Anomalous Viscosity of an Expanding Quark-Gluon Plasma

We argue that an expanding quark-gluon plasma has an anomalous viscosity, which arises from interactions with dynamically generated color fields. We derive an expression for the anomalous viscosity in the turbulent plasma domain and apply it to the hydrodynamic expansion phase, when the quark-gluon plasma is near equilibrium. The anomalous viscosity dominates over the collisional viscosity for weak coupling and not too late times. This effect may provide an explanation for the apparent ``nearly perfect'' liquidity of the matter produced in nuclear collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider without the assumption that it is a strongly coupled state.Comment: Final version accepted for publicatio

Momentum dependence of the energy gap in the superconducting state of optimally doped Bi2(Sr,R)2CuOy (R=La and Eu)

The energy gap of optimally doped Bi2(Sr,R)2CuOy (R=La and Eu) was probed by angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) using a vacuum ultraviolet laser (photon energy 6.994 eV) or He I resonance line (21.218 eV) as photon source. The results show that the gap around the node at sufficiently low temperatures can be well described by a monotonic d-wave gap function for both samples and the gap of the R=La sample is larger reflecting the higher Tc. However, an abrupt deviation from the d-wave gap function and an opposite R dependence for the gap size were observed around the antinode, which represent a clear disentanglement between the antinodal pseudogap and the nodal superconducting gap.Comment: Submitted as the proceedings of LT2

A simple SO(10) GUT in five dimensions

A simple supersymmetric SO(10) GUT in five dimensions is considered. The fifth dimension is compactified on the $S^1/(Z_2\times Z_2^\prime)$ orbifold possessing two inequivalent fixed points. In our setup, all matter and Higgs multiplets reside on one brane (PS brane) where the original SO(10) gauge group is broken down to the Pati-Salam (PS) gauge group, SU(4)_c \timesSU(2)_L \times SU(2)$_R$, by the orbifold boundary condition, while only the SO(10) gauge multiplet resides in the bulk. The further breaking of the PS symmetry to the Standard Model gauge group is realized by Higgs multiplets on the PS brane as usual in four dimensional models. Proton decay is fully suppressed. In our simple setup, the gauge coupling unification is realized after incorporating threshold corrections of Kaluza-Klein modes. When supersymmetry is assumed to be broken on the other brane, supersymmetry breaking is transmitted to the PS brane through the gaugino mediation with the bulk gauge multiplet.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, some errors have been corrected (no change in conclusions

Spatial Distributions of Cold and Warm Interstellar Dust in M101 Resolved with AKARI/Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS)

The nearby face-on spiral galaxy M101 has been observed with the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard AKARI. The far-infrared four-band images reveal fine spatial structures of M101, which include global spiral patterns, giant HII regions embedded in outer spiral arms, and a bar-like feature crossing the center. The spectral energy distribution of the whole galaxy shows the presence of the cold dust component (18 K) in addition to the warm dust component (55 K). The distribution of the cold dust is mostly concentrated near the center, and exhibits smoothly distributed over the entire extent of the galaxy, whereas the distribution of the warm dust indicates some correlation with the spiral arms, and has spotty structures such as four distinctive bright spots in the outer disk in addition to a bar-like feature near the center tracing the CO intensity map. The star-formation activity of the giant HII regions that spatially correspond to the former bright spots is found to be significantly higher than that of the rest of the galaxy. The latter warm dust distribution implies that there are significant star-formation activities in the entire bar filled with molecular clouds. Unlike our Galaxy, M101 is a peculiar normal galaxy with extraordinary active star-forming regions.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ AKARI special issu

Solving problems of 4D minimal SO(10) model in a warped extra dimension

The minimal renormalizable supersymmetric SO(10) model, an SO(10) framework with only one 10 and one 126 Higgs multiplets in the Yukawa sector, is attractive because of its high predictive power for the neutrino oscillation data. However, this model suffers from problems related to running of gauge couplings. The gauge coupling unification may be spoiled due to the presence of Higgs multiplets much lighter than the grand unification (GUT) scale. In addition, the gauge couplings blow up around the GUT scale because of the presence of Higgs multiplets of large representations. We consider the minimal SO(10) model in the warped extra dimension and find a possibility to solve these problems.Comment: 12 pages, no figure; version to appear in Phys. Rev.