Non-uniform convergence of two-photon decay rates for excited atomic states

Two-photon decay rates in simple atoms such as hydrogenlike systems represent rather interesting fundamental problems in atomic physics. The sum of the energies of the two emitted photons has to fulfill an energy conservation condition, the decay takes place via intermediate virtual states, and the total decay rate is obtained after an integration over the energy of one of the emitted photons. Here, we investigate cases with a virtual state having an energy intermediate between the initial and the final state of the decay process, and we show that due to non-uniform convergence, only a careful treatment of the singularities infinitesimally displaced from the photon integration contour leads to consistent and convergent results.Comment: 3 pages; LaTe

Nicht nur Schall und Rauch:Zum Umgang mit Namen im Biologieunterricht

Namen sind Wörter, die Individuen bezeichnen. Das Namengeben hat im täglichen Leben emotionale und Beziehungen stiftende Bedeutung. Dieses wird im Unterricht viel zu wenig beachtet. Die Namen für die Organismen und Organismengruppen können anschaulich sein und dann das Lernen der biologischen Sachverhalte fördern, aber auch behindern. Im Beitrag wird diese Frage anhand empirischer Befunde erörtert und es werden daraus Vorschläge für den Biologieunterricht abgeleitet

Dynamics and symmetries of a field partitioned by an accelerated frame

The canonical evolution and symmetry generators are exhibited for a Klein-Gordon (K-G) system which has been partitioned by an accelerated coordinate frame into a pair of subsystems. This partitioning of the K-G system is conveyed to the canonical generators by the eigenfunction property of the Minkowski Bessel (M-B) modes. In terms of the M-B degrees of freedom, which are unitarily related to those of the Minkowski plane waves, a near complete diagonalization of these generators can be realized.Comment: 14 pages, PlainTex. Related papers on accelerated frames available at http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~gerlac

Fitted HBT radii versus space-time variances in flow-dominated models

The inability of otherwise successful dynamical models to reproduce the ``HBT radii'' extracted from two-particle correlations measured at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is known as the ``RHIC HBT Puzzle.'' Most comparisons between models and experiment exploit the fact that for Gaussian sources the HBT radii agree with certain combinations of the space-time widths of the source which can be directly computed from the emission function, without having to evaluate, at significant expense, the two-particle correlation function. We here study the validity of this approach for realistic emission function models some of which exhibit significant deviations from simple Gaussian behaviour. By Fourier transforming the emission function we compute the 2-particle correlation function and fit it with a Gaussian to partially mimic the procedure used for measured correlation functions. We describe a novel algorithm to perform this Gaussian fit analytically. We find that for realistic hydrodynamic models the HBT radii extracted from this procedure agree better with the data than the values previously extracted from the space-time widths of the emission function. Although serious discrepancies between the calculated and measured HBT radii remain, we show that a more ``apples-to-apples'' comparison of models with data can play an important role in any eventually successful theoretical description of RHIC HBT data.Comment: 12 pages, 16 color figure

Equation of State and Collective Dynamics

This talk summarizes the present status of a program to quantitatively relate data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on collective expansion flow to the Equation of State (EOS) of hot and dense strongly interacting matter, including the quark-gluon plasma and the quark-hadron phase transition. The limits reached with the present state of the art and the next steps required to make further progress will both be discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 two-part figures. Invited talk given at the 5th International Conference on the Physics and Astrophysics of Quark-Gluon Plasma (ICPAQGP 2005), Kolkata (India), Feb 8-12, 2005. Proceedings to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Jan-E Alam et al., eds.

CDF Multi-Muon Events and Singlet Extensions of the MSSM

We discuss a generalization of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model in the form of three additional singlet superfields, which would explain the essential features of the CDF multi-muon events presented recently: a large production cross section of ~ 100 pb originates from the production of a CP-odd scalar A with a mass in the 70 - 80 GeV range and a large value of tan(beta) ~ 40. The CP-odd scalar A decays dominantly into CP-odd and CP-even scalars a_1 and h_1, which generate decay cascades h_1 -> 2 h_2 -> 4 a_2 -> 8 tau-leptons, and a_1 -> h_1 a_2 with h_1 decaying as above. The decay a_2 -> tau+ tau- is slow, leading to a lifetime of O(20) ps. The phenomenology of the model differs from similar scenarios presented before in that one of the two cascades leads to 10 instead of 8 tau-leptons, and additional production processes like associate A production with b b-bar pairs are relevant.Comment: 10 pages, comments on the required total cross section added, to appear in MPL

A Problematic Set of Two-Loop Self-Energy Corrections

We investigate a specific set of two-loop self-energy corrections involving squared decay rates and point out that their interpretation is highly problematic. The corrections cannot be interpreted as radiative energy shifts in the usual sense. Some of the problematic corrections find a natural interpretation as radiative nonresonant corrections to the natural line shape. They cannot uniquely be associated with one and only one atomic level. While the problematic corrections are rather tiny when expressed in units of frequency (a few Hertz for hydrogenic P levels) and do not affect the reliability of quantum electrodynamics at the current level of experimental accuracy, they may be of importance for future experiments. The problems are connected with the limitations of the so-called asymptotic-state approximation which means that atomic in- and out-states in the S-matrix are assumed to have an infinite lifetime.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures (New J. Phys., in press, submitted 28th May

The "topological" charge for the finite XX quantum chain

It is shown that an operator (in general non-local) commutes with the Hamiltonian describing the finite XX quantum chain with certain non-diagonal boundary terms. In the infinite volume limit this operator gives the "topological" charge.Comment: 5 page

Evolution of pion HBT radii from RHIC to LHC -- Predictions from ideal hydrodynamics

We present hydrodynamic predictions for the charged pion HBT radii for a range of initial conditions covering those presumably reached in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC. We study central (b=0) and semi-central (b=7fm) collisions and show the expected increase of the HBT radii and their azimuthal oscillations. The predicted trends in the oscillation amplitudes reflect a change of the final source shape from out-of-plane to in-plane deformation as the initial entropy density is increased.Comment: 6 pages, incl. 5 figures. Contribution to the CERN Theory Institute Workshop "Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC -- Last Call for Predictions", CERN, 14 May - 8 June 2007, to appear in J. Phys.