In vivo nuclear magnetic resonance imaging

A number of physiological changes have been demonstrated in bone, muscle and blood after exposure of humans and animals to microgravity. Determining mechanisms and the development of effective countermeasures for long duration space missions is an important NASA goal. The advent of tomographic nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR or MRI) gives NASA a way to greatly extend early studies of this phenomena in ways not previously possible; NMR is also noninvasive and safe. NMR provides both superb anatomical images for volume assessments of individual organs and quantification of chemical/physical changes induced in the examined tissues. The feasibility of NMR as a tool for human physiological research as it is affected by microgravity is demonstrated. The animal studies employed the rear limb suspended rat as a model of mucle atrophy that results from microgravity. And bedrest of normal male subjects was used to simulate the effects of microgravity on bone and muscle

Schr\"{o}dinger Fields on the Plane with non-Abelian Chern-Simons Interactions

Physical content of the nonrelativistic quantum field theory with non-Abelian Chern-Simons interactions is clarified with the help of the equivalent first- quantized description which we derive in any physical gauge.Comment: 12 pages, LaTex, SNUTP 94-1

Current Algebra in Three Dimensions

We study a three dimensional analogue of the Wess--Zumino--Witten model, which describes the Goldstone bosons of three dimensional Quantum Chromodynamics. The topologically non--trivial term of the action can also be viewed as a nonlinear realization of Chern--Simons form. We obtain the current algebra of this model by canonical methods. This is a three dimensional generalization of the Kac--Moody algebra.Comment: 11 pages, UR-1266, ER40685-72

Geometric Quantization of Topological Gauge Theories

We study the symplectic quantization of Abelian gauge theories in $2+1$ space-time dimensions with the introduction of a topological Chern-Simons term.Comment: 13 pages, plain TEX, IF/UFRJ/9

Central charge and renormalization in supersymmetric theories with vortices

Some quantum features of vortices in supersymmetric theories in 1+2 dimensions are studied in a manifestly supersymmetric setting of the superfield formalism. A close examination of the supercurrent that accommodates the central charge and super-Poincare charges in a supermultiplet reveals that there is no genuine quantum anomaly in the supertrace identity and in the supercharge algebra, with the central-charge operator given by the bare Fayet-Iliopoulos term alone. The central charge and the vortex spectrum undergo renormalization on taking the expectation value of the central-charge operator. It is shown that the vortex spectrum is exactly determined at one loop while the spectrum of the elementary excitations receives higher-order corrections.Comment: 9 pages, revte

Mode regularization of the susy sphaleron and kink: zero modes and discrete gauge symmetry

To obtain the one-loop corrections to the mass of a kink by mode regularization, one may take one-half the result for the mass of a widely separated kink-antikink (or sphaleron) system, where the two bosonic zero modes count as two degrees of freedom, but the two fermionic zero modes as only one degree of freedom in the sums over modes. For a single kink, there is one bosonic zero mode degree of freedom, but it is necessary to average over four sets of fermionic boundary conditions in order (i) to preserve the fermionic Z$_2$ gauge invariance $\psi \to -\psi$, (ii) to satisfy the basic principle of mode regularization that the boundary conditions in the trivial and the kink sector should be the same, (iii) in order that the energy stored at the boundaries cancels and (iv) to avoid obtaining a finite, uniformly distributed energy which would violate cluster decomposition. The average number of fermionic zero-energy degrees of freedom in the presence of the kink is then indeed 1/2. For boundary conditions leading to only one fermionic zero-energy solution, the Z$_2$ gauge invariance identifies two seemingly distinct `vacua' as the same physical ground state, and the single fermionic zero-energy solution does not correspond to a degree of freedom. Other boundary conditions lead to two spatially separated $\omega \sim 0$ solutions, corresponding to one (spatially delocalized) degree of freedom. This nonlocality is consistent with the principle of cluster decomposition for correlators of observables.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure

Quantum Aspects of Supersymmetric Maxwell Chern-Simons Solitons

We study the various quantum aspects of the $N=2$ supersymmetric Maxwell Chern-Simons vortex systems. The fermion zero modes around the vortices will give rise the degenerate states of vortices. We analyze the angular momentum of these zero modes and apply the result to get the supermultiplet structures of the vortex. The leading quantum correction to the mass of the vortex coming from the mode fluctuations is also calculated using various methods depending on the value of the coefficient of the Chern-Simons term $\kappa$ to be zero, infinite and finite, separately. The mass correction is shown to vanish for all cases. Fermion numbers of vortices are also discussed.Comment: 40 pages, ReVTeX, HYUPT-94/04 SNUTP 94-6

Massless Scalar QED with Non-minimal Chern Simons Coupling

2+1 dimensional massless scalar QED with $(\phi^*\phi)^3$ scalar self-coupling is modified by the addition of a non- minimal Chern-Simons term that couples the dual of the electromagnetic field strength to the covariant current of the complex scalar field. The theory is shown to be fully one- loop renormalizable. The one loop effective potential for the scalar field gives rise to spontaneous symmetry breaking which induces masses for both the scalar and vector fields. At high temperature there is a symmetry restoring phase transition.Comment: 18 pages, latex, preprint WIN-93-1

Stochastic collective dynamics of charged--particle beams in the stability regime

We introduce a description of the collective transverse dynamics of charged (proton) beams in the stability regime by suitable classical stochastic fluctuations. In this scheme, the collective beam dynamics is described by time--reversal invariant diffusion processes deduced by stochastic variational principles (Nelson processes). By general arguments, we show that the diffusion coefficient, expressed in units of length, is given by $\lambda_c\sqrt{N}$, where $N$ is the number of particles in the beam and $\lambda_c$ the Compton wavelength of a single constituent. This diffusion coefficient represents an effective unit of beam emittance. The hydrodynamic equations of the stochastic dynamics can be easily recast in the form of a Schr\"odinger equation, with the unit of emittance replacing the Planck action constant. This fact provides a natural connection to the so--called ``quantum--like approaches'' to beam dynamics. The transition probabilities associated to Nelson processes can be exploited to model evolutions suitable to control the transverse beam dynamics. In particular we show how to control, in the quadrupole approximation to the beam--field interaction, both the focusing and the transverse oscillations of the beam, either together or independently.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Self dual models and mass generation in planar field theory

We analyse in three space-time dimensions, the connection between abelian self dual vector doublets and their counterparts containing both an explicit mass and a topological mass. Their correspondence is established in the lagrangian formalism using an operator approach as well as a path integral approach. A canonical hamiltonian analysis is presented, which also shows the equivalence with the lagrangian formalism. The implications of our results for bosonisation in three dimensions are discussed.Comment: 15 pages,Revtex, No figures; several changes; revised version to appear in Physical Review