Evolution of malaria virulence in cross-generation transmission through selective immune pressure

Theoretical arguments and some mathematical models of host-parasite coevolution (e.g. [1- 6]) suggest host immunity as the driving source for the evolution of parasite virulence. Imperfect vaccines in particular, can play the role and recent work [7] sets to test these ideas experimentally, using the mouse malaria model, Plasmodium chabaudi. To this end the authors evolve parasite lines in immunized and nonimmunized (“naïve”) mice using serial passage of infected blood samples. They find parasite lines evolved in immunized mice become more virulent than those evolved in naive mice. Furthermore, this feature persisted even when the evolved strains were transmitted through mosquitoes. 
Here we develop a mathematical model of parasite dynamics that qualitatively reproduces the experimental results of [7]. Our model accounts for the basic in-host processes: (i) production and depletion of red blood cells (RBC); (ii) immune-modulated parasite growth/ replication, (iii) immune stimulation and clearing of parasite. Besides we introduce multiple parasite strains with variable levels of virulence, and allow random mutations during replication process. The virulence is represented by a single parameter – immune stimulation threshold. So more virulent strains have higher “tolerance levels”, hence increased RBC depletion (anemia). 
Numeric simulations with our model exhibit, as in [7] the overall evolution of virulence in serial passage of parasite strains, and its enhancement through partial (imperfect) immunization

Zero modes of two-dimensional chiral p-wave superconductors

We discuss fermionic zero modes in the two-dimensional chiral p-wave superconductors. We show quite generally, that without fine-tuning, in a macroscopic sample there is only one or zero of such Majorana-fermion modes depending only on whether the total vorticity of the order parameter is odd or even, respectively. As a special case of this, we find explicitly the one zero mode localized on a single odd-vorticity vortex, and show that, in contrast, zero modes are absent for an even-vorticity vortex. One zero mode per odd vortex persists, within an exponential accuracy, for a collection of well-separated vortices, shifting to finite E or -E energies as two odd vortices approach. These results should be useful for the demonstration of the non-Abelian statistics that such zero-mode vortices are expected to exhibit, and for their possible application in quantum computation

Runaway Quarks

When heavy nuclei collide, a quark-gluon plasma is formed. The plasma is subject to strong electric field due to the charge of the colliding nuclei. The electric field can influence the behavior of the quark-gluon plasma. In particular, we might observe an increased number of quarks moving in the direction of that field, as we do in the standard electron-ion plasma. In this paper we show that this phenomenon, called the runaway quarks, does not exist.Comment: 13 pages, uses harvmac.tex, epsf.te

One Dimensional Gas of Bosons with Feshbach Resonant Interactions

We present a study of a gas of bosons confined in one dimension with Feshbach resonant interactions, at zero temperature. Unlike the gas of one dimensional bosons with non-resonant interactions, which is known to be equivalent to a system of interacting spinless fermions and can be described using the Luttinger liquid formalism, the resonant gas possesses novel features. Depending on its parameters, the gas can be in one of three possible regimes. In the simplest of those, it can still be described by the Luttinger liquid theory, but its Fermi momentum cannot be larger than a certain cutoff momentum dependent on the details of the interactions. In the other two regimes, it is equivalent to a Luttinger liquid at low density only. At higher densities its excitation spectrum develops a minimum, similar to the roton minimum in helium, at momenta where the excitations are in resonance with the Fermi sea. As the density of the gas is increased further, the minimum dips below the Fermi energy, thus making the ground state unstable. At this point the standard ground state gets replaced by a more complicated one, where not only the states with momentum below the Fermi points, but also the ones with momentum close to that minimum, get filled, and the excitation spectrum develops several branches. We are unable so far to study this new regime in detail due to the lack of the appropriate formalism.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figure

Strongly-resonant p-wave superfluids

We study theoretically a dilute gas of identical fermions interacting via a p-wave resonance. We show that, depending on the microscopic physics, there are two distinct regimes of p-wave resonant superfluids, which we term "weak" and "strong". Although expected naively to form a BCS-BEC superfluid, a strongly-resonant p-wave superfluid is in fact unstable towards the formation of a gas of fermionic triplets. We examine this instability and estimate the lifetime of the p-wave molecules due to the collisional relaxation into triplets. We discuss consequences for the experimental achievement of p-wave superfluids in both weakly- and strongly-resonant regimes

