1,159 research outputs found
Hadronic Atoms and Effective Interactions
We examine the problem of hadronic atom energy shifts using the technique of
effective interactions and demonstrate equivalence with the conventional
quantum mechanical approach.Comment: 22 page latex file with 2 figure
An all-optical trap for a gram-scale mirror
We report on a stable optical trap suitable for a macroscopic mirror, wherein
the dynamics of the mirror are fully dominated by radiation pressure. The
technique employs two frequency-offset laser fields to simultaneously create a
stiff optical restoring force and a viscous optical damping force. We show how
these forces may be used to optically trap a free mass without introducing
thermal noise; and we demonstrate the technique experimentally with a 1 gram
mirror. The observed optical spring has an inferred Young's modulus of 1.2 TPa,
20% stiffer than diamond. The trap is intrinsically cold and reaches an
effective temperature of 0.8 K, limited by technical noise in our apparatus.Comment: Major revision. Replacement is version that appears in Phy. Rev.
Lett. 98, 150802 (2007
Deeply bound pionic states and the effective pion mass in nuclear systems
We show that the s-wave pion-nuclear potential which reproduces the deeply
bound pionic states in Pb, recently discovered at GSI, is remarkably close to
the one constructed directly from low energy theorems based on chiral symmetry.
Converting this information into an effective pion mass we find
in the center of the Pb nucleus, and
in symmetric nuclear matter.Comment: 6 pages, TeX, 2 figures in ps , submitted to Phys. Lett.
Adaptive thermal compensation of test masses in advanced LIGO
As the first generation of laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors
near operation, research and development has begun on increasing the
instrument's sensitivity while utilizing the existing infrastructure. In the
Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), significant
improvements are being planned for installation in ~2007, increasing strain
sensitivity through improved suspensions and test mass substrates, active
seismic isolation, and higher input laser power. Even with the highest quality
optics available today, however, finite absorption of laser power within
transmissive optics, coupled with the tremendous amount of optical power
circulating in various parts of the interferometer, result in critical
wavefront deformations which would cripple the performance of the instrument.
Discussed is a method of active wavefront correction via direct thermal
actuation on optical elements of the interferometer. A simple nichrome heating
element suspended off the face of an affected optic will, through radiative
heating, remove the gross axisymmetric part of the original thermal distortion.
A scanning heating laser will then be used to remove any remaining
non-axisymmetric wavefront distortion, generated by inhomogeneities in the
substrate's absorption, thermal conductivity, etc. A proof-of-principle
experiment has been constructed at MIT, selected data of which are presented.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit
Stimuli-Responsive Codelivery of Oligonucleotides and Drugs by Self-Assembled Peptide Nanoparticles
Ever more emerging combined treatments exploiting synergistic effects of drug combinations demand smart, responsive codelivery carriers to reveal their full potential. In this study, a multifunctional stimuli-responsive amphiphilic peptide was designed and synthesized to self-assemble into nanoparticles capable of co-bearing and -releasing hydrophobic drugs and antisense oligonucleotides for combined therapies. The rational design was based on a hydrophobic l-tryptophan-d-leucine repeating unit derived from a truncated sequence of gramicidin A (gT), to entrap hydrophobic cargo, which is combined with a hydrophilic moiety of histidines to provide electrostatic affinity to nucleotides. Stimuli-responsiveness was implemented by linking the hydrophobic and hydrophilic sequence through an artificial amino acid bearing a disulfide functional group (H3SSgT). Stimuli-responsive peptides self-assembled in spherical nanoparticles in sizes (100–200 nm) generally considered as preferable for drug delivery applications. Responsive peptide nanoparticles revealed notable nucleotide condensing abilities while maintaining the ability to load hydrophobic cargo. The disulfide cleavage site introduced in the peptide sequence induced responsiveness to physiological concentrations of reducing agent, serving to release the incorporated molecules. Furthermore, the peptide nanoparticles, singly loaded or coloaded with boron-dipyrromethene (BODIPY) and/or antisense oligonucleotides, were efficiently taken up by cells. Such amphiphilic peptides that led to noncytotoxic, reduction-responsive nanoparticles capable of codelivering hydrophobic and nucleic acid payloads simultaneously provide potential toward combined treatment strategies to exploit synergistic effects
Current status of the CLIO project
CLIO (Cryogenic Laser Interferometer Observatory) is a Japanese gravitational
wave detector project. One of the main purposes of CLIO is to demonstrate
thermal-noise suppression by cooling mirrors for a future Japanese project,
LCGT (Large-scale Cryogenic Gravitational Telescope). The CLIO site is in
Kamioka mine, as is LCGT. The progress of CLIO between 2005 and 2007 (room- and
cryogenic-temperature experiments) is introduced in this article. In a
room-temperature experiment, we made efforts to improve the sensitivity. The
current best sensitivity at 300 K is about
around 400 Hz. Below 20 Hz, the strain (not displacement) sensitivity is
comparable to that of LIGO, although the baselines of CLIO are 40-times shorter
(CLIO: 100m, LIGO: 4km). This is because seismic noise is extremely small in
Kamioka mine. We operated the interferometer at room temperature for
gravitational wave observations. We obtained 86 hours of data. In the cryogenic
experiment, it was confirmed that the mirrors were sufficiently cooled (14 K).
However, we found that the radiation shield ducts transferred 300K radiation
into the cryostat more effectively than we had expected. We observed that noise
caused by pure aluminum wires to suspend a mirror was suppressed by cooling the
mirror.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures. Amaldi7 proceedings, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.
(accepted
Perturbative framework for the pi(+)pi(-) atom
The perturbative framework is developed for the calculation of the pi(+)pi(-)
atom characteristics on the basis of the field-theoretical Bethe-Salpeter
approach. A closed expression for the first-order correction to the pi(+)pi(-)
atom lifetime has been obtained.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX-fil
Chiral Perturbation Theory and the pp -> pp pi0 Reaction Near Threshold
A chiral-perturbative consideration of the near-threshold pp -> pp pi0
reaction indicates that the pion-rescattering term has a substantial energy and
momentum dependence. The existing calculations that incorporate this dependence
give pion rescattering contributions significantly larger than those of the
conventional treatment, and this enhanced rescattering term interferes
destructively with the one-body impulse term, leading to theoretical cross
sections that are much smaller than the observed values. However, since the
existing calculations are based on coordinate-space representation, they
involve a number of simplifying assumptions about the energy-momentum flow in
the rescattering diagram, even though the delicate interplay between the
one-body and two-body terms makes it desirable to avoid these kinematical
assumptions. We carry out here a momentum-space calculation that retains the
energy-momentum dependence of the vertices as predicted by chiral perturbation
theory. Our improved treatment increases the rescattering amplitude by a factor
of 3 over the value obtained in the r-space calculations. The pp -> pp pi0
transition amplitude, which is now dominated by the rescattering term, leads to
the cross section much larger than what was reported in the approximate r-space
calculations. Thus, the extremely small cross sections obtained in the previous
chiral perturbative treatments of this reaction should be considered as an
accidental consequence of the approximations employed rather than a general
feature.Comment: 25 pages,REVTEX, 5 ps figure
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