A Note on Supersymmetric WZW term in Four Dimensions

We reconsider the supersymmetric Wess-Zumino-Witten (SWZW) term in four dimensions. It has been known that the manifestly supersymmetric form of the SWZW term includes derivative terms on auxiliary fields, the highest components of chiral superfields, and then we cannot eliminate them by their equations of motion. We discuss a possibility for the elimination of such derivative terms by adding total derivative terms. Although the most of derivative terms can be eliminated as in this way, we find that all the derivative terms can be canceled, if and only if an anomalous term in SWZW term vanishes. As a byproduct, we find the first example of a higher derivative term free from such a problem.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages, no figures, typos corrected, references added, accepted for publication in Modern Physics Letters

The Effect of Hydrostatic Weighting on the Vertical Temperature Structure of the Solar Corona

We investigate the effect of hydrostatic scale heights ${\lambda}(T)$ in coronal loops on the determination of the vertical temperature structure $T(h)$ of the solar corona. Every method that determines an average temperature at a particular line-of-sight from optically thin emission (e.g. in EUV or soft X-ray wavelengths) of a mutli-temperature plasma, is subject to the emission measure-weighted contributions $dEM(T)/dT$ from different temperatures. Because most of the coronal structures (along open or closed field lines) are close to hydrostatic equilibrium, the hydrostatic temperature scale height introduces a height-dependent weighting function that causes a systematic bias in the determination of the temperature structure $T(h)$ as function of altitude $h$. The net effect is that the averaged temperature seems to increase with altitude, $dT(h)/dh > 0$, even if every coronal loop (of a multi-temperature ensemble) is isothermal in itself. We simulate this effect with differential emission measure distributions observed by {\sl SERTS} for an instrument with a broadband temperature filter such as {\sl Yohkoh/SXT} and find that the apparent temperature increase due to hydrostatic weighting is of order \Delta T \approx T_0 \times h/r_{\sun}. We suggest that this effect largely explains the systematic temperature increase in the upper corona reported in recent studies (e.g. by Sturrock et al., Wheatland et al., or Priest et al.), rather than being an intrinsic signature of a coronal heating mechanism.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. ApJ Letters, accepted 2000 April 6, in pres

Majorana meets Coxeter: Non-Abelian Majorana Fermions and Non-Abelian Statistics

We discuss statistics of vortices having zero-energy non-Abelian Majorana fermions inside them. Considering the system of multiple non-Abelian vortices, we derive a non-Abelian statistics that differs from the previously derived non-Abelian statistics. The new non-Abelian statistics presented here is given by a tensor product of two different groups, namely the non-Abelian statistics obeyed by the Abelian Majorana fermions and the Coxeter group. The Coxeter group is a symmetric group related to the symmetry of polytopes in a high-dimensional space. As the simplest example, we consider the case in which a vortex contains three Majorana fermions that are mixed with each other under the SO(3) transformations. We concretely present the representation of the Coxeter group in our case and its geometrical expressions in the high-dimensional Hilbert space constructed from non-Abelian Majorana fermions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, references added, published versio

SDSS White Dwarf mass distribution at low effective temperatures

The DA white dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as analyzed in the papers for Data Releases 1 and 4, show an increase in surface gravity towards lower effective temperatures below 11500 K. We study the various possible explanations of this effect, from a real increase of the masses to uncertainties or deficiencies of the atmospheric models. No definite answer is found but the tentative conclusion is that it is most likely the current description of convection in the framework of the mixing-length approximation, which leads to this effect.Comment: to appear in the proceedings of the 16th European Workshop on White Dwarfs, Barcelona, 200

Unusual Tunneling Characteristics of Double-quantum-well Heterostructures

We report tunneling phenomena in double In$_{0.53}$Ga$_{0.47}$As quantum-well structures that are at odds with the conventional parallel-momentum-conserving picture of tunneling between two-dimensional systems. We found that the tunneling current was mostly determined by the correlation between the emitter and the state in one well, and not by that between those in both wells. Clear magnetic-field-dependent features were first observed before the main resonance, corresponding to tunneling channels into the Landau levels of the well near the emitter. These facts provide evidence of the violation of in-plane momentum conservation in two-dimensional systems.Comment: Submitted to ICPS-27 conference proceeding as a contributed pape

Statistical significance of fine structure in the frequency spectrum of Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations

We discuss a statistical analysis of Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations measured in a two-dimensional ring, in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Measurements performed at different values of gate voltage are used to calculate the ensemble-averaged modulus of the Fourier spectrum and, at each frequency, the standard deviation associated to the average. This allows us to prove the statistical significance of a splitting that we observe in the h/e peak of the averaged spectrum. Our work illustrates in detail the role of sample specific effects on the frequency spectrum of Aharonov-Bohm conductance oscillations and it demonstrates how fine structures of a different physical origin can be discriminated from sample specific features.Comment: accepted for publication in PR

Slow shocks and conduction fronts from Petschek reconnection of skewed magnetic fields: two-fluid effects

In models of fast magnetic reconnection, flux transfer occurs within a small portion of a current sheet triggering stored magnetic energy to be thermalized by shocks. When the initial current sheet separates magnetic fields which are not perfectly anti-parallel, i.e. they are skewed, magnetic energy is first converted to bulk kinetic energy and then thermalized in slow magnetosonic shocks. We show that the latter resemble parallel shocks or hydrodynamic shocks for all skew angles except those very near the anti-parallel limit. As for parallel shocks, the structures of reconnection-driven slow shocks are best studied using two-fluid equations in which ions and electrons have independent temperature. Time-dependent solutions of these equations can be used to predict and understand the shocks from reconnection of skewed magnetic fields. The results differ from those found using a single-fluid model such as magnetohydrodynamics. In the two-fluid model electrons are heated indirectly and thus carry a heat flux always well below the free-streaming limit. The viscous stress of the ions is, however, typically near the fluid-treatable limit. We find that for a wide range of skew angles and small plasma beta an electron conduction front extends ahead of the slow shock but remains within the outflow jet. In such cases conduction will play a more limited role in driving chromospheric evaporation than has been predicted based on single-fluid, anti-parallel models

Spin-Hall effect in two-dimensional mesoscopic hole systems

The spin Hall effect in two dimensional hole systems is studied by using the four-terminal Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker formula with the help of Green functions. The spin Hall effect exists even when there are {\em not} any correlations between the spin-up and -down heavy holes (light holes) and when the $\Gamma$-point degeneracy of the heavy hole and light hole bands is lifted by the confinement or recovered by the strain. When only a heavy hole charge current without any spin polarization is injected through one lead, under right choice of lead voltages, one can get a pure heavy (light) hole spin current, combined with a possible impure light (heavy) hole spin current from another two leads. The spin Hall coefficients of both heavy and light holes depend on the Fermi energy, devise size and the disorder strength. It is also shown that the spin Hall effect of two dimensional hole systems is much more robust than that of electron systems with the Rashba spin-orbit coupling and the spin Hall coefficients do not decrease with the system size but tend to some nonzero values when the disorder strength is smaller than some critical value.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure