Transition radiation in the quantum regime as a diffractive phenomenon

We demonstrate that the transition photon radiation and pair creation can be interpreted as a diffractive phenomenon in terms of the light-cone wave functions in a way similar to the Good-Walker approach [6] to the diffraction dissociation. Our formulas for spectra agree with those obtained by Baier and Katkov [5] within the quasiclassical operator method. However, there is some disagreement with earlier results by Garibyan [4].Comment: 7 pages. The journal version published in Phys. Lett.

Relating the description of gluon production in pA collisions and parton energy loss in AA collisions

We calculate the classical gluon field of a fast projectile passing through a dense medium. We show that this allows us to calculate both the initial state gluon production in proton-nucleus collisions and the final state gluon radiation off a hard parton produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions. This unified description of these two phenomena makes the relation between the saturation scale $Q_s$ and the transport coefficient $\hat q$ more transparent. Also, we discuss the validity of the eikonal approximation for gluon propagation inside the nucleus in proton-nucleus collisions at RHIC energy.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

Coexistence of Weak and Strong Wave Turbulence in a Swell Propagation

By performing two parallel numerical experiments -- solving the dynamical Hamiltonian equations and solving the Hasselmann kinetic equation -- we examined the applicability of the theory of weak turbulence to the description of the time evolution of an ensemble of free surface waves (a swell) on deep water. We observed qualitative coincidence of the results. To achieve quantitative coincidence, we augmented the kinetic equation by an empirical dissipation term modelling the strongly nonlinear process of white-capping. Fitting the two experiments, we determined the dissipation function due to wave breaking and found that it depends very sharply on the parameter of nonlinearity (the surface steepness). The onset of white-capping can be compared to a second-order phase transition. This result corroborates with experimental observations by Banner, Babanin, Young.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Submitted in Phys. Rev. Letter

Weak compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the solar corona

This Letter presents a calculation of the power spectra of weakly turbulent Alfven waves and fast magnetosonic waves ("fast waves") in low-beta plasmas. It is shown that three-wave interactions transfer energy to high-frequency fast waves and, to a lesser extent, high-frequency Alfven waves. MHD turbulence is thus a promising mechanism for producing the high-frequency waves needed to explain the anisotropic heating of minor ions in the solar corona.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted, Phys. Rev. Let

Integrable turbulence generated from modulational instability of cnoidal waves

We study numerically the nonlinear stage of modulational instability (MI) of cnoidal waves, in the framework of the focusing one-dimensional Nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation. Cnoidal waves are the exact periodic solutions of the NLS equation and can be represented as a lattice of overlapping solitons. MI of these lattices lead to development of "integrable turbulence" [Zakharov V.E., Stud. Appl. Math. 122, 219-234 (2009)]. We study the major characteristics of the turbulence for dn-branch of cnoidal waves and demonstrate how these characteristics depend on the degree of "overlapping" between the solitons within the cnoidal wave. Integrable turbulence, that develops from MI of dn-branch of cnoidal waves, asymptotically approaches to it's stationary state in oscillatory way. During this process kinetic and potential energies oscillate around their asymptotic values. The amplitudes of these oscillations decay with time as t^{-a}, 1<a<1.5, the phases contain nonlinear phase shift decaying as t^{-1/2}, and the frequency of the oscillations is equal to the double maximal growth rate of the MI, s=2g_{max}. In the asymptotic stationary state the ratio of potential to kinetic energy is equal to -2. The asymptotic PDF of wave amplitudes is close to Rayleigh distribution for cnoidal waves with strong overlapping, and is significantly non-Rayleigh one for cnoidal waves with weak overlapping of solitons. In the latter case the dynamics of the system reduces to two-soliton collisions, which occur with exponentially small rate and provide up to two-fold increase in amplitude compared with the original cnoidal wave.Comment: 36 pages, 25 figure

Quantum Many-Body Dynamics of Dark Solitons in Optical Lattices

We present a fully quantum many-body treatment of dark solitons formed by ultracold bosonic atoms in one-dimensional optical lattices. Using time-evolving block decimation to simulate the single-band Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we consider the quantum dynamics of density and phase engineered dark solitons as well as the quantum evolution of mean-field dark solitons injected into the quantum model. The former approach directly models how one may create quantum entangled dark solitons in experiment. While we have already presented results regarding the latter approach elsewhere [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 103}, 140403 (2009)], we expand upon those results in this work. In both cases, quantum fluctuations cause the dark soliton to fill in and may induce an inelasticity in soliton-soliton collisions. Comparisons are made to the Bogoliubov theory which predicts depletion into an anomalous mode that fills in the soliton. Our many-body treatment allows us to go beyond the Bogoliubov approximation and calculate explicitly the dynamics of the system's natural orbitals.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures -- v3 has only minor changes from v2 -- this is the print versio

Transverse Spectra of Radiation Processes in Medium

We develop a formalism for evaluation of the transverse momentum dependence of cross sections of the radiation processes in medium. The analysis is based on the light-cone path integral approach to the induced radiation. The results are applicable in both QED and QCD