Anomalous acoustic reflection on a sliding interface or a shear band

We study the reflection of an acoustic plane wave from a steadily sliding planar interface with velocity strengthening friction or a shear band in a confined granular medium. The corresponding acoustic impedance is utterly different from that of the static interface. In particular, the system being open, the energy of an in-plane polarized wave is no longer conserved, the work of the external pulling force being partitioned between frictional dissipation and gain (of either sign) of coherent acoustic energy. Large values of the friction coefficient favor energy gain, while velocity strengthening tends to suppress it. An interface with infinite elastic contrast (one rigid medium) and V-independent (Coulomb) friction exhibits spontaneous acoustic emission, as already shown by M. Nosonovsky and G.G. Adams (Int. J. Ing. Sci., {\bf 39}, 1257 (2001)). But this pathology is cured by any finite elastic contrast, or by a moderately large V-strengthening of friction. We show that (i) positive gain should be observable for rough-on-flat multicontact interfaces (ii) a sliding shear band in a granular medium should give rise to sizeable reflection, which opens a promising possibility for the detection of shear localization.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Effective theory of the Delta(1232) in Compton scattering off the nucleon

We formulate a new power-counting scheme for a chiral effective field theory of nucleons, pions, and Deltas. This extends chiral perturbation theory into the Delta-resonance region. We calculate nucleon Compton scattering up to next-to-leading order in this theory. The resultant description of existing $\gamma$p cross section data is very good for photon energies up to about 300 MeV. We also find reasonable numbers for the spin-independent polarizabilities $\alpha_p$ and $\beta_p$.Comment: 29 pp, 9 figs. Minor revisions. To be published in PR

Study of a Large NaI(Tl) Crystal

Using a narrow band positron beam, the response of a large high-resolution NaI(Tl) crystal to an incident positron beam was measured. It was found that nuclear interactions cause the appearance of additional peaks in the low energy tail of the deposited energy spectrum

Problems with Extraction of the Nucleon to Delta(1232) Photonic Amplitudes

We investigate the model dependence and the importance of choice of database in extracting the {\it physical} nucleon-Delta(1232) electromagnetic transition amplitudes, of interest to QCD and baryon structure, from the pion photoproduction observables. The model dependence is found to be much smaller than the range of values obtained when different datasets are fitted. In addition, some inconsistencies in the current database are discovered, and their affect on the extracted transition amplitudes is discussed.Comment: Revtex, 2 figs., submitted to PR

Low-energy Compton scattering on the nucleon and sum rules

The Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn and Baldin-Lapidus sum rules are evaluated in the dressed K-matrix model for photon-induced reactions on the nucleon. For the first time the sum $\alpha+\beta$ of the electric and magnetic polarisabilities and the forward spin polarisability $\gamma_0$ are explicitly calculated in two alternative ways -- from the sum rules and from the low-energy expansion of the real Compton scattering amplitude -- within the {\em same} framework. The two methods yield compatible values for $\alpha+\beta$ but differ somewhat for $\gamma_0$. Consistency between the two ways of determining the polarisabilities is a measure of the extent to which basic symmetries of the model are obeyed.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, using REVTeX. More concise version, results unchanged. To appear in Phys. Rev.

High Purity Pion Beam at TRIUMF

An extension of the TRIUMF M13 low-energy pion channel designed to suppress positrons based on an energy-loss technique is described. A source of beam channel momentum calibration from the decay pi+ --> e+ nu is also described.Comment: 5 page

On the extraction of electromagnetic properties of the Delta(1232) excitation from pion photoproduction

Several methods for the treatment of pion photoproduction in the region of the Delta(1232) resonance are discussed, in particular the effective Lagrangian approach and the speed plot analysis are compared to a dynamical treatment. As a main topic, we discuss the extraction of the genuine resonance parts of the magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole multipoles of the electromagnetic excitation of the resonance. To this end, we try to relate the various values for the ratio R_{EM} of the E2 to M1 multipole excitation strengths for the Delta(1232) resonance as extracted by the different methods to corresponding ratios of a dynamical model. Moreover, it is confirmed that all methods for extracting resonance properties suffer from an unitary ambiguity which is due to some phenomenological contributions entering the models.Comment: 22 pages revtex including 7 postscript figure

Field theory of nucleon to higher-spin baryon transitions

We discuss the nucleon to higher-spin $N$- and $\Delta$-resonance transitions by pions and photons. The higher-spin baryons are described by Rarita-Schwinger fields and, as we argue, this imposes a stringent consistency requirement on the form of the couplings. Popular $\pi N\Delta$ and $\gamma N\Delta$ couplings are inconsistent from this point of view. We construct examples of consistent interactions with the same nonrelativistic limit as the conventional ones.Comment: 5 pages, Revtex, 1 PostScript figure; published versio

Fixed-t subtracted dispersion relations for Compton scattering off the nucleon

We present fixed-$t$ subtracted dispersion relations for Compton scattering off the nucleon at energies $E_\gamma \leq$ 500 MeV, as a formalism to extract the nucleon polarizabilities with a minimum of model dependence. The subtracted dispersion integrals are mainly saturated by $\pi N$ intermediate states in the $s$-channel $\gamma N \to \pi N \to \gamma N$ and $\pi \pi$ intermediate states in the $t$-channel $\gamma \gamma \to \pi \pi \to N \bar N$. For the subprocess $\gamma \gamma \to \pi \pi$, we construct a unitarized amplitude and find a good description of the available data. We show results for Compton scattering using the subtracted dispersion relations and display the sensitivity on the scalar polarizability difference $\alpha - \beta$ and the backward spin polarizability $\gamma_\pi$, which enter directly as fit parameters in the present formalism

Baryon Charge Radii and Quadrupole Moments in the 1/N_c Expansion: The 3-Flavor Case

We develop a straightforward method to compute charge radii and quadrupole moments for baryons both with and without strangeness, when the number of QCD color charges is N_c. The minimal assumption of the single-photon exchange ansatz implies that only two operators are required to describe these baryon observables. Our results are presented so that SU(3) flavor and isospin symmetry breaking can be introduced according to any desired specification, although we also present results obtained from two patterns suggested by the quark model with gluon exchange interactions. The method also permits to extract a number of model-independent relations; a sample is r^2_Lambda / r_n^2 = 3/(N_c+3), independent of SU(3) symmetry breaking.Comment: 30 pages, no figures, REVTeX