The lattice gluon propagator in renormalizable ξ\xi gauges

We study the SU(3) gluon propagator in renormalizable $R_\xi$ gauges implemented on a symmetric lattice with a total volume of (3.25 fm)$^4$ for values of the guage fixing parameter up to $\xi=0.5$. As expected, the longitudinal gluon dressing function stays constant at its tree-level value $\xi$. Similar to the Landau gauge, the transverse $R_\xi$ gauge gluon propagator saturates at a non-vanishing value in the deep infrared for all values of $\xi$ studied. We compare with very recent continuum studies and perform a simple analysis of the found saturation with a dynamically generated effective gluon mass.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Damage-based fracture with electro-magnetic coupling

Acoupled elastic and electro-magnetic analysis is proposed including finite displacements and damage-based fracture. Piezo-electric terms are considered and resulting partial differential equations include a non-classical wave equation due to the specific constitutive law. The resulting wave equation is constrained and, in contrast with the traditional solutions of the decoupled classical electromagnetic wave equations, the constraint is directly included in the analysis. The absence of free current density allows the expression of the magnetic field rate as a function of the electric field and therefore, under specific circumstances, removal of the corresponding magnetic degrees-offreedom. A Lagrange multiplier field is introduced to exactly enforce the divergence constraint, forming a three-field variational formulation (required to include thewave constraint). No vector-potential is required or mentioned, eliminating the need for gauges. The classical boundary conditions of electromagnetism are specialized and a boundary condition involving the electric field is obtained. The spatial discretization makes use of mixed bubble-based (of the MINI type) finite elementswith displacement, electric field and Lagrange multiplier degrees-of-freedom. Three verification examples are presented with very good qualitative conclusions and mesh-independence

Gluons at finite temperature

The gluon propagator is investigated at finite temperature via lattice simulations. In particular, we discuss its interpretation as a massive-type bosonic propagator. Moreover, we compute the corresponding spectral density and study the violation of spectral positivity. Finally, we explore the dependence of the gluon propagator on the phase of the Polyakov loop

Universality class for bootstrap percolation with m=3m=3 on the cubic lattice

We study the $m=3$ bootstrap percolation model on a cubic lattice, using Monte Carlo simulation and finite-size scaling techniques. In bootstrap percolation, sites on a lattice are considered occupied (present) or vacant (absent) with probability $p$ or $1-p$, respectively. Occupied sites with less than $m$ occupied first-neighbours are then rendered unoccupied; this culling process is repeated until a stable configuration is reached. We evaluate the percolation critical probability, $p_c$, and both scaling powers, $y_p$ and $y_h$, and, contrarily to previous calculations, our results indicate that the model belongs to the same universality class as usual percolation (i.e., $m=0$). The critical spanning probability, $R(p_c)$, is also numerically studied, for systems with linear sizes ranging from L=32 up to L=480: the value we found, $R(p_c)=0.270 \pm 0.005$, is the same as for usual percolation with free boundary conditions.Comment: 11 pages; 4 figures; to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.