2,980 research outputs found
Cosmological implications of conformal field theory
Requiring all massless elementary fields to have conformal scaling symmetry
removes a conflict between gravitational theory and the quantum theory of
elementary particles and fields. Extending this postulate to the scalar field
of the Higgs model, dynamical breaking of both gauge and conformal symmetries
determines parameters for the interacting fields. In uniform isotropic geometry
a modified Friedmann cosmic evolution equation is derived with nonvanishing
cosmological constant. Parameters determined by numerical solution are
consistent with empirical data for redshifts , including
luminosity distances for observed type Ia supernovae and peak structure ratios
in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The theory does not require dark
matter.Comment: 8 pages Conclusions about the early universe which must be reexamined
have been removed. Manuscript revised and reformatted. Accepted for
publication in Modern Physics Letters A (2011
Gluon and gluino penguin diagrams and the charmless decays of the b quark
Gluon mediated exclusive hadronic decays of b quarks are studied within the standard model (SM) and the constrained minimally supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). For all allowed regions of the MSSM parameter space (A, tan beta, m_0, m_{1/2}) the penguin magnetic dipole form factor F^R_2 is dominant over the electric dipole and can be larger than the magnetic dipole form factor of the SM. However, overall the SM electric dipole decay amplitude F^L_1 dominates the decay rate. The MSSM penguin contributions to the free quark decay rate approach the 10% level for those regions of parameter space close to the highest allowed values of tan beta (~55) for which the gluino is light (m_{\tilde{g}} \approx 360 GeV) and lies within the range of the six d-squark masses. In these regions the supersymmetric box amplitudes are negligible. The MSSM phases change very little over the allowed parameter space and can lead to significant interference with the SM amplitudes
Factorization fits to charmless strangeless B decays
We present fits to charmless strangeless hadronic B decay data for mean
branching ratios and CP-violating asymmetries using the QCD factorization model
of Beneke et al. Apart from one CP-violating parameter, the model gives a very
good representation of 26 measured data. We find the CKM angle alpha = (93.5
+/- 8.4 -1.3) degrees and to be quite stable to plausible "charming penguin"
corrections.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, Minor changes to text, references adde
Estimating Community Stability and Ecological Interactions from Time-Series Data
Natural ecological communities are continuously buffeted by a varying environment, often making it difficult to measure the stability of communities using concepts requiring the existence of an equilibrium point. Instead of an equilibrium point, the equilibrial state of communities subject to environmental stochasticity is a stationary distribution, which is characterized by means, variances, and other statistical moments. Here, we derive three properties of stochastic multispecies communities that measure different characteristics associated with community stability. These properties can be estimated from multispecies time-series data using first-order multivariate autoregressive (MAR(1)) models. We demonstrate how to estimate the parameters of MAR(1) models and obtain confidence intervals for both parameters and the measures of stability. We also address the problem of estimation when there is observation (measurement) error. To illustrate these methods, we compare the stability of the planktonic communities in three lakes in which nutrient loading and planktivorous fish abundance were experimentally manipulated. MAR(1) models and the statistical methods we present can be used to identify dynamically important interactions between species and to test hypotheses about stability and other dynamical properties of naturally varying ecological communities. Thus, they can be used to integrate theoretical and empirical studies of community dynamics
Crystal Structure of Colloidally Prepared Metastable Ag2Se Nanocrystals.
Structural polymorphism is known for many bulk materials; however, on the nanoscale metastable polymorphs tend to form more readily than in the bulk, and with more structural variety. One such metastable polymorph observed for colloidal Ag2Se nanocrystals has traditionally been referred to as the "tetragonal" phase. While there are reports on the chemistry and properties of this metastable polymorph, its crystal structure, and therefore electronic structure, has yet to be determined. We report that an anti-PbCl2-like structure type (space group P21/n) more accurately describes the powder X-ray diffraction and X-ray total scattering patterns of colloidal Ag2Se nanocrystals prepared by several different methods. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that this anti-PbCl2-like Ag2Se polymorph is a dynamically stable, narrow-band-gap semiconductor. The anti-PbCl2-like structure of Ag2Se is a low-lying metastable polymorph at 5-25 meV/atom above the ground state, depending on the exchange-correlation functional used
Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering from Effective Field Theory
We perform a nonperturbative calculation of the 1S0 NN scattering amplitude
using an effective field theory (EFT) expansion. The expansion we advocate is a
modification of what has been used previously; it is no a chiral expansion in
powers of the pion mass. We use dimensional regularization throughout and the
MS-bar subtraction scheme; our final result depends only on physical
observables. We show that the EFT expansion of the quantity |p|cot delta(p)
converges at momenta much greater than the scale that characterizes the
derivative expansion of the EFT Lagrangian. Our conclusions are optimistic
about the applicability of an EFT approach to the quantitative study of nuclear
matter.Comment: Revised discussion of power counting in the EFT expansion. Tex file
uses harvmac, epsf macros, 35 pages with 9 postscript figure
New CMB Power Spectrum Constraints from MSAMI
We present new cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy results from the
combined analysis of the three flights of the first Medium Scale Anisotropy
Measurement (MSAM1). This balloon-borne bolometric instrument measured about 10
square degrees of sky at half-degree resolution in 4 frequency bands from 5.2
icm to 20 icm with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Here we present an overview of
our analysis methods, compare the results from the three flights, derive new
constraints on the CMB power spectrum from the combined data and reduce the
data to total-power Wiener-filtered maps of the CMB. A key feature of this new
analysis is a determination of the amplitude of CMB fluctuations at . The analysis technique is described in a companion paper by Knox.Comment: 9 pages, 6 included figure
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