Single particle Green's functions and interacting topological insulators

We study topological insulators characterized by the integer topological invariant Z, in even and odd spacial dimensions. These are well understood in case when there are no interactions. We extend the earlier work on this subject to construct their topological invariants in terms of their Green's functions. In this form, they can be used even if there are interactions. Specializing to one and two spacial dimensions, we further show that if two topologically distinct topological insulators border each other, the difference of their topological invariants is equal to the difference between the number of zero energy boundary excitations and the number of zeroes of the Green's function at the boundary. In the absence of interactions Green's functions have no zeroes thus there are always edge states at the boundary, as is well known. In the presence of interactions, in principle Green's functions could have zeroes. In that case, there could be no edge states at the boundary of two topological insulators with different topological invariants. This may provide an alternative explanation to the recent results on one dimensional interacting topological insulators.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory for curved spacetime backgrounds

We consider a modified version of four-dimensional electrodynamics, which has a photonic Chern-Simons-like term with spacelike background vector in the action. Light propagation in curved spacetime backgrounds is discussed using the geometrical-optics approximation. The corresponding light path is modified, which allows for new effects. In a Schwarzschild background, for example, there now exist stable bounded orbits of light rays and the two polarization modes of light rays in unbounded orbits can have different gravitational redshifts. An Erratum with important corrections has been published, which appears as Appendix E in this arXiv version.Comment: 28 pages with elsart, v6: published version of paper and Erratu

A note on Burgers' turbulence

In this note the Polyakov equation [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 52} (1995) 6183] for the velocity-difference PDF, with the exciting force correlation function $\kappa (y)\sim1-y^{\alpha}$ is analyzed. Several solvable cases are considered, which are in a good agreement with available numerical results. Then it is shown how the method developed by A. Polyakov can be applied to turbulence with short-scale-correlated forces, a situation considered in models of self-organized criticality.Comment: 11 pages, Late

Superfluid transition in a rotating fermi gas with resonant interactions

We study a rotating atomic Fermi gas near a narrow s-wave Feshbach resonance in a uniaxial trap with frequencies Ω⊥, Ωz. We predict the upper-critical angular velocity, ωc2(δ,T), as a function of temperature T and detuning δ across the BEC-BCS crossover. The suppression of superfluidity at ωc2 is distinct in the BCS and BEC regimes, with the former controlled by depairing and the latter by the dilution of bosonic molecules. At low T and Ωz 〉 Ω⊥, in the BCS and crossover regimes of 0 δ δc, ωc2 is implicitly given by ωc22+Ω2 ≈ 2Δ Ω/F, vanishing as ωc2∼Ω (1-δ/δc)1/2 near δc 2F+γ2Fln(F/Ω) (with Δ the BCS gap and γ the resonance width), and extending the bulk result ωc2 2Δ2/ F to a trap. In the BEC regime of δωc2→Ω-, where molecular superfluidity is destroyed only by large quantum fluctuations associated with comparable boson and vortex densities. © 2006 The American Physical Society

Structure and consequences of vortex-core states in p-wave superfluids

It is now well established that in two-dimensional chiral p-wave paired superfluids, the vortices carry zero-energy modes which obey non-abelian exchange statistics and can potentially be used for topological quantum computation. In such superfluids there may also exist other excitations below the bulk gap inside the cores of vortices. We study the properties of these subgap states, and argue that their presence affects the topological protection of the zero modes. In conventional superconductors where the chemical potential is of the order of the Fermi energy of a non-interacting Fermi gas, there is a large number of subgap states and the mini-gap towards the lowest of these states is a small fraction of the Fermi energy. It is therefore difficult to cool the system to below the mini-gap and at experimentally available temperatures, transitions between the subgap states, including the zero modes, will occur and can alter the quantum states of the zero-modes. We show that compound qubits involving the zero-modes and the parity of the occupation number of the subgap states on each vortex are still well defined. However, practical schemes taking into account all subgap states would nonetheless be difficult to achieve. We propose to avoid this difficulty by working in the regime of small chemical potential mu, near the transition to a strongly paired phase, where the number of subgap states is reduced. We develop the theory to describe this regime of strong pairing interactions and we show how the subgap states are ultimately absorbed into the bulk gap. Since the bulk gap vanishes as mu -> 0 there is an optimum value mu_c which maximises the combined gap. We propose cold atomic gases as candidate systems where the regime of strong interactions can be explored, and explicitly evaluate mu_c in a Feshbach resonant K-40 gas.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures; v2: main text as published version, additional detail included as appendice