Are there S=-2 Pentaquarks?

Recent evidence for pentaquark baryons in the channels $\Xi^-\pi^-$, $\Xi^-\pi^+$ and their anti-particles claimed by the NA49 collaboration is critically confronted with the vast amount of existing data on $\Xi$ spectroscopy which was accumulated over the past decades. It is shown that the claim is at least partially inconsistent with these data. In addition two further exotic channels of the pentaquark type available in the NA49 data are investigated. It is argued that this study leads to internal inconsistency with the purported signals

Long-range behavior of the optical potential for the elastic scattering of charged composite particles

The asymptotic behavior of the optical potential, describing elastic scattering of a charged particle $\alpha$ off a bound state of two charged, or one charged and one neutral, particles at small momentum transfer $\Delta_{\alpha}$ or equivalently at large intercluster distance $\rho_{\alpha}$, is investigated within the framework of the exact three-body theory. For the three-charged-particle Green function that occurs in the exact expression for the optical potential, a recently derived expression, which is appropriate for the asymptotic region under consideration, is used. We find that for arbitrary values of the energy parameter the non-static part of the optical potential behaves for $\Delta_{\alpha} \rightarrow 0$ as $C_{1}\Delta_{\alpha} + o\,(\Delta_{\alpha})$. From this we derive for the Fourier transform of its on-shell restriction for $\rho_{\alpha} \rightarrow \infty$ the behavior $-a/2\rho_{\alpha}^4 + o\,(1/\rho_{\alpha}^4)$, i.e., dipole or quadrupole terms do not occur in the coordinate-space asymptotics. This result corroborates the standard one, which is obtained by perturbative methods. The general, energy-dependent expression for the dynamic polarisability $C_{1}$ is derived; on the energy shell it reduces to the conventional polarisability $a$ which is independent of the energy. We emphasize that the present derivation is {\em non-perturbative}, i.e., it does not make use of adiabatic or similar approximations, and is valid for energies {\em below as well as above the three-body dissociation threshold}.Comment: 35 pages, no figures, revte

Proton-Deuteron Elastic Scattering from 2.5 to 22.5 MeV

We present the results of a calculation of differential cross sections and polarization observables for proton-deuteron elastic scattering, for proton laboratory energies from 2.5 to 22.5 MeV. The Paris potential parametrisation of the nuclear force is used. As solution method for the charged-composite particle equations the 'screening and renormalisation approach' is adopted which allows to correctly take into account the Coulomb repulsion between the two protons. Comparison is made with the precise experimental data of Sagara et al. [Phys. Rev. C 50, 576 (1994)] and of Sperison et al. [Nucl. Phys. A422, 81 (1984)].Comment: 24 pages, 8 eps figures, uses REVTe

Minimum Cell Connection in Line Segment Arrangements

We study the complexity of the following cell connection problems in segment arrangements. Given a set of straight-line segments in the plane and two points a and b in different cells of the induced arrangement: [(i)] compute the minimum number of segments one needs to remove so that there is a path connecting a to b that does not intersect any of the remaining segments; [(ii)] compute the minimum number of segments one needs to remove so that the arrangement induced by the remaining segments has a single cell. We show that problems (i) and (ii) are NP-hard and discuss some special, tractable cases. Most notably, we provide a near-linear-time algorithm for a variant of problem (i) where the path connecting a to b must stay inside a given polygon P with a constant number of holes, the segments are contained in P, and the endpoints of the segments are on the boundary of P. The approach for this latter result uses homotopy of paths to group the segments into clusters with the property that either all segments in a cluster or none participate in an optimal solution

Computing the Similarity Between Moving Curves

In this paper we study similarity measures for moving curves which can, for example, model changing coastlines or retreating glacier termini. Points on a moving curve have two parameters, namely the position along the curve as well as time. We therefore focus on similarity measures for surfaces, specifically the Fr\'echet distance between surfaces. While the Fr\'echet distance between surfaces is not even known to be computable, we show for variants arising in the context of moving curves that they are polynomial-time solvable or NP-complete depending on the restrictions imposed on how the moving curves are matched. We achieve the polynomial-time solutions by a novel approach for computing a surface in the so-called free-space diagram based on max-flow min-cut duality

R-matrix theory of driven electromagnetic cavities

Resonances of cylindrical symmetric microwave cavities are analyzed in R-matrix theory which transforms the input channel conditions to the output channels. Single and interfering double resonances are studied and compared with experimental results, obtained with superconducting microwave cavities. Because of the equivalence of the two-dimensional Helmholtz and the stationary Schroedinger equations, the results present insight into the resonance structure of regular and chaotic quantum billiards.Comment: Revtex 4.

Experimental vs. Numerical Eigenvalues of a Bunimovich Stadium Billiard -- A Comparison

We compare the statistical properties of eigenvalue sequences for a gamma=1 Bunimovich stadium billiard. The eigenvalues have been obtained by two ways: one set results from a measurement of the eigenfrequencies of a superconducting microwave resonator (real system) and the other set is calculated numerically (ideal system). The influence of the mechanical imperfections of the real system in the analysis of the spectral fluctuations and in the length spectra compared to the exact data of the ideal system are shown. We also discuss the influence of a family of marginally stable orbits, the bouncing ball orbits, in two microwave stadium billiards with different geometrical dimensions.Comment: RevTex, 8 pages, 8 figures (postscript), to be published in Phys. Rev.

Wave Dynamical Chaos in a Superconducting Three-Dimensional Sinai Billiard

Based on very accurate measurements performed on a superconducting microwave resonator shaped like a desymmetrized three-dimensional (3D) Sinai billiard, we investigate for the first time spectral properties of the vectorial Helmholtz, i.e. non-quantum wave equation for a classically totally chaotic and theoretically precisely studied system. We are thereby able to generalize some aspects of quantum chaos and present some results which are consequences of the polarization features of the electromagnetic waves.Comment: 4 pages RevTex; 4 postscript figures; to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett.; Info: [email protected]