The electric dipole form factor of the nucleon

The electric dipole form factor of the nucleon stemming from the QCD $\bar{\theta}$ term is calculated in chiral perturbation theory in leading order. To this order, the form factor originates from the pion cloud. Its momentum-dependence is proportional to a non-derivative time-reversal-violating pion-nucleon coupling, and the scale for momentum variation--appearing, in particular, in the radius of the form factor--is the pion mass.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

P110 and P140 Cytadherence-Related Proteins Are Negative Effectors of Terminal Organelle Duplication in Mycoplasma genitalium

BACKGROUND:The terminal organelle is a complex structure involved in many aspects of the biology of mycoplasmas such as cell adherence, motility or cell division. Mycoplasma genitalium cells display a single terminal organelle and duplicate this structure prior to cytokinesis in a coordinated manner with the cell division process. Despite the significance of the terminal organelle in mycoplasma virulence, little is known about the mechanisms governing its duplication. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:In this study we describe the isolation of a mutant, named T192, with a transposon insertion close to the 3' end of the mg192 gene encoding for P110 adhesin. This mutant shows a truncated P110, low levels of P140 and P110 adhesins, a large number of non-motile cells and a high frequency of new terminal organelle formation. Further analyses revealed that the high rates of new terminal organelle formation in T192 cells are a direct consequence of the reduced levels of P110 and P140 rather than to the expression of a truncated P110. Consistently, the phenotype of the T192 mutant was successfully complemented by the reintroduction of the mg192 WT allele which restored the levels of P110 and P140 to those of the WT strain. Quantification of DAPI-stained DNA also showed that the increase in the number of terminal organelles in T192 cells is not accompanied by a higher DNA content, indicating that terminal organelle duplication does not trigger DNA replication in mycoplasmas. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:Our results demonstrate the existence of a mechanism regulating terminal organelle duplication in M. genitalium and strongly suggest the implication of P110 and P140 adhesins in this mechanism

The vector form factor of the pion from unitarity and analyticity: a model-independent approach

We study a model-independent parameterization of the vector pion form factor that arises from the constraints of analyticity and unitarity. Our description should be suitable up to sqrt(s) ~ 1.2 GeV and allows a model-independent determination of the mass of the rho(770) resonance, M(rho) = (775.1 +- 0.5) MeV. We analyse the experimental data on tau(-) -> pion(-) pion(0) neutrino(tau), in this framework, and its consequences on the low-energy observables worked out by chiral perturbation theory. An evaluation of the two-pion contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, a_muon, and to the fine structure constant, alpha(M(Z)^2), is also performed.Comment: 1+15 pages, 2 figure

Dynamical Generation of Hyperon Resonances

In this talk we report on how, using a chiral unitary approach for the meson--baryon interactions, two octets of $J^{\pi}=1/2^-$ baryon states and a singlet are generated dynamically, resulting in the case of strangeness $S=-1$ in two poles of the scattering matrix close to the nominal $\Lambda(1405)$ resonance. We suggest experiments which could show evidence for the existence of these states.Comment: Invited talk in the VIII International Conference on Hypernuclei and Strange Particle Physic

QCD chiral Lagrangian on the lattice, strong coupling expansion and Ward identities with Wilson fermions

We discuss a general strategy to compute the coefficients of the QCD chiral Lagrangian using lattice QCD with Wilson fermions. This procedure requires the introduction of a lattice chiral Lagrangian as an intermediate step in the calculation. The QCD chiral Lagrangian is then obtained by expanding the lattice effective theory in increasing powers of the lattice spacing and the external momenta. In order to investigate the consequences of the chiral symmetry breaking induced by the Wilson term, we study the lattice chiral Lagrangian at the leading order of the strong coupling and large $N$ expansion. We show that the effects of the Wilson term can be conveniently taken into account, in the lattice effective theory, by a suitable renormalization procedure. In particular, we show that, at the leading order of the strong coupling and large N expansion, the chiral symmetry is exactly recovered on the lattice provided that the bare quark mass and the lattice operators are properly renormalized.Comment: 45 pages, no figures. Latex fil

Chiral perturbation theory

The main elements and methods of chiral perturbation theory, the effective field theory of the Standard Model below the scale of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, are summarized. Applications to the interactions of mesons and baryons at low energies are reviewed, with special emphasis on developments of the last three years. Among the topics covered are the strong, electromagnetic and semileptonic weak interactions of mesons at and beyond next--to--leading order in the chiral expansion, nonleptonic weak interactions of mesons, virtual photon corrections and the meson--baryon system. The discussion is limited to processes at zero temperature, for infinite volume and with at most one baryon.Comment: 84 pages, Latex, 11 PostScript figures (in separate file) embedded with epsfig.sty, complete ps file (compressed, uuencoded, 0.6 MB) available via email on request; to appear in Progr. Part. Nucl. Phys., vol. 3

The Electric Dipole Form Factor of the Nucleon in Chiral Perturbation Theory to Sub-leading Order

The electric dipole form factor (EDFF) of the nucleon stemming from the QCD theta term and from the quark color-electric dipole moments is calculated in chiral perturbation theory to sub-leading order. This is the lowest order in which the isoscalar EDFF receives a calculable, non-analytic contribution from the pion cloud. In the case of the theta term, the expected lower bound on the deuteron electric dipole moment is |d_d| > 1.4 10^(-4) \theta e fm. The momentum dependence of the isovector EDFF is proportional to a non-derivative time-reversal-violating pion-nucleon coupling, and the scale for momentum variation ---appearing, in particular, in the radius of the form factor--- is the pion mass.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

K -> 3 pi Final State Interactions at NLO in CHPT and Cabibbo's Proposal to Measure a_0-a_2

We present the analytical results for the K -> 3 pi final state interactions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in CHPT. We also study the recent Cabibbo's proposal to measure the pi-pi scattering lenghts combination a_0-a_2 from the cusp effect in the pi^0-pi^0 energy spectrum at threshold for K^+ -> pi^0 pi^0 pi^+ and K_L -> pi^0 pi^0 pi^0$, and give the relevant formulas to describe it at NLO. For that, we use the NLO CHPT expression to fit the real part of K -> 3 pi to data while the pi-pi scattering lenghts are treated non-perturbatively. Using them, we make a quantitative estimate of the theoretical uncertaintity of the a_0-a_2 determination at NLO in our approach and obtain that it is not smaller than 5 % if added quadratically and 7 % if linearly for K^+ -> pi^0 pi^0 pi^+. One gets similar theoretical uncertainties if the neutral K_L -> pi^0 pi^0 pi^0 decay data below threshold are used instead. For this decay, there are very large theoretical uncertainties above threshold due to cancellations and data above threshold cannot be used to get the scattering lenghts. All the numbers we present are in the isospin limit apart of two-pion phase space factors which are physical. We compare our results for the cusp effect with Cabibbo and Isidori's results and discuss the differences and agreements. We also comment on the apperance of the singularity at the K -> 3 pi pseudo-threshold s=(m_K-m_pi)^2 in the discontinuity that defines the cusp.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures. v2=v3 Added the full contributions to the cusp from the real part of the discontinuity. v4 Improved text. Matches published versio

The Nucleon Electric Dipole Form Factor From Dimension-Six Time-Reversal Violation

We calculate the electric dipole form factor of the nucleon that arises as a low-energy manifestation of time-reversal violation in quark-gluon interactions of effective dimension 6: the quark electric and chromoelectric dipole moments, and the gluon chromoelectric dipole moment. We use the framework of two-flavor chiral perturbation theory to one loop