Relativistic eikonal description of A(p,pN) reactions

The authors present a relativistic and cross-section factorized framework for computing quasielastic A(p,pN) observables at intermediate and high energies. The model is based on the eikonal approximation and can accomodate both optical potentials and the Glauber method for dealing with the initial- and final-state interactions (IFSI). At lower nucleon energies, the optical-potential philosophy is preferred, whereas at higher energies the Glauber method is more natural. This versatility in dealing with the IFSI allows one to describe A(p,pN) reactions in a wide energy range. Most results presented here use optical potentials as this approach is argued to be the optimum choice for the kinematics of the experiments considered in the present paper. The properties of the IFSI factor, a function wherein the entire effect of the IFSI is contained, are studied in detail. The predictions of the presented framework are compared with two kinematically different experiments. First, differential cross sections for quasielastic proton scattering at 1 GeV off 12C, 16O, and 40Ca target nuclei are computed and compared to data from PNPI. Second, the formalism is applied to the analysis of a 4He(p,2p) experiment at 250 MeV. The optical-potential calculations are found to be in good agreement with the data from both experiments, showing the reliability of the adopted model in a wide energy range.Comment: 34 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Meson production in high-energy electron-nucleus scattering

Pseudoscalar mesons can be produced and studied in high-energy electron-nucleus scattering. We review and extend our previous analysis of meson production in the nuclear Coulomb field. The $P\rightarrow \gamma \gamma$ decay rates are most directly determined for mesons produced in the double-Coulomb region where both photons are nearly real, and provided the background-hadronic contribution remains small. The larger the mass of the meson the higher the electron energy needed to assure such a condition.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figure

Bremsstrahlung Radiation as Coherent State in Thermal QED

Based on fully finite temperature field theory we investigate the radiation probability in the bremsstrahlung process in thermal QED. It turns out that the infrared divergences resulting from the emission and absorption of the real photons are canceled by the virtual photon exchange processes at finite temperature. The full quantum calculation results for soft photons radiation coincide completely with that obtained in the semi-classical approximation. In the framework of Thermofield Dynamics it is shown that the bremsstrahlung radiation in thermal QED is a coherent state, the quasiclassical behavior of the coherent state leads to above coincidence.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Color Screening and the Suppression of the Charmonium State Yield in Nuclear Reactions

We discuss the new data for the production of the $\psi'$ meson in pA collisions at 450 GeV at CERN-SPS (of the NA50-collaboration) [1]. We extract from the CERN data $\sigma(\psi' N)\approx 8$ mb under the assumption that the $\psi'$ is produced as a result of the space-time evolution of a point-like $c\bar c$ pair which expands with time to the full size of the charmonium state. In the analysis we assume the existence of a relationship between the distribution of color in a hadron and the cross section of its interaction with a nucleon. However, our result is rather sensitive to the pattern of the expansion of the wave packet and significantly larger values of $\sigma(\psi' N)$ are not ruled out by the data. We show that recent CERN data confirm the suggestion of [2] that color fluctuations of the strengths in charmonium-nucleon interaction are the major source of suppression of the $J/\psi$ yield as observed at CERN in both pA and AA collisions.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures (one with color

Effects of the Neutron Spin-Orbit Density on Nuclear Charge Density in Relativistic Models

The neutron spin-orbit density contributes to the nuclear charge density as a relativistic effect. The contribution is enhanced by the effective mass stemming from the Lorentz-scalar potential in relativistic models. This enhancement explains well the difference between the cross sections of elastic electron scattering off $^{40}$Ca and $^{48}$Ca which was not reproduced in non-relativistic models. The spin-orbit density will be examined in more detail in electron scattering off unstable nuclei which would be available in the future.Comment: 4 pages with 3 eps figures, revte

