Polyimides with pendant alkyl groups

The effect on selected polyimide properties when pendant alkyl groups were attached to the polymer backbone was investigated. A series of polymers were prepared using benzophenone tetracarboxylic acid dianhydride (BTDA) and seven different p-alkyl-m,p'-diaminobenzophenone monomers. The alkyl groups varied in length from C(1) (methyl) to C(9) (nonyl). The polyimide prepared from BTDA and m,p'-diaminobenzophenone was included as a control. All polymers were characterized by various chromatographic, spectroscopic, thermal, and mechanical techniques. Increasing the length of the pendant alkyl group resulted in a systematic decrease in glass transition temperature (Tg) for vacuum cured films. A 70 C decrease in Tg to 193 C was observed for the nonyl polymer compared to the Tg for the control. A corresponding systematic increase in Tg indicative of crosslinking, was observed for air cured films. Thermogravimetric analysis revealed a slight sacrifice in thermal stability with increasing alkyl length. No improvement in film toughness was observed

Analysis of the extraterrestrial life detection problem

Analysis of extraterrestrial life detection proble

Chiral extrapolation and physical insights

It has recently been established that finite-range regularisation in chiral effective field theory enables the accurate extrapolation of modern lattice QCD results to the chiral regime. We review some of the highlights of extrapolations of quenched lattice QCD results, including spectroscopy and magnetic moments. The $\Delta$ resonance displays peculiar chiral features in the quenched theory which can be exploited to demonstrate the presence of significant chiral corrections.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, presented at LHP2003, Cairns, Australi

Hadron structure on the back of an envelope

In order to remove a little of the mysticism surrounding the issue of strangeness in the nucleon, we present simple, physically transparent estimates of both the strange magnetic moment and charge radius of the proton. Although simple, the estimates are in quite good agreement with sophisticated calculations using the latest input from lattice QCD. We further explore the possible size of systematic uncertainties associated with charge symmetry violation (CSV) in the recent precise determination of the strange magnetic moment of the proton. We find that CSV acts to increase the error estimate by 0.003 \mu_N such that G_M^s = -0.046 +/- 0.022 \mu_N.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, Invited talk at First Workshop on Quark-Hadron Duality and the Transition to pQCD, Frascati, June 6-8 200

Chiral Symmetry and the Intrinsic Structure of the Nucleon

Understanding hadron structure within the framework of QCD is an extremely challenging problem. In order to solve it, it is vital that our thinking should be guided by the best available insight. Our purpose here is to explain the model independent consequences of the approximate chiral symmetry of QCD for two famous results concerning the structure of the nucleon. We show that both the apparent success of the constituent quark model in reproducing the ratio of the proton to neutron magnetic moments and the apparent success of the Foldy term in reproducing the observed charge radius of the neutron are coincidental. That is, a relatively small change of the current quark mass would spoil both results.Comment: RevTeX, 10 pages, 2 figure

Extrapolation of lattice QCD results beyond the power-counting regime

Resummation of the chiral expansion is necessary to make accurate contact with current lattice simulation results of full QCD. Resummation techniques including relativistic formulations of chiral effective field theory and finite-range regularization (FRR) techniques are reviewed, with an emphasis on using lattice simulation results to constrain the parameters of the chiral expansion. We illustrate how the chiral extrapolation problem has been solved and use FRR techniques to identify the power-counting regime (PCR) of chiral perturbation theory. To fourth-order in the expansion at the 1% tolerance level, we find 0 \le m_pi \le 0.18 GeV for the PCR, extending only a small distance beyond the physical pion mass.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, plenary talk at BARYONS 2004, Paris, Oct. 25-2

Chiral extrapolations for nucleon magnetic moments

Lattice QCD simulations have made significant progress in the calculation of nucleon electromagnetic form factors in the chiral regime in recent years. With simulation results achieving pion masses of order ~180 MeV, there is an apparent challenge as to how the physical regime is approached. By using contemporary methods in chiral effective field theory, both the quark-mass and finite-volume dependence of the isovector nucleon magnetic moment are carefully examined. The extrapolation to the physical point yields a result that is compatible with experiment, albeit with a combined statistical and systematic uncertainty of 10%. The extrapolation shows a strong finite-volume dependence; lattice sizes of L > 5 fm must be used to simulate results within 2% of the infinite-volume result for the magnetic moment at the physical pion mass.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl