Global Alfven Wave Heating of the Magnetosphere of Young Stars

Excitation of a Global Alfven wave (GAW) is proposed as a viable mechanism to explain plasma heating in the magnetosphere of young stars. The wave and basic plasma parameters are compatible with the requirement that the dissipation length of GAWs be comparable to the distance between the shocked region at the star's surface and the truncation region in the accretion disk. A two-fluid magnetohydrodynamic plasma model is used in the analysis. A current carrying filament along magnetic field lines acts as a waveguide for the GAW. The current in the filament is driven by plasma waves along the magnetic field lines and/or by plasma crossing magnetic field lines in the truncated region of the disk of the accreting plasma. The conversion of a small fraction of the kinetic energy into GAW energy is sufficient to heat the plasma filament to observed temperatures.Comment: Submitted to ApJ, aheatf.tex, 2 figure

Tkachenko polarons in vortex lattices

We analyze the properties of impurities immersed in a vortex lattice formed by ultracold bosons in the mean field quantum Hall regime. In addition to the effects of a periodic lattice potential, the impurity is dressed by collective modes with parabolic dispersion (Tkachenko modes). We derive the effective polaron model, which contains a marginal impurity-phonon interaction. The polaron spectral function exhibits a Lorentzian broadening for arbitrarily small wave vectors even at zero temperature, in contrast with the result for optical or acoustic phonons. The anomalous damping of Tkachenko polarons could be detected experimentally using momentum-resolved spectroscopy.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Orthogonality catastrophe and Kondo effect in graphene

Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe in graphene, at energies close to the Dirac point, is analyzed. It is shown that, in clean systems, the orthogonality catastrophe is suppressed, due to the vanishing density of states at the Dirac point. In the presence of preexisting localized states at the Dirac energy, the orthogonality catastrophe shows similar features to those found in normal metals with a finite density of states at the Fermi level. The implications for the Kondo effect induced by magnetic impurities, and for the Fermi edge singularities in tunneling processes are also discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Gravitomagnetic Moments of the Fundamental Fields

The quadratic form of the Dirac equation in a Riemann spacetime yields a gravitational gyromagnetic ratio \kappa_S = 2 for the interaction of a Dirac spinor with curvature. A gravitational gyromagnetic ratio \kappa_S = 1 is also found for the interaction of a vector field with curvature. It is shown that the Dirac equation in a curved background can be obtained as the square--root of the corresponding vector field equation only if the gravitational gyromagnetic ratios are properly taken into account.Comment: 8 pages, RevTeX Style, no figures, changed presentation -- now restricted to fields of spin 0, 1/2 and 1 -- some references adde

Mass Generation from Lie Algebra Extensions

Applied to the electroweak interactions, the theory of Lie algebra extensions suggests a mechanism by which the boson masses are generated without resource to spontaneous symmetry breaking. It starts from a gauge theory without any additional scalar field. All the couplings predicted by the Weinberg-Salam theory are present, and a few others which are nevertheless consistent within the model.Comment: 11 pages; revtex; title and PACS have been changed; comments included in the manuscrip

Exact edge singularities and dynamical correlations in spin-1/2 chains

Exact formulas for the singularities of the dynamical structure factor, S^{zz}(q,omega), of the S=1/2 xxz spin chain at all q and any anisotropy and magnetic field in the critical regime are derived, expressing the exponents in terms of the phase shifts which are known exactly from the Bethe ansatz solution. We also study the long time asymptotics of the self-correlation function . Utilizing these results to supplement very accurate time-dependent Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) for short to moderate times, we calculate S^{zz}(q,omega) to very high precision.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, published versio