The Mixmaster Spacetime, Geroch's Transformation and Constants of Motion

We show that for $U(1)$-symmetric spacetimes on $S^3 \times R$ a constant of motion associated with the well known Geroch transformation, a functional $K[h_{ij},\pi^{ij}]$, quadratic in gravitational momenta, is strictly positive in an open subset of the set of all $U(1)$-symmetric initial data, and therefore not weakly zero. The Mixmaster initial data appear to be on the boundary of that set. We calculate the constant of motion perturbatively for the Mixmaster spacetime and find it to be proportional to the minisuperspace Hamiltonian to the first order in the Misner anisotropy variables, i.e. weakly zero. Assuming that $K$ is exactly zero for the Mixmaster spacetime, we show that Geroch's transformation, when applied to the Mixmaster spacetime, gives a new \mbox{$U(1)$-symmetric} solution of the vacuum Einstein equations, globally defined on \mbox{$S^2 \times S^1 \times R$},which is non-homogeneous and presumably exhibits Mixmaster-like complicated dynamical behavior.Comment: 25 pages, preprint YCTP-20-93, Revte

Fast phonetic similarity search over large repositories

Analysis of unstructured data may be inefficient in the presence of spelling errors. Existing approaches use string similarity methods to search for valid words within a text, with a supporting dictionary. However, they are not rich enough to encode phonetic information to assist the search. In this paper, we present a novel approach for efficiently perform phonetic similarity search over large data sources, that uses a data structure called PhoneticMap to encode language-specific phonetic information. We validate our approach through an experiment over a data set using a Portuguese variant of a well-known repository, to automatically correct words with spelling errors

Two-temperature relaxation and melting after absorption of femtosecond laser pulse

The theory and experiments concerned with the electron-ion thermal relaxation and melting of overheated crystal lattice constitute the subject of this paper. The physical model includes two-temperature equation of state, many-body interatomic potential, the electron-ion energy exchange, electron thermal conductivity, and optical properties of solid, liquid, and two phase solid-liquid mixture. Two-temperature hydrodynamics and molecular dynamics codes are used. An experimental setup with pump-probe technique is used to follow evolution of an irradiated target with a short time step 100 fs between the probe femtosecond laser pulses. Accuracy of measurements of reflection coefficient and phase of reflected probe light are ~1% and \sim 1\un{nm}, respectively. It is found that, {\it firstly}, the electron-electron collisions make a minor contribution to a light absorbtion in solid Al at moderate intensities; {\it secondly}, the phase shift of a reflected probe results from heating of ion subsystem and kinetics of melting of Al crystal during 0 where $t$ is time delay between the pump and probe pulses measured from the maximum of the pump; {\it thirdly} the optical response of Au to a pump shows a marked contrast to that of Al on account of excitation of \textit{d}-electronsComment: 6th International Conference on Photo-Excited Processes and Applications 9-12 Sep 2008, Sapporo, Japan, http://www.icpepa6.com, the contributed paper will be published in Applied Surface Science(2009

Weakly--exceptional quotient singularities

A singularity is said to be weakly--exceptional if it has a unique purely log terminal blow up. In dimension $2$, V. Shokurov proved that weakly--exceptional quotient singularities are exactly those of types $D_{n}$, $E_{6}$, $E_{7}$, $E_{8}$. This paper classifies the weakly--exceptional quotient singularities in dimensions $3$ and $4$

D∗DπD^*D\pi and B∗BπB^*B\pi couplings in QCD

We calculate the $D^*D\pi$ and $B^*B\pi$ couplings using QCD sum rules on the light-cone. In this approach, the large-distance dynamics is incorporated in a set of pion wave functions. We take into account two-particle and three-particle wave functions of twist 2, 3 and 4. The resulting values of the coupling constants are $g_{D^*D\pi}= 12.5\pm 1$ and $g_{B^*B\pi}= 29\pm 3$. From this we predict the partial width \Gamma (D^{*+} \ra D^0 \pi^+ )=32 \pm 5~ keV . We also discuss the soft-pion limit of the sum rules which is equivalent to the external axial field approach employed in earlier calculations. Furthermore, using $g_{B^*B\pi}$ and $g_{D^*D\pi}$ the pole dominance model for the B \ra \pi and D\ra \pi semileptonic form factors is compared with the direct calculation of these form factors in the same framework of light-cone sum rules.Comment: 27 pages (LATEX) +3 figures enclosed as .uu file MPI-PhT/94-62 , CEBAF-TH-94-22, LMU 15/9

