Thermoelectric power of MgB2−x_{2-x}Bex_x

We investigated thermoelectric power $S(T)$ of MgB$_{2-x}$Be$_{x}$ ($x=0$, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.6). $S(T)$ decreases systematically with $x$, suggesting that the hole density increases. Our band calculation shows that the increase occurs in the $\sigma$-band. With the hole-doping, $T_{c}$ decreases. Implication of this phenomenon is discussed within the BCS framework. While the Mott formula explains only the linear part of $S(T)$ at low temperature, incorporation of electron-phonon interaction enables us to explain $S(T)$ over wide temperature range including the anomalous behavior at high temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The decay pi0 to gamma gamma to next to leading order in Chiral Perturbation Theory

The two photon decay width of the neutral pion is analyzed within the combined framework of Chiral Perturbation Theory and the 1/Nc expansion up to order p^6 and p^4 times 1/Nc in the decay amplitude. The eta' is explicitly included in the analysis. It is found that the decay width is enhanced by about 4.5% due to the isospin-breaking induced mixing of the pure U(3) states. This effect, which is of leading order in the low energy expansion, is shown to persist nearly unchanged at next to leading order. The chief prediction for the width with its estimated uncertainty is 8.10+-0.08 eV. This prediction at the 1% level makes the upcomming precision measurement of the decay width even more urgent. Observations on the eta and eta' can also be made, especially about their mixing, which is shown to be significantly affected by next to leading order corrections.Comment: 21 pages, two figure

S=−1S=-1 Meson-Baryon Unitarized Coupled Channel Chiral Perturbation Theory and the S01−S_{01}- Λ\Lambda(1405) and −Λ- \Lambda(1670) Resonances

The $s-$wave meson-baryon scattering is analyzed for the strangeness $S=-1$ and isospin I=0 sector in a Bethe-Salpeter coupled channel formalism incorporating Chiral Symmetry. Four channels have been considered: $\pi \Sigma$, $\bar K N$, $\eta \Lambda$ and $K \Xi$. The required input to solve the Bethe-Salpeter equation is taken from lowest order Chiral Perturbation Theory in a relativistic formalism. There appear undetermined low energy constants, as a consequence of the renormalization of the amplitudes, which are obtained from fits to the $\pi\Sigma\to\pi\Sigma$ mass-spectrum, to the elastic $\bar K N \to \bar K N$ and $\bar K N\to \pi \Sigma$ $t$--matrices and to the $K^- p \to \eta \Lambda$ cross section data. The position and residues of the complex poles in the second Riemann Sheet of the scattering amplitude determine masses, widths and branching ratios of the $S_{01}-$ $\Lambda$(1405) and $-\Lambda$(1670) resonances, in reasonable agreement with experiment. A good overall description of data, from $\pi \Sigma$ threshold up to 1.75 GeV, is achieved despite the fact that three-body channels have not been explicitly included.Comment: 23 pages, Latex, 10 Figures. In this revised version a new subsection 3.6 on Heavy Baryon Expansion and new references have been adde

Scalar meson and glueball decays within a effective chiral approach

We study the strong and electromagnetic decay properties of scalar mesons above 1 GeV within a chiral approach. The scalar-isoscalar states are treated as mixed states of quarkonia and glueball configurations. A fit to the experimental decay rates listed by the Particle Data group is performed to extract phenomenological constraints on the nature of the scalar resonances. A comparison to other theoretical approaches in the scalar meson sector is discussed.Comment: 13 pages, accepted for publication in PL

Ecosystem restoration strengthens pollination network resilience and function.

Land degradation results in declining biodiversity and the disruption of ecosystem functioning worldwide, particularly in the tropics. Vegetation restoration is a common tool used to mitigate these impacts and increasingly aims to restore ecosystem functions rather than species diversity. However, evidence from community experiments on the effect of restoration practices on ecosystem functions is scarce. Pollination is an important ecosystem function and the global decline in pollinators attenuates the resistance of natural areas and agro-environments to disturbances. Thus, the ability of pollination functions to resist or recover from disturbance (that is, the functional resilience) may be critical for ensuring a successful restoration process. Here we report the use of a community field experiment to investigate the effects of vegetation restoration, specifically the removal of exotic shrubs, on pollination. We analyse 64 plant-pollinator networks and the reproductive performance of the ten most abundant plant species across four restored and four unrestored, disturbed mountaintop communities. Ecosystem restoration resulted in a marked increase in pollinator species, visits to flowers and interaction diversity. Interactions in restored networks were more generalized than in unrestored networks, indicating a higher functional redundancy in restored communities. Shifts in interaction patterns had direct and positive effects on pollination, especially on the relative and total fruit production of native plants. Pollinator limitation was prevalent at unrestored sites only, where the proportion of flowers producing fruit increased with pollinator visitation, approaching the higher levels seen in restored plant communities. Our results show that vegetation restoration can improve pollination, suggesting that the degradation of ecosystem functions is at least partially reversible. The degree of recovery may depend on the state of degradation before restoration intervention and the proximity to pollinator source populations in the surrounding landscape. We demonstrate that network structure is a suitable indicator for pollination quality, highlighting the usefulness of interaction networks in environmental management

Phenomenology of eta-gamma and eta'-gamma transition form factors at large momentum transfer

I discuss the progress in our theoretical understanding of the eta-gamma and eta'-gamma transition form factors, including the recent data from CLEO and L3 at large momentum transfer, Q^2. The experimental data above Q^2=1 GeV^2 can be well described by the hard scattering approach if the distribution amplitudes for eta and eta' mesons are taken close to the asymptotic one. Particular attention is paid to the interpretation of the data in terms of properly defined eta-eta' mixing parameters. I also comment on the use and misuse of interpolation formulas for P-gamma and P-gamma^* transition form factors.Comment: 6 pages + 4 figures (using espcrc2.sty, feynmp.sty); Talk presented at conference PHOTON'99, Freiburg, May 199

Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction: A Typical/Concise Review

Nearly a recent century of work is divided to Nucleon-Nucleon (NN) interaction issue. We review some overall perspectives of NN interaction with a brief discussion about deuteron, general structure and symmetries of NN Lagrangian as well as equations of motion and solutions. Meanwhile, the main NN interaction models, as frameworks to build NN potentials, are reviewed concisely. We try to include and study almost all well-known potentials in a similar way, discuss more on various commonly used plain forms for two-nucleon interaction with an emphasis on the phenomenological and meson-exchange potentials as well as the constituent-quark potentials and new ones based on chiral effective field theory and working in coordinate-space mostly. The potentials are constructed in a way that fit NN scattering data, phase shifts, and are also compared in this way usually. An extra goal of this study is to start comparing various potentials forms in a unified manner. So, we also comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the models and potentials partly with reference to some relevant works and probable future studies.Comment: 85 pages, 5 figures, than the previous v3 edition, minor changes, and typos fixe

Five supernova survey galaxies in the southern hemisphere. I. Optical and near-infrared database

The determination of the supernova (SN) rate is based not only on the number of detected events, but also on the properties of the parent galaxy population. This is the first paper of a series aimed at obtaining new, refined, SN rates from a set of five SN surveys, by making use of a joint analysis of near-infrared (NIR) data. We describe the properties of the 3838 galaxies that were monitored for SNe events, including newly determined morphologies and their DENIS and POSS-II/UKST I, 2MASS and DENIS J and Ks and 2MASS H magnitudes. We have compared 2MASS, DENIS and POSS-II/UKST IJK magnitudes in order to find possible systematic photometric shifts in the measurements. The DENIS and POSS-II/UKST I band magnitudes show large discrepancies (mean absolute difference of 0.4 mag), mostly due to different spectral responses of the two instruments, with an important contribution (0.33 mag rms) from the large uncertainties in the photometric calibration of the POSS-II and UKST photographic plates. In the other wavebands, the limiting near infrared magnitude, morphology and inclination of the galaxies are the most influential factors which affect the determination of photometry of the galaxies. Nevertheless, no significant systematic differences have been found between of any pair of NIR magnitude measurements, except for a few percent of galaxies showing large discrepancies. This allows us to combine DENIS and 2MASS data for the J and Ks filters.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables, published in Astrophysics, Vol. 52, No. 1, 2009 (English translation of Astrofizika

Self energies of the pion and the delta isobar from the ^3He(e,e'pi^+)^3H reaction

In a kinematically complete experiment at the Mainz microtron MAMI, pion angular distributions of the $^3$He(e,e'$\pi^+)^3$H reaction have been measured in the excitation region of the $\Delta$ resonance to determine the longitudinal ($L$), transverse ($T$), and the $LT$ interference part of the differential cross section. The data are described only after introducing self-energy modifications of the pion and $\Delta$-isobar propagators. Using Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) to extrapolate the pion self energy as inferred from the measurement on the mass shell, we deduce a reduction of the $\pi^+$ mass of $\Delta m_{\pi^+} = (-1.7^{+ 1.7}_{- 2.1})$ MeV/c$^2$ in the neutron-rich nuclear medium at a density of $\rho = (0.057^{+ 0.085}_{- 0.057})$ fm$^{-3}$. Our data are consistent with the $\Delta$ self energy determined from measurements of $\pi^0$ photoproduction from $^4$He and heavier nuclei.Comment: Elsart, 12 pages and 4 figures, Correspondent: Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Achim Richter, [email protected], submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Spectral functions of isoscalar scalar and isovector electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon at two-loop order

We calculate the imaginary parts of the isoscalar scalar and isovector electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon up to two-loop order in chiral perturbation theory. Particular attention is paid on the correct behavior of Im $\sigma_N(t)$ and Im $G_{E,M}^V(t)$ at the two-pion threshold $t_0=4 m_\pi^2$ in connection with the non-relativistic 1/M-expansion. We recover the well-known strong enhancement near threshold originating from the nearby anomalous singularity at $t_c = 4m_\pi^2-m_\pi^4/M^2 = 3.98 m_\pi^2$. In the case of the scalar spectral function Im $\sigma_N(t)$ one finds a significant improvement in comparison to the lowest order one-loop result. Higher order $\pi\pi$-rescattering effects are however still necessary to close a remaining 20%-gap to the empirical scalar spectral function. The isovector electric and magnetic spectral functions Im $G_{E,M}^V(t)$ get additionally enhanced near threshold by the two-pion-loop contributions. After supplementing their two-loop results by a phenomenological $\rho$-meson exchange term one can reproduce the empirical isovector electric and magnetic spectral functions fairly well.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Physical Review