Charmonium spectral functions in Nf=2 QCD

We report on a study of charmonium at high temperature in 2-flavour QCD. This is the first such study with dynamical fermions. Using an improved anisotropic lattice action, spectral functions are extracted from correlators in the vector and pseudoscalar channels. No signs of medium-induced suppression of the ground states are seen for temperatures up to 1.5T_c, while at T~2T_c there are clear signs of modifications. The current systematic and statistical uncertainties in our data, in particular the relatively coarse lattice and small volume, do not allow us to draw a firm conclusion at this stage.Comment: 6 pages, talk by JIS at Lattice 2005 (Non-zero temperature and density

Exact and Truncated Dynamics in Nonequilibrium Field Theory

Nonperturbative dynamics of quantum fields out of equilibrium is often described by the time evolution of a hierarchy of correlation functions, using approximation methods such as Hartree, large N, and nPI-effective action techniques. These truncation schemes can be implemented equally well in a classical statistical system, where results can be tested by comparison with the complete nonlinear evolution obtained by numerical methods. For a 1+1 dimensional scalar field we find that the early-time behaviour is reproduced qualitatively by the Hartree dynamics. The inclusion of direct scattering improves this to the quantitative level. We show that the emergence of nonthermal temperature profiles at intermediate times can be understood in terms of the fixed points of the evolution equations in the Hartree approximation. The form of the profile depends explicitly on the initial ensemble. While the truncated evolution equations do not seem to be able to get away from the fixed point, the full nonlinear evolution shows thermalization with a (surprisingly) slow relaxation.Comment: 30 pages with 12 eps figures, minor changes; to appear in Phys.Rev.

Disorder-induced melting of the charge order in thin films of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3

We have studied the magnetic-field-induced melting of the charge order in thin films of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 (PCMO) films on SrTiO3 (STO) by X-ray diffraction, magnetization and transport measurement. At small thickness (25 nm) the films are under tensile strain and the low-temperature melting fields are of the order of 20 T or more, comparable to the bulk value. With increasing film thickness the strain relaxes, which leads to a strong decrease of the melting fields. For a film of 150 nm, with in-plane and out-of-plane lattice parameters closer to the bulk value, the melting field has reduced to 4 T at 50 K, with a strong increase in the hysteretic behavior and also an increasing fraction of ferromagnetic material. Strain relaxation by growth on a template of YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) or by post-annealing yields similar results with an even stronger reduction of the melting field. Apparently, strained films behave bulk-like. Relaxation leads to increasing suppression of the CO state, presumably due to atomic scale disorder produced by the relaxation process.Comment: 7 pages, 4 fig

Optimality Theory as a Framework for Lexical Acquisition

This paper re-investigates a lexical acquisition system initially developed for French.We show that, interestingly, the architecture of the system reproduces and implements the main components of Optimality Theory. However, we formulate the hypothesis that some of its limitations are mainly due to a poor representation of the constraints used. Finally, we show how a better representation of the constraints used would yield better results

Transport coefficients from the 2PI effective action

We show that the lowest nontrivial truncation of the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action correctly determines transport coefficients in a weak coupling or 1/N expansion at leading (logarithmic) order in several relativistic field theories. In particular, we consider a single real scalar field with cubic and quartic interactions in the loop expansion, the O(N) model in the 2PI-1/N expansion, and QED with a single and many fermion fields. Therefore, these truncations will provide a correct description, to leading (logarithmic) order, of the long time behavior of these systems, i.e. the approach to equilibrium. This supports the promising results obtained for the dynamics of quantum fields out of equilibrium using 2PI effective action techniques.Comment: 5 pages, explanation in introduction expanded, summary added; to appear in PR

Antiferromagnetic Spin Fluctuations in the Metallic Phase of Quasi-Two-Dimensional Organic Superconductors

We give a quantitative analysis of the previously published nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments in the k-(ET)2X family of organic charge transfer salts by using the phenomenological spin fluctuation model of Moriya, and Millis, Monien and Pines (M-MMP). For temperatures above T_nmr ~ 50 K, the model gives a good quantitative description of the data in the metallic phases of several k-(ET)2X materials. These materials display antiferromagnetic correlation lengths which increase with decreasing temperature and grow to several lattice constants by T_nmr. It is shown that the fact that the dimensionless Korringa ratio is much larger than unity is inconsistent with a broad class of theoretical models (such as dynamical mean-field theory) which neglects spatial correlations and/or vertex corrections. For materials close to the Mott insulating phase the nuclear spin relaxation rate, the Knight shift and the Korringa ratio all decrease significantly with decreasing temperature below T_nmr. This cannot be described by the M-MMP model and the most natural explanation is that a pseudogap, similar to that observed in the underdoped cuprate superconductors, opens up in the density of states below T_nmr. Such a pseudogap has recently been predicted to occur in the dimerised organic charge transfer salts materials by the resonating valence bond (RVB) theory. We propose specific new experiments on organic superconductors to elucidate these issues. For example, measurements to see if high magnetic fields or high pressures can be used to close the pseudogap would be extremely valuable.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Large-N spacetime reduction and the sign and silver-blaze problems of dense QCD

We study the spacetime-reduced (Eguchi-Kawai) version of large-N QCD with nonzero chemical potential. We explore a method to suppress the sign fluctuations of the Dirac determinant in the hadronic phase; the method employs a re-summation of gauge configurations that are related to each other by center transformations. We numerically test this method in two dimensions, and find that it successfully solves the silver-blaze problem. We analyze the system further, and measure its free energy F, the average phase theta of its Dirac determinant, and its chiral condensate . We show that F and are independent of mu in the hadronic phase but that, as chiral perturbation theory predicts, the quenched chiral condensate drops from its mu=0 value when mu~(pion mass)/2. Finally, we find that the distribution of theta qualitatively agrees with further, more recent, predictions from chiral perturbation theory.Comment: 43 pages, 17 figure