The hbar Expansion in Quantum Field Theory

We show how expansions in powers of Planck's constant hbar = h/2\pi can give new insights into perturbative and nonperturbative properties of quantum field theories. Since hbar is a fundamental parameter, exact Lorentz invariance and gauge invariance are maintained at each order of the expansion. The physics of the hbar expansion depends on the scheme; i.e., different expansions are obtained depending on which quantities (momenta, couplings and masses) are assumed to be independent of hbar. We show that if the coupling and mass parameters appearing in the Lagrangian density are taken to be independent of hbar, then each loop in perturbation theory brings a factor of hbar. In the case of quantum electrodynamics, this scheme implies that the classical charge e, as well as the fine structure constant are linear in hbar. The connection between the number of loops and factors of hbar is more subtle for bound states since the binding energies and bound-state momenta themselves scale with hbar. The hbar expansion allows one to identify equal-time relativistic bound states in QED and QCD which are of lowest order in hbar and transform dynamically under Lorentz boosts. The possibility to use retarded propagators at the Born level gives valence-like wave-functions which implicitly describe the sea constituents of the bound states normally present in its Fock state representation.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. Version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Suppression of Bremsstrahlung at Non-Zero Temperature

The first-order bremsstrahlung emission spectrum is $\alpha d\omega/\omega$ at zero temperature. If the radiation is emitted into a region that contains a thermal distribution of photons, then the rate is increased by a factor $1+N(\omega)$ where $N(\omega)$ is the Bose-Einstein function. The stimulated emission changes the spectrum to $\alpha Td\omega/\omega^{2}$ for $\omega\ll T$. If this were correct, an infinite amount of energy would be radiated in the low frequency modes. This unphysical result indicates a breakdown of perturbation theory. The paper computes the bremsstrahlung rate to all orders of perturbation theory, neglecting the recoil of the charged particle. When the perturbation series is summed, it has a different low-energy behavior. For $\omega\ll\alpha T$, the spectrum is independent of $\omega$ and has a value proportional to $d\omega/\alpha T$ .Comment: 16 pages (plain TeX), figures available on reques

Theoretical Expectations For High Mass Photon Pairs in L+ L- Gamma Gamma Events at LEP/SLC

Recently, the L3 collaboration has reported the observation of four events in the reactions e+ e- --> L+ L- + (2 Photons), L = e, mu, tau, with the invariant photon pair mass near 60 GeV in a data sample collected in the L3 detector corresponding to 950,000 produced Z0's. More recently, more data from the other LEP collaborations have become available. In this paper, we use the Monte Carlo genrator YFS3 and our recent exact results on e+ e- --> L+ L- + (2 Photons) to assess the QED expectations for such L3-type high mass photon pair events in e+ e- --> L+ L- + (n Photons) near the Z0 resonance.Comment: 9 pages (LaTeX + 6 uu-encoded figures), UTHEP-93-1002 (version with corrected preprint number

Bloch-Nordsieck Thermometers: One-loop Exponentiation in Finite Temperature QED

We study the scattering of hard external particles in a heat bath in a real-time formalism for finite temperature QED. We investigate the distribution of the 4-momentum difference of initial and final hard particles in a fully covariant manner when the scale of the process, $Q$, is much larger than the temperature, $T$. Our computations are valid for all $T$ subject to this constraint. We exponentiate the leading infra-red term at one-loop order through a resummation of soft (thermal) photon emissions and absorptions. For $T>0$, we find that tensor structures arise which are not present at $T=0$. These carry thermal signatures. As a result, external particles can serve as thermometers introduced into the heat bath. We investigate the phase space origin of $\log(Q/m)$ and $\log(Q/T)$ terms.Comment: LaTeX file, 29 pages including 3 figure

Radiative corrections to e+e- --> WW --> 4f with RACOONWW

RACOONWW is the first Monte Carlo generator for e+e- --> WW --> 4f(+gamma) that includes the electroweak O(alpha) radiative corrections in the double-pole approximation completely. Some numerical results for LEP2 energies are discussed, and the predictions for the total W-pair cross section are confronted with LEP2 data.Comment: 7 pages, latex, 5 postscript files, to appear in the Proceedings of the 5th Zeuthen Workshop on Elementary Particle Theory ``Loops and Legs in Quantum Field Theory'', Bastei/Koenigstein, Germany, April 9-14, 200