and a combination of all three mechanisms. Five amounts of incomplete cases from 5% to 75% were considered. Complete case analysis (CC), single imputation (SI) and five multiple imputation (MI) techniques available within the R statistical software were investigated: a) data augmentation (DA) approach assuming a multivariate normal distribution, b) DA assuming a general location model, c) regression switching imputation, d) regression switching with predictive mean matching (MICE-PMM) and e) flexible additive imputation models. A Cox proportional hazards model was fitted and appropriate estimates for the regression coefficients and model performance measures were obtained. Results: Performing a CC analysis produced unbiased regression estimates, but inflated standard errors, which affected the significance of the covariates in the model with 25% or more missingness. Using SI, underestimated the variability; resulting in poor coverage even with 10% missingness. Of the MI approaches, applying MICE-PMM produced, in general, the least biased estimates and better coverage for the incomplete covariates and better model performance for all mechanisms. However, this MI approach still produced biased regression coefficient estimates for the incomplete skewed continuous covariates when 50% or more cases had missing data imposed with a MCAR, MAR or combined mechanism. When the missingness depended on the incomplete covariates, i.e. MNAR, estimates were biased with more than 10% incomplete cases for all MI approaches. Conclusion: The results from this simulation study suggest that performing MICE-PMM may be the preferred MI approach provided that less than 50% of the cases have missing data and the missing data are not MNAR

The QCD phase diagram for external magnetic fields

The effect of an external (electro)magnetic field on the finite temperature transition of QCD is studied. We generate configurations at various values of the quantized magnetic flux with $N_f=2+1$ flavors of stout smeared staggered quarks, with physical masses. Thermodynamic observables including the chiral condensate and susceptibility, and the strange quark number susceptibility are measured as functions of the field strength. We perform the renormalization of the studied observables and extrapolate the results to the continuum limit using $N_t=6,8$ and 10 lattices. We also check for finite volume effects using various lattice volumes. We find from all of our observables that the transition temperature $T_c$ significantly decreases with increasing magnetic field. This is in conflict with various model calculations that predict an increasing $T_c(B)$. From a finite volume scaling analysis we find that the analytic crossover that is present at B=0 persists up to our largest magnetic fields $eB \approx 1 \textmd{GeV}^2$, and that the transition strength increases mildly up to this $eB\approx1 \textmd{GeV}^2$.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figure

Optically opaque color-flavor locked phase inside compact stars

The contribution of thermally excited electron-positron pairs to the bulk properties of the color-flavor locked quark phase inside compact stars is examined. The presence of these pairs causes the photon mean free path to be much smaller than a typical core radius ($R_0 \simeq 1$ km) for all temperatures above 25 keV so that the photon contribution to the thermal conductivity is much smaller than that of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons. We also find that the electrons and positrons dominate the electrical conductivity, while their contributions to the total thermal energy is negligible.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Published versio