Effective Field Theory of pure Gravity and the Renormalization Group

The general structure of the renormalization group equations for the low energy effective field theory formulation of pure gravity is presented. The solution of these equations takes a particular simple form if the mass scale of the effective theory is much smaller than the Planck mass (a possibility compatible with the renormalization of the effective theory). A theory with just one free renormalized parameter is obtained when contributions suppressed by inverse powers of the Planck mass are neglected.Comment: latex, 9 pages, minor correction, version publishe

The Beginning of the End of the Anthropic Principle

We argue that if string theory as an approach to the fundamental laws of physics is correct, then there is almost no room for anthropic arguments in cosmology. The quark and lepton masses and interaction strengths are determined.Comment: 12 page

Renormalization of the one-pion-exchange interaction

A renormalization scheme for the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction based on a subtracted T-matrix equation is proposed and applied to the one-pion-exchange potential supplemented by contact interactions. The singlet and triplet scattering lengths are given to fix the renormalized strengths of the contact interactions. With only one scaling parameter ($\mu$), the results show an overall very good agreement with neutron-proton data, particularly for the observables related to the triplet channel. The agreement is qualitative in the $^1S_0$ channel. Between the low-energy NN observables we have examined, the mixing parameter of the $^3S_1-^3D_1$ states is the most sensible to the scale. The scheme is renormalization group invariant for $\mu\to\infty$.Comment: 16 pages, 4 eps figures, to appear in Nuclear Physics

Do β-Defensins and Other Antimicrobial Peptides Play a Role in Neuroimmune Function and Neurodegeneration?

It is widely accepted that the brain responds to mechanical trauma and development of most neurodegenerative diseases with an inflammatory sequelae that was once thought exclusive to systemic immunity. Mostly cationic peptides, such as the β-defensins, originally assigned an antimicrobial function are now recognized as mediators of both innate and adaptive immunity. Herein supporting evidence is presented for the hypothesis that neuropathological changes associated with chronic disease conditions of the CNS involve abnormal expression and regulatory function of specific antimicrobial peptides. It is also proposed that these alterations exacerbate proinflammatory conditions within the brain that ultimately potentiate the neurodegenerative process

A Chiral Effective Lagrangian for Nuclei

An effective hadronic lagrangian consistent with the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics and intended for applications to finite-density systems is constructed. The degrees of freedom are (valence) nucleons, pions, and the low-lying non-Goldstone bosons, which account for the intermediate-range nucleon-nucleon interactions and conveniently describe the nonvanishing expectation values of nucleon bilinears. Chiral symmetry is realized nonlinearly, with a light scalar meson included as a chiral singlet to describe the mid-range nucleon-nucleon attraction. The low-energy electromagnetic structure of the nucleon is described within the theory using vector-meson dominance, so that external form factors are not needed. The effective lagrangian is expanded in powers of the fields and their derivatives, with the terms organized using Georgi's ``naive dimensional analysis''. Results are presented for finite nuclei and nuclear matter at one-baryon-loop order, using the single-nucleon structure determined within the model. Parameters obtained from fits to nuclear properties show that naive dimensional analysis is a useful principle and that a truncation of the effective lagrangian at the first few powers of the fields and their derivatives is justified.Comment: 43 pages, REVTeX 3.0 with epsf.sty, plus 12 figure

Many-body Fock sectors in Wick-Cutkosky model

In the model where two massive scalar particles interact by the ladder exchanges of massless scalar particles (Wick-Cutkosky model), we study in light-front dynamics the contributions of different Fock sectors (with increasing number of exchanged particles) to full normalization integral and electromagnetic form factor. It turns out that two-body sector always dominates. At small coupling constant $\alpha\ll 1$, its contribution is close to 100%. It decreases with increase of $\alpha$. For maximal value $\alpha=2\pi$, corresponding to the zero bound state mass, two-body sector contributes to the normalization integral 64%, whereas the three-body contribution is 26% and the sum of all higher contributions from four- to infinite-body sectors is 10%. Contributions to the form factor from different Fock sectors fall off faster for asymptotically large $Q^2$, when the number of particles in the Fock sectors becomes larger. So, asymptotic behavior of the form factor is determined by the two-body Fock sector.Comment: 36 pages, 16 figure

The Proton Spin in the Chiral Bag Model : Casimir Contribution and Cheshire Cat Principle

The flavor singlet axial charge has been a source of study in the last years due to its relation to the so called {\it Proton Spin Problem}. The relevant flavor singlet axial current is anomalous, i.e., its divergence contains a piece which is the celebrated $U_A(1)$ anomaly. This anomaly is intimately associated with the $\eta^\prime$ meson, which gets its mass from it. When the gauge degrees of freedom of QCD are confined within a volume as is presently understood, the $U_A(1)$ anomaly is known to induce color anomaly leading to "leakage" of the color out of the confined volume (or bag). For consistency of the theory, this anomaly should be canceled by a boundary term. This ``color boundary term" inherits part or most of the dynamics of the volume (i.e., QCD). In this paper, we exploit this mapping of the volume to the surafce via the color boundary condition to perform a complete analysis of the flavor singlet axial charge in the chiral bag model using the Cheshire Cat Principle. This enables us to obtain the hitherto missing piece in the axial charge associated with the gluon Casimir energies. The result is that the flavor singlet axial charge is small independent of the confinement (bag) size ranging from the skyrmion picture to the MIT bag picture, thereby confirming the (albeit approximate) Cheshire Cat phenomenon.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure

Effect of Zero Modes on the Bound-State Spectrum in Light-Cone Quantisation

We study the role of bosonic zero modes in light-cone quantisation on the invariant mass spectrum for the simplified setting of two-dimensional SU(2) Yang-Mills theory coupled to massive scalar adjoint matter. Specifically, we use discretised light-cone quantisation where the momentum modes become discrete. Two types of zero momentum mode appear -- constrained and dynamical zero modes. In fact only the latter type of modes turn out to mix with the Fock vacuum. Omission of the constrained modes leads to the dynamical zero modes being controlled by an infinite square-well potential. We find that taking into account the wavefunctions for these modes in the computation of the full bound state spectrum of the two dimensional theory leads to 21% shifts in the masses of the lowest lying states.Comment: LaTeX with 5 postscript file

Systematic Renormalization in Hamiltonian Light-Front Field Theory

We develop a systematic method for computing a renormalized light-front field theory Hamiltonian that can lead to bound states that rapidly converge in an expansion in free-particle Fock-space sectors. To accomplish this without dropping any Fock sectors from the theory, and to regulate the Hamiltonian, we suppress the matrix elements of the Hamiltonian between free-particle Fock-space states that differ in free mass by more than a cutoff. The cutoff violates a number of physical principles of the theory, and thus the Hamiltonian is not just the canonical Hamiltonian with masses and couplings redefined by renormalization. Instead, the Hamiltonian must be allowed to contain all operators that are consistent with the unviolated physical principles of the theory. We show that if we require the Hamiltonian to produce cutoff-independent physical quantities and we require it to respect the unviolated physical principles of the theory, then its matrix elements are uniquely determined in terms of the fundamental parameters of the theory. This method is designed to be applied to QCD, but for simplicity, we illustrate our method by computing and analyzing second- and third-order matrix elements of the Hamiltonian in massless phi-cubed theory in six dimensions.Comment: 47 pages, 6 figures; improved referencing, minor presentation change