Self-consistent approach for excitons in quantum wells

We introduce a computationally efficient approach to calculating the characteristics of excitons in quantum wells. In this approach we derive a system of self-consistent equations describing the motion of an electron-hole pair. The motion in the growth direction of the quantum well in this approach is separated from the in-plane motion, but each of them occurs in modified potentials found self-consistently. The approach is applied to shallow quantum wells, for which we obtained an analytical expression for the exciton binding energy and the ground state eigenfunction. Our results are in excellent agreement with standard variational calculations, but require greatly reduced computational effort.Comment: RevTeX4, 13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev B Changed content, added references, correct typo

FAS and NF-κB signalling modulate dependence of lung cancers on mutant EGFR

Human lung adenocarcinomas with activating mutations in EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) often respond to treatment with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), but the magnitude of tumour regression is variable and transient. This heterogeneity in treatment response could result from genetic modifiers that regulate the degree to which tumour cells are dependent on mutant EGFR. Through a pooled RNA interference screen, we show that knockdown of FAS and several components of the NF-κB pathway specifically enhanced cell death induced by the EGFR TKI erlotinib in EGFR-mutant lung cancer cells. Activation of NF-κB through overexpression of c-FLIP or IKK (also known as CFLAR and IKBKB, respectively), or silencing of IκB (also known as NFKBIA), rescued EGFR-mutant lung cancer cells from EGFR TKI treatment. Genetic or pharmacologic inhibition of NF-κB enhanced erlotinib-induced apoptosis in erlotinib-sensitive and erlotinib-resistant EGFR-mutant lung cancer models. Increased expression of the NF-κB inhibitor IκB predicted for improved response and survival in EGFR-mutant lung cancer patients treated with EGFR TKI. These data identify NF-κB as a potential companion drug target, together with EGFR, in EGFR-mutant lung cancers and provide insight into the mechanisms by which tumour cells escape from oncogene dependence

A QCD motivated model for soft interactions at high energies

In this paper we develop an approach to soft scattering processes at high energies,which is based on two mechanisms: Good-Walker mechanism for low mass diffractionand multi-Pomeron interactions for high mass diffraction. The pricipal idea, that allows us to specify the theory for Pomeron interactions, is that the so called soft processes occur at rather short distances (r^2 \propto 1 /^2 \propto \alpha'_\pom \approx 0.01 GeV^{-2}), where perturbative QCD is valid. The value of the Pomeron slope \alpha'_\pom was obtained from the fit to experimental data. Using this theoretical approach we suggest a model that fits all soft data in the ISR-Tevatron energy range, the total, elastic, single and double diffractive cross sections, including $t$ dependence of the differential elastic cross section, and the mass dependence of single diffraction. In this model we calculate the survival probability of diffractive Higgs production, and obtained a value for this observable, which is smaller than 1% at the LHC energy range.Comment: 33pp,20 figures in eps file

Effects of genuine dimension-six Higgs operators

We systematically discuss the consequences of genuine dimension-six Higgs operators. These operators are not subject to stringent constraints from electroweak precision data. However, they can modify the couplings of the Higgs boson to electroweak gauge bosons and, in particular, the Higgs self-interactions. We study the sensitivity to which those couplings can be probed at future \ee linear colliders in the sub-TeV and in the multi-TeV range. We find that for $\sqrt s=500$ GeV with a luminosity of 1 ab$^{-1}$ the anomalous $WWH$ and $ZZH$ couplings may be probed to about the 0.01 level, and the anomalous $HHH$ coupling to about the 0.1 level.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures; typos corrected and references adde

Resonance- and Chaos-Assisted Tunneling

We consider dynamical tunneling between two symmetry-related regular islands that are separated in phase space by a chaotic sea. Such tunneling processes are dominantly governed by nonlinear resonances, which induce a coupling mechanism between ``regular'' quantum states within and ``chaotic'' states outside the islands. By means of a random matrix ansatz for the chaotic part of the Hamiltonian, one can show that the corresponding coupling matrix element directly determines the level splitting between the symmetric and the antisymmetric eigenstates of the pair of islands. We show in detail how this matrix element can be expressed in terms of elementary classical quantities that are associated with the resonance. The validity of this theory is demonstrated with the kicked Harper model.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure