Staggered Heavy Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory

Although taste violations significantly affect the results of staggered calculations of pseudoscalar and heavy-light mesonic quantities, those entering staggered calculations of baryonic quantities have not been quantified. Here I develop staggered chiral perturbation theory in the light-quark baryon sector by mapping the Symanzik action into heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. For 2+1 dynamical quark flavors, the masses of flavor-symmetric nucleons are calculated to third order in partially quenched and fully dynamical staggered chiral perturbation theory. To this order the expansion includes the leading chiral logarithms, which come from loops with virtual decuplet-like states, as well as terms the order of the cubed pion mass, which come from loops with virtual octet-like states. Taste violations enter through the meson propagators in loops and tree-level terms the order of the squared lattice spacing. The pattern of taste symmetry breaking and the resulting degeneracies and mixings are discussed in detail. The resulting chiral forms are appropriate to lattice results obtained with operators already in use and could be used to study the restoration of taste symmetry in the continuum limit. I assume that the fourth root of the fermion determinant can be incorporated in staggered chiral perturbation theory using the replica method.Comment: 54 pages; v2: corrected discussion in Sec. III.C, conclusions unchange

A flexible polymer chain in a critical solvent: Coil or globule?

We study the behavior of a flexible polymer chain in the presence of a low-molecular weight solvent in the vicinity of a liquid-gas critical point within the framework of a self-consistent field theory. The total free energy of the dilute polymer solution is expressed as a function of the radius of gyration of the polymer and the average solvent number density within the gyration volume at the level of the mean-field approximation. Varying the strength of attraction between polymer and solvent we show that two qualitatively different regimes occur at the liquid-gas critical point. In case of weak polymer-solvent interactions the polymer chain is in a globular state. On the contrary, in case of strong polymer-solvent interactions the polymer chain attains an expanded conformation. We discuss the influence of the critical solvent density fluctuations on the polymer conformation. The reported effect could be used to excert control on the polymer conformation by changing the thermodynamic state of the solvent. It could also be helpful to estimate the solvent density within the gyration volume of the polymer for drug delivery and molecular imprinting applications

On N-wave type systems and their gauge equivalent

The class of nonlinear evolution equations - gauge equivalent to the N-wave equations related to the simple Lie algebra g are derived and analyzed. They are written in terms of the functions S(x,t) satisfying r= rank g nonlinear constraints. The corresponding Lax pairs and the time evolution of the scattering data are found. The Zakharov-Shabat dressing method is appropriately modified to construct their soliton solutions.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX 2e, revised versio

Goldstone boson counting in linear sigma models with chemical potential

We analyze the effects of finite chemical potential on spontaneous breaking of internal symmetries within the class of relativistic field theories described by the linear sigma model. Special attention is paid to the emergence of ``abnormal'' Goldstone bosons with quadratic dispersion relation. We show that their presence is tightly connected to nonzero density of the Noether charges, and formulate a general counting rule. The general results are demonstrated on an SU(3)xU(1) invariant model with an SU(3)-sextet scalar field, which describes one of the color-superconducting phases of QCD.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX4, 4 eps figures, v2: general discussion in Sec. IV expanded and improved, references added, other minor corrections throughout the tex

Probing Exciton Localization in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Using High-Resolution Near-Field Microscopy

We observe localization of excitons in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes at room temperature using high-resolution near-field photoluminescence (PL) microscopy. Localization is the result of spatially confined exciton energy minima with depths of more than 15 meV connected to lateral energy gradients exceeding 2 meV/nm as evidenced by energy-resolved PL imaging. Simulations of exciton diffusion in the presence of energy variations support this interpretation predicting strongly enhanced PL at local energy minima

Comparison of 1/mQ^2 Corrections in Mesons and Baryons

We extend our relativistic quark model to the study of the decay Lambda_b -> Lambda_c ell nu and verify that the model satisfies the heavy-quark symmetry constraints at order 1/mQ^2. We isolate a strong dependence on a parameter which measures the relative distortion in the light-quark wave functions of the Lambda_b and Lambda_c. This parameter and the 1/mQ^2 corrections turn out to be small. The dependence on a corresponding parameter in the meson case leads to large 1/mQ^2 corrections.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 3 self-contained LaTeX figures in separate fil

Factorization, Power Corrections, and the Pion Form Factor

This letter is an investigation of the pion form factor utilizing recently developed effective field theory techniques. The primary results reported are: Both the transition and electromagnetic form factors are corrected at order $\Lambda/Q$. However, these corrections only arise due to time ordered products which are sensitive to soft components of the pion. The usual higher twist wave function corrections contribute only at order $\Lambda^2/Q^2$, when the quark mass vanishes. In the case of the electromagnetic form factor the $\Lambda/Q$ power correction is enhanced by a power of $1/\alpha_s(Q)$ relative to the leading order result of Brodsky and Lepage, if the scale $\sqrt{\Lambda Q}$ is non-perturbative. This enhanced correction could explain the discrepancy with the data.Comment: Published, extended, versio

Chaos at the border of criticality

The present paper points out to a novel scenario for formation of chaotic attractors in a class of models of excitable cell membranes near an Andronov-Hopf bifurcation (AHB). The mechanism underlying chaotic dynamics admits a simple and visual description in terms of the families of one-dimensional first-return maps, which are constructed using the combination of asymptotic and numerical techniques. The bifurcation structure of the continuous system (specifically, the proximity to a degenerate AHB) endows the Poincare map with distinct qualitative features such as unimodality and the presence of the boundary layer, where the map is strongly expanding. This structure of the map in turn explains the bifurcation scenarios in the continuous system including chaotic mixed-mode oscillations near the border between the regions of sub- and supercritical AHB. The proposed mechanism yields the statistical properties of the mixed-mode oscillations in this regime. The statistics predicted by the analysis of the Poincare map and those observed in the numerical experiments of the continuous system show a very good agreement.Comment: Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science (tentatively, Sept 2008