The influence of medium effects on the gross structure of hybrid stars

We investigate the influence of medium effects on the structure of hybrid stars, i.e. neutron stars possessing a quark matter core. We found that medium effects reduce the extent of a pure quark matter phase in the interior of a hybrid star significantly in favor of a mixed phase of quark and hadronic matter. Over a wide range of the strong coupling constant - which parameterizes the influence of medium effects - quark matter is able to exist at least in a mixed phase in the interior of neutron stars.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, 4 inline eps-figures, 4 gif-figures, extended discussion, to be published in Nucl. Phys. A. Also available at http://theorie.physik.uni-giessen.de/~schertle/HybSta

Vortex Holography

We show that the Abelian Higgs field equations in the four dimensional anti de Sitter spacetime have a vortex line solution. This solution, which has cylindrical symmetry in AdS$_4$, is a generalization of the flat spacetime Nielsen-Olesen string. We show that the vortex induces a deficit angle in the AdS$_4$ spacetime that is proportional to its mass density. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we show that the mass density of the string is uniform and dual to the discontinuity of a logarithmic derivative of correlation function of the boundary scalar operator.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, 4 eps figures, references and two paragraphs added, to appear in Nucl. Phys.

Non-adiabatic geometrical quantum gates in semiconductor quantum dots

In this paper we study the implementation of non-adiabatic geometrical quantum gates with in semiconductor quantum dots. Different quantum information enconding/manipulation schemes exploiting excitonic degrees of freedom are discussed. By means of the Aharanov-Anandan geometrical phase one can avoid the limitations of adiabatic schemes relying on adiabatic Berry phase; fast geometrical quantum gates can be in principle implementedComment: 5 Pages LaTeX, 10 Figures include

An infinite family of convex Brunnian links in RnR^n

This paper proves that convex Brunnian links exist for every dimension $n \geq 3$ by constructing explicit examples. These examples are three-component links which are higher-dimensional generalizations of the Borromean rings.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Novel point mutation in the extracellular domain of the granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) receptor in a case of severe congenital neutropenia hyporesponsive to G-CSF treatment

Severe congenital neutropenia (SCN) is a heterogeneous condition characterized by a drastic reduction in circulating neutrophils and a maturation arrest of myeloid progenitor cells in the bone marrow. Usually this condition can be successfully treated with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF). Here we describe the identification of a novel point mutation in the extracellular domain of the G-CSF receptor (G-CSF-R) in an SCN patient who failed to respond to G-CSF treatment. When this mutant G-CSF-R was expressed in myeloid cells, it was defective in both proliferation and survival signaling. This correlated with diminished activation of the receptor complex as determined by signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) activation, although activation of STAT5 was more affected than STAT3. Interestingly, the mutant receptor showed normal affinity for ligand, but a reduced number of ligand binding sites compared with the wild-type receptor. This suggests that the mutation in the extracellular domain affects ligand-receptor complex formation with severe consequences for intracellular signal transduction. Together these data add to our understanding of the mechanisms of cytokine receptor signaling, emphasize the role of GCSFR mutations in the etiology of SCN, and implicate such mutations in G-CSF hyporesponsiveness

Exotic smooth structures on 4-manifolds with zero signature

For every integer $k\geq 2$, we construct infinite families of mutually nondiffeomorphic irreducible smooth structures on the topological $4$-manifolds $(2k-1)(S^2\times S^2)$ and (2k-1)(\CP#\CPb), the connected sums of $2k-1$ copies of $S^2\times S^2$ and \CP#\CPb.Comment: 6 page

On the Exact Evaluation of Certain Instances of the Potts Partition Function by Quantum Computers

We present an efficient quantum algorithm for the exact evaluation of either the fully ferromagnetic or anti-ferromagnetic q-state Potts partition function Z for a family of graphs related to irreducible cyclic codes. This problem is related to the evaluation of the Jones and Tutte polynomials. We consider the connection between the weight enumerator polynomial from coding theory and Z and exploit the fact that there exists a quantum algorithm for efficiently estimating Gauss sums in order to obtain the weight enumerator for a certain class of linear codes. In this way we demonstrate that for a certain class of sparse graphs, which we call Irreducible Cyclic Cocycle Code (ICCC_\epsilon) graphs, quantum computers provide a polynomial speed up in the difference between the number of edges and vertices of the graph, and an exponential speed up in q, over the best classical algorithms known to date

Exotic Smooth Structures on Small 4-Manifolds

Let M be either CP^2#3CP^2bar or 3CP^2#5CP^2bar. We construct the first example of a simply-connected symplectic 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to M.Comment: 11 page

Medium effects in strange quark matter and strange stars

We investigate the properties of strange quark matter at zero temperature including medium effects. The quarks are considered as quasiparticles which acquire an effective mass generated by the interaction with the other quarks of the dense system. The effective quark masses are derived from the zero momentum limit of the dispersion relations following from an effective quark propagator obtained from resumming one-loop self energy diagrams in the hard dense loop approximation. This leads to a thermodynamic selfconsistent description of strange quark matter as an ideal Fermi gas of quasiparticles. Within this approach we find that medium effects reduce the overall binding energy with respect to $^{56}Fe$ of strange quark matter. For realistic values of the strong coupling constant strange quark matter is not absolutely stable. The application to pure strange quark matter stars shows that medium effects have, nevertheless, no impact on the mass-radius relation of the stars. However, a phase transition to hadronic matter at the surface of the stars becomes more likely.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, 14 eps-figures included. To be published in Nuclear Physics