Strings in plane-fronted gravitational waves

Brinkmann's plane-fronted gravitational waves with parallel rays --~shortly pp-waves~-- are shown to provide, under suitable conditions, exact string vacua at all orders of the sigma-model perturbation expansion.Comment: 7 pages, no figure

Comparing the observed properties of the GRBs detected by the Fermi and Swift satellites

We studied the distribution of the GRBs, observed by the Fermi satellite, in the multidimensional parameter space consisting of the duration, Fluence, Peak flux and Peak energy (if it was available). About 10% of the Fermi bursts was observed also by the Swift satellite. We did not find significant differences between the Peak flux and Peak energy of GRBs observed and not observed also by the Swift satellite. In contrast, those GRBs detected also by the Swift satellite had significantly greater Fluence and duration. We did a similar study for the GRBs detected by the Swift satellite. About 30% percent of these bursts was also measured by the Fermi satellite. We found a significant difference in the Fluence, Peak flux and Photon index but none in duration. These differences may be accounted for the different construction and observing strategy of the Fermi and Swift satellites.Comment: 7th Huntsville Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium, GRB 2013: paper 5 in eConf Proceedings C130414

Berry phase correction to electron density in solids and "exotic" dynamics

Recent results on the semiclassical dynamics of an electron in a solid are explained using techniques developed for ``exotic'' Galilean dynamics. The system is indeed Hamiltonian and Liouville's theorem holds for the symplectic volume form. Suitably defined quantities satisfy hydrodynamic equations.Comment: Affiliation of the first Author expanded. One more reference added. To appear in Mod. Phys. Lett. B. 5 page

Properties of the intermediate type of gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-ray bursts can be divided into three groups ("short", "intermediate", "long") with respect to their durations. The third type of gamma-ray bursts - as known - has the intermediate duration. We show that the intermediate group is the softest one. An anticorrelation between the hardness and the duration is found for this subclass in contrast to the short and long groups.Comment: In Sixteenth Maryland Astrophysics Conferenc