Fermion Determinants

The current status of bounds on and limits of fermion determinants in two, three and four dimensions in QED and QCD is reviewed. A new lower bound on the two-dimensional QED determinant is derived. An outline of the demonstration of the continuity of this determinant at zero mass when the background magnetic field flux is zero is also given.Comment: 10 page

UR-295 Data Collection in Parkinson\u27s VR

This project is meant to show an addition to a Parkinson\u27s simulation within VR where there are now different methods of data collection that are collected in-game. These data points are tracked and logged during gameplay, and are meant to allow researchers to make more effective use of the simulation as a tool for data collection. An example demo of the game and example files that were generated during gameplay are provided

Heralded state preparation in a superconducting qubit

We demonstrate high-fidelity, quantum nondemolition, single-shot readout of a superconducting flux qubit in which the pointer state distributions can be resolved to below one part in 1000. In the weak excitation regime, continuous measurement permits the use of heralding to ensure initialization to a fiducial state, such as the ground state. This procedure boosts readout fidelity to 93.9% by suppressing errors due to spurious thermal population. Furthermore, heralding potentially enables a simple, fast qubit reset protocol without changing the system parameters to induce Purcell relaxation.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Light Hadron Spectroscopy: Theory and Experiment

Rapporteur talk at the Lepton-Photon Conference, Rome, July 2001: reviewing the evidence and strategies for understanding scalar mesons, glueballs and hybrids, the gluonic Pomeron and the interplay of heavy flavours and light hadron dynamics. Dedicated to the memory of Nathan Isgur, long-time collaborator and friend, whose original ideas in hadron spectroscopy formed the basis for much of the talk.Comment: to be published in "Lepton Photon 2001 Conference Proceedings" (World Scientific Publishing), 19 pages with 6 figure

On Some Positivity Properties of the Interquark Potential in QCD

We prove that the Fourier transform of the exponential e^{-\b V(R)} of the {\bf static} interquark potential in QCD is positive. It has been shown by Eliott Lieb some time ago that this property allows in the same limit of static spin independent potential proving certain mass relation between baryons with different quark flavors.Comment: 6 pages, latex with one postscript figur

A Framework for the Coordination of Legged Robot Gaits

This paper introduces a framework for representing, generating, and then tuning gaits of legged robots. We introduce a convenient parametrization of gait generators as dynamical systems possessing designer specified stable limit cycles over an appropriate torus. This parametrization affords a continuous selection of operation within a coordination design plane, inspired by biology, spanned by axes that determine the mix of feedforward/feedback and centralized/decentralized control. Tuning the gait generator parameters through repeated physical experiments with our robot hexapod, RHex, determines the appropriate operating point - the mix of feedback and degree of control decentralization - to achieve significantly increased performance relative to the centralized feedforward operating point that has governed its previous behavior. The present preliminary experiments with these new gaits suggest that they may permit for the first time locomotion over extremely rough terrain that is almost as reliable, rapid, and energy efficient as the very fastest or most efficient outcomes centralized feedforward gaits can achieve on level ground

Nature of the light scalar mesons

Despite the apparent simplicity of meson spectroscopy, light scalar mesons cannot be accommodated in the usual $q\bar q$ structure. We study the description of the scalar mesons below 2 GeV in terms of the mixing of a chiral nonet of tetraquarks with conventional $q\bar q$ states. A strong diquark-antidiquark component is found for several states. The consideration of a glueball as dictated by quenched lattice QCD drives a coherent picture of the isoscalar mesons.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

UC-296 Cybersecurity Park

Cybersecurity Park is an educational VR game intended for middle-school-age children that aims to demonstrate a wide range of cybersecurity concepts to the players. Such concepts include hacking ethics and types of hackers, cryptography, Trojan Horse / ransomware viruses, and authentication and authorization. These concepts are split into various mini-games that the player can freely navigate to from the hub they spawn in. For example, in the mini-game showcasing the Trojan Horse concept, players play as a knight defending a castle from evildoers. Visitors will approach the castle and ask access into the castle, and, based on the actions by the visitors, the player will choose whether or not to allow access into the castle. The player acts as a firewall, and the visitors act like applications requesting access into a computer. If a bad visitor/application is let into the castle (representing a computer), then the castle will begin to catch fire. This one of six mini-games present within this game, and video demonstrations of some of these mini-games are provided

Diquark Masses from Lattice QCD

We present first results for diquark correlation functions calculated in Landau gauge on the lattice. Masses have been extracted from the long distance behaviour of these correlation functions. We find that the ordering of diquark masses with spin 0 and 1 states in colour anti-triplet and sextet channels is in accordance with instanton motivated interaction models. Although we find evidence for an attractive interaction in colour anti-triplet states with a splitting between spin 0 and spin 1 diquarks that can account for the mass splitting between the nucleon and the delta, there is no evidence for a deeply bound diquark state.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e uses revtex, 3 EPS-figures, small corrections, references update

Gait Generation and Optimization for Legged Robots

This paper presents a general framework for representing and generating gaitsfor legged robots. We introduce a convenient parametrization of gait generators as dynamical systems possessing specified stable limit cycles over an appropriate torus. Inspired by biology, this parametrization affords a continuous selection of operation within a coordination design plane spanned by axes that determine the mix of ”feedforward/feedback” and centralized/decentralized” control. Applying optimization to the parameterized gait generation system allowed RHex, our robotic hexapod, to learn new gaits demonstrating significant performance increases. For example, RHex can now run at 2.4m/s (up from 0.8m/s), run with a specific resistance of 0.6 (down from 2.0), climb 45◦ inclines (up from 25◦), and traverse 35◦ inclines (up from 15◦)