Photon Multiplicity Measurements : From SPS to RHIC and LHC

Results from the photon multiplicity measurements using a fine granularity preshower photon multiplicity detector (PMD) at CERN SPS are discussed. These include study of pseudo-rapidity distributions of photons, scaling of photon multiplicity with number of participating nucleons, centrality dependence of mean transverse momentum of photons, event-by-event fluctuations in photon multiplicity and localised charged-neutral fluctuations. Basic features of the PMD to be used in STAR experiment at RHIC and in ALICE experiment at LHC are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, Invited talk at the 4th International Conference on the Physcis and Astrophysics of the Quark-Gluon-Plasma, November 2001, Jaipur, India, to appear in Praman

On the linear increase of the flux tube thickness near the deconfinement transition

We study the flux tube thickness of a generic Lattice Gauge Theory near the deconfining phase transition. It is well known that the effective string model predicts a logarithmic increase of the flux tube thickness as a function of the interquark distance for any confining LGT at zero temperature. It is perhaps less known that this same model predicts a linear increase in the vicinity of the deconfinement transition. We present a precise derivation of this result and compare it with a set of high precision simulations in the case of the 3d gauge Ising model.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, minor changes. Accepted for publication in JHE

The xSAP Safety Analysis Platform

This paper describes the xSAP safety analysis platform. xSAP provides several model-based safety analysis features for finite- and infinite-state synchronous transition systems. In particular, it supports library-based definition of fault modes, an automatic model extension facility, generation of safety analysis artifacts such as Dynamic Fault Trees (DFTs) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) tables. Moreover, it supports probabilistic evaluation of Fault Trees, failure propagation analysis using Timed Failure Propagation Graphs (TFPGs), and Common Cause Analysis (CCA). xSAP has been used in several industrial projects as verification back-end, and is currently being evaluated in a joint R&D Project involving FBK and The Boeing Company

Finding Exponential Product Formulas of Higher Orders

In the present article, we review a continual effort on generalization of the Trotter formula to higher-order exponential product formulas. The exponential product formula is a good and useful approximant, particularly because it conserves important symmetries of the system dynamics. We focuse on two algorithms of constructing higher-order exponential product formulas. The first is the fractal decomposition, where we construct higher-order formulas recursively. The second is to make use of the quantum analysis, where we compute higher-order correction terms directly. As interludes, we also have described the decomposition of symplectic integrators, the approximation of time-ordered exponentials, and the perturbational composition.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures. To be published in the conference proceedings ''Quantum Annealing and Other Optimization Methods," eds. B.K.Chakrabarti and A.Das (Springer, Heidelberg

The Elusive p-air Cross Section

For the \pbar p and $pp$ systems, we have used all of the extensive data of the Particle Data Group[K. Hagiwara {\em et al.} (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D 66, 010001 (2002).]. We then subject these data to a screening process, the ``Sieve'' algorithm[M. M. Block, physics/0506010.], in order to eliminate ``outliers'' that can skew a $\chi^2$ fit. With the ``Sieve'' algorithm, a robust fit using a Lorentzian distribution is first made to all of the data to sieve out abnormally high \delchi, the individual i$^{\rm th}$ point's contribution to the total $\chi^2$. The $\chi^2$ fits are then made to the sieved data. We demonstrate that we cleanly discriminate between asymptotic $\ln s$ and $\ln^2s$ behavior of total hadronic cross sections when we require that these amplitudes {\em also} describe, on average, low energy data dominated by resonances. We simultaneously fit real analytic amplitudes to the ``sieved'' high energy measurements of $\bar p p$ and $pp$ total cross sections and $\rho$-values for $\sqrt s\ge 6$ GeV, while requiring that their asymptotic fits smoothly join the the $\sigma_{\bar p p}$ and $\sigma_{pp}$ total cross sections at $\sqrt s=$4.0 GeV--again {\em both} in magnitude and slope. Our results strongly favor a high energy $\ln^2s$ fit, basically excluding a $\ln s$ fit. Finally, we make a screened Glauber fit for the p-air cross section, using as input our precisely-determined $pp$ cross sections at cosmic ray energies.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 2 table,Paper delivered at c2cr2005 Conference, Prague, September 7-13, 2005. Fig. 2 was missing from V1. V3 fixes all figure

Photon Neutrino Scattering in Non-Commutative Space

We extend the non-commutative standard model based on the minimal $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)$ gauge group to include the interaction of photon with neutrino. We show that, in the gauge invariant manner, only the right handed neutrino can directly couple to the photon. Consequently, we obtain the Feynman rule for the $\gamma\nu\bar\nu$-vertex which does not exist in the minimal extension of non-commutative standard model (mNCSM). We calculate the amplitude for $\gamma\nu\to\gamma\nu$ in both the nonminimal non-commutative standard model (nmNCSM) and the extended version of mNCSM. The obtained cross section grows in the center of mass frame, respectively, as $(\theta_{NC})^2{M}_Z^{-4}E^6$ and $(\theta_{NC})^4E^6$ which can exceed the cross section for $\gamma\nu\to\gamma\gamma\nu$ and $\gamma\nu\to\gamma\nu$ in the high energy limit in the commutative space.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Neutral interstellar He parameters in front of the heliosphere 1994--2007

Analysis of IBEX measurements of neutral interstellar He flux brought the inflow velocity vector different from the results of earlier analysis of observations from GAS/Ulysses. Recapitulation of results on the helium inflow direction from the past ~40 years suggested that the inflow direction may be changing with time. We reanalyze the old Ulysses data and reprocess them to increase the accuracy of the instrument pointing to investigate if the GAS observations support the hypothesis that the interstellar helium inflow direction is changing. We employ a similar analysis method as in the analysis of the IBEX data. We seek a parameter set that minimizes reduced chi-squared, using the Warsaw Test Particle Model for the interstellar He flux at Ulysses with a state of the art model of neutral He ionization in the heliosphere, and precisely reproducing the observation conditions. We also propose a supplementary method of constraining the parameters based on cross-correlations of parameters obtained from analysis of carefully selected subsets of data. We find that the ecliptic longitude and speed of interstellar He are in a very good agreement with the values reported in the original GAS analysis. We find, however, that the temperature is markedly higher. The 3-seasons optimum parameter set is lambda = 255.3, beta = 6, v = 26.0 km/s, T = 7500 K. We find no evidence that it is varying with time, but the uncertainty range is larger than originally reported. The originally-derived parameters of interstellar He from GAS are in good agreement with presently derived, except for the temperature, which seems to be appreciably higher, in good agreement with interstellar absorption line results. While the results of the present analysis are in marginal agreement with the earlier reported results from IBEX, the most likely values from the two analyses differ for reasons that are still not understood.Comment: submitted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic