Parity-Violating Nuclear Force as derived from QCD Sum Rules

Parity-violating nuclear force, as may be accessed from parity violation studies in nuclear systems, represents an area of nonleptonic weak interactions which has been the subject of experimental investigations for several decades. In the simple meson-exchange picture, parity-violating nuclear force may be parameterized as arising from exchange of \pi, \rho, \omega, or other meson(s) with strong meson-nucleon coupling at one vertex and weak parity-violating meson-nucleon coupling at the other vertex. The QCD sum rule method allows for a fairly complicated, but nevertheless straightforward, leading-order loop-contribution determination of the various parity-violating MNN couplings starting from QCD (with the nontrivial vacuum) and Glashow-Salam-Weinberg electroweak theory. We continue our earlier investigation of parity-violating \pi NN coupling (by Henley, Hwang, and Kisslinger) to other parity-violating couplings. Our predictions are in reasonable overall agreement with the results estimated on phenomenological grounds, such as in the now classic paper of Desplanques, Donoghue, and Holstein (DDH), in the global experimental fit of Adelberger and Haxton (AH), or the effective field theory (EFT) thinking of Ramsey-Musolf and Page (RP).Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Modification of nucleon properties in nuclear matter and finite nuclei

We present a model for the description of nuclear matter and finite nuclei, and at the same time, for the study of medium modifications of nucleon properties. The nucleons are described as nontopological solitons which interact through the self-consistent exchange of scalar and vector mesons. The model explicitly incorporates quark degrees of freedom into nuclear many-body systems and provides satisfactory results on the nuclear properties. The present model predicts a significant increase of the nucleon radius at normal nuclear matter density. It is very interesting to see the nucleon properties change from the nuclear surface to the nuclear interior.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

White matter hyperintensities and within-person variability in community-dwelling adults aged 60–64 years

Estimates of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) derived from T2-weighted MRI were investigated in relation to cognitive performance in 469 healthy community-dwelling adults aged 60–64 years. Frontal lobe WMH but not WMH from other brain regions (temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes, anterior and posterior horn, periventricular body) were associated with elevated within-person reaction time (RT) variability (trial to trial fluctuations in RT performance) but not performance on several other cognitive tasks including psychomotor speed, memory, and global cognition. The findings are consistent with the view that elevated within-person variability is related to neurobiological disturbance, and that attentional mechanisms supported by the frontal cortex play a key role in this type of variability

Quasi-adiabatic Continuation of Quantum States: The Stability of Topological Ground State Degeneracy and Emergent Gauge Invariance

We define for quantum many-body systems a quasi-adiabatic continuation of quantum states. The continuation is valid when the Hamiltonian has a gap, or else has a sufficiently small low-energy density of states, and thus is away from a quantum phase transition. This continuation takes local operators into local operators, while approximately preserving the ground state expectation values. We apply this continuation to the problem of gauge theories coupled to matter, and propose a new distinction, perimeter law versus "zero law" to identify confinement. We also apply the continuation to local bosonic models with emergent gauge theories. We show that local gauge invariance is topological and cannot be broken by any local perturbations in the bosonic models in either continuous or discrete gauge groups. We show that the ground state degeneracy in emergent discrete gauge theories is a robust property of the bosonic model, and we argue that the robustness of local gauge invariance in the continuous case protects the gapless gauge boson.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Prediction error and regularity detection underlie two dissociable mechanisms for computing the sense of agency

The sense of agency refers to the subjective feeling of controlling one’s own actions, and through them, events in the outside world. According to computational motor control models, the prediction errors from comparison between the predicted sensory feedback and actual sensory feedback determine whether people feel agency over the corresponding outcome event, or not. This mechanism requires a model of the relation between action and outcome. However, in a novel environment, where this model has not yet been learned, the sense of agency must emerge during exploratory behaviours. In the present study, we designed a novel control detection task, in which participants explored the extent to which they could control the movement of three dots with a computer mouse, and then identified the dot that they felt they could control. Pre-recorded motions were applied for two dots, and the participants’ real-time motion only influenced one dot’s motion (i.e. the target dot). We disturbed participants’ control over the motion of the target dot in one of two ways. In one case, we applied a fixed angular bias transformation between participant’s movements and dot movements. In another condition, we mixed the participant’s current movement with replay of another movement, and used the resulting hybrid signal to drive visual dot position. The former intervention changes the match between motor action and visual outcome, but maintains a regular relation between the two. In contrast, the latter alters both matching and motor-visual correlation. Crucially, we carefully selected the strength of these two perturbations so that they caused the same magnitude of impairment of motor performance in a simple reaching task, suggesting that both interventions produced comparable prediction errors. However, we found the visuomotor transformation had much less effect on the ability to detect which dot was under one’s own control than did the nonlinear disturbance. This suggests a specific role of a correlation-like mechanism that detects ongoing visual-motor regularity in the human sense of agency. These regularity-detection mechanisms would remain intact under the linear, but not the nonlinear transformation. Human sense of agency may depend on monitoring ongoing motor-visual regularities, as well as on detecting prediction errors

Exotic order in simple models of bosonic systems

We show that simple Bose Hubbard models with unfrustrated hopping and short range two-body repulsive interactions can support stable fractionalized phases in two and higher dimensions, and in zero magnetic field. The simplicity of the constructed models advances the possibility of a controlled experimental realization and novel applications of such unconventional states.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Molecular dynamics simulations of the dipolar-induced formation of magnetic nanochains and nanorings

Iron, cobalt and nickel nanoparticles, grown in the gas phase, are known to arrange in chains and bracelet-like rings due to the long-range dipolar interaction between the ferromagnetic (or super-paramagnetic) particles. We investigate the dynamics and thermodynamics of such magnetic dipolar nanoparticles for low densities using molecular dynamics simulations and analyze the influence of temperature and external magnetic fields on two- and three-dimensional systems. The obtained phase diagrams can be understood by using simple energetic arguments.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Towards A Holographic Model of D-Wave Superconductors

The holographic model for S-wave high T_c superconductors developed by Hartnoll, Herzog and Horowitz is generalized to describe D-wave superconductors. The 3+1 dimensional gravitational theory consists a symmetric, traceless second-rank tensor field and a U(1) gauge field in the background of the AdS black hole. Below T_c the tensor field which carries the U(1) charge undergoes the Higgs mechanism and breaks the U(1) symmetry of the boundary theory spontaneously. The phase transition characterized by the D-wave condensate is second order with the mean field critical exponent beta = 1/2. As expected, the AC conductivity is isotropic below T_c and the system becomes superconducting in the DC limit but has no hard gap.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, Some typos corrected, Matched with the published versio