Synchrotron oscillation damping due to beam-beam collisions

In DA{\Phi}NE, the Frascati e+/e- collider, the crab waist collision scheme has been successfully implemented in 2008 and 2009. During the collision operations for Siddharta experiment, an unusual synchrotron damping effect has been observed. Indeed, with the longitudinal feedback switched off, the positron beam becomes unstable with beam currents in the order of 200-300 mA. The longitudinal instability is damped by bringing the positron beam in collision with a high current electron beam (~2A). Besides, we have observed a shift of \approx 600Hz in the residual synchrotron sidebands. Precise measurements have been performed by using both a commercial spectrum analyzer and the diagnostics capabilities of the DA{\Phi}NE longitudinal bunch-by-bunch feedback. This damping effect has been observed in DA{\Phi}NE for the first time during collisions with the crab waist scheme. Our explanation is that beam collisions with a large crossing angle produce a longitudinal tune shift and a longitudinal tune spread, providing Landau damping of synchrotron oscillations.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figures, talk presented to IPAC'10 - Kyoto - May 24-28 201

Softening of the equation of state of matter at large densities and temperatures: chiral symmetry restoration vs. quark deconfinement

We discuss two models for describing the behavior of matter at large densities and intermediate temperatures. In both models a softening of the equation of state takes place due to the appearance of new degrees of freedom. The first is a hadronic model in which the softening is due to chiral symmetry restoration. In the second model the softening is associated with the formation of clusters of quarks in the mixed phase. We show that both models allow a significant softening but, in the first case the bulk modulus is mainly dependent on the density, while in the mixed phase model it also strongly depends on the temperature. We also show that the bulk modulus is not vanishing in the mixed phase due to the presence of two conserved charges, the baryon and the isospin one. Only in a small region of densities and temperatures the incompressibility becomes extremely small. Finally we compare our results with recent analysis of heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, editorially accepted versio

Radiative transfer in highly scattering materials - numerical solution and evaluation of approximate analytic solutions

Numerical solutions for radiative transport in a class of anisotropically scattering materials are presented. Conditions for convergence and divergence of the iterative method are given and supported by computed results. The relation of two flux theories to the equation of radiative transfer for isotropic scattering is discussed. The adequacy of the two flux approach for the reflectance, radiative flux and radiative flux divergence of highly scattering media is evaluated with respect to solutions of the radiative transfer equation

Generation of strong magnetic fields by r-modes in millisecond accreting neutron stars: induced deformations and gravitational wave emission

Differential rotation induced by the r-mode instability can generate very strong toroidal fields in the core of accreting, millisecond spinning neutron stars. We introduce explicitly the magnetic damping term in the evolution equations of the r-modes and solve them numerically in the Newtonian limit, to follow the development and growth of the internal magnetic field. We show that the strength of the latter can reach large values, $B \sim 10^{14}$ G, in the core of the fastest accreting neutron stars. This is strong enough to induce a significant quadrupole moment of the neutron star mass distribution, corresponding to an ellipticity |\epsilon_B}| \sim 10^{-8}. If the symmetry axis of the induced magnetic field is not aligned with the spin axis, the neutron star radiates gravitational waves. We suggest that this mechanism may explain the upper limit of the spin frequencies observed in accreting neutron stars in Low Mass X-Ray Binaries. We discuss the relevance of our results for the search of gravitational waves.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

1-2-3-flavor color superconductivity in compact stars

We suggest a scenario where the three light quark flavors are sequentially deconfined under increasing pressure in cold asymmetric nuclear matter, e.g., as in neutron stars. The basis for our analysis is a chiral quark matter model of Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type with diquark pairing in the spin-1 single flavor (CSL) and spin-0 two/three flavor (2SC/CFL) channels, and a Dirac-Brueckner Hartree-Fock (DBHF) approach in the nuclear matter sector. We find that nucleon dissociation sets in at about the saturation density, n_0, when the down-quark Fermi sea is populated (d-quark dripline) due to the flavor asymmetry imposed by beta-equilibrium and charge neutrality. At about 3n_0 u-quarks appear forming a two-flavor color superconducting (2SC) phase, while the s-quark Fermi sea is populated only at still higher baryon density. The hybrid star sequence has a maximum mass of 2.1 M_sun. Two- and three-flavor quark matter phases are found only in gravitationally unstable hybrid star solutions.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of Quark Matter 2008: 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus Nucleus Collisions (QM 2008), Jaipur, India, 4-10 Feb 200

Strange Exotic States and Compact Stars

We discuss the possible appearance of strange exotic multi-quark states in the interior of neutron stars and signals for the existence of strange quark matter in the core of compact stars. We show how the in-medium properties of possible pentaquark states are constrained by pulsar mass measurements. The possibility of generating the observed large pulsar kick velocities by asymmetric emission of neutrinos from strange quark matter in magnetic fields is outlined.Comment: 10 pages, invited talk given at the International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter 2006 (SQM2006), UCLA, USA, March 26-31, 2006, Journal of Physics G in press, refs. adde

A dynamical, confining model and hot quark stars

We explore the consequences of an equation of state (EOS) obtained in a confining Dyson-Schwinger equation model of QCD for the structure and stability of nonstrange quark stars at finite-T, and compare the results with those obtained using a bag-model EOS. Both models support a temperature profile that varies over the star's volume and the consequences of this are model independent. However, in our model the analogue of the bag pressure is (T,mu)-dependent, which is not the case in the bag model. This is a significant qualitative difference and comparing the results effects a primary goal of elucidating the sensitivity of quark star properties to the form of the EOS.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, epsfig.sty, elsart.sty. Shortened version to appear in Phys. Lett. B, qualitatively unmodifie

Bulk Viscosity in Hybrid Stars

We compute the bulk viscosity of a mixed quark-hadron phase. In the first scenario to be discussed, the mixed phase occurs at large densities and we assume that it is composed of a mixing of hyperonic matter and quarks in the Color Flavor Locked phase. In a second scenario, the mixed phase occurs at lower densities and it is composed of a mixing of nucleons and unpaired quark matter. We have also investigated the effect of a non-vanishing surface tension at the interface between hadronic and quark matter. In both scenarios, the bulk viscosity is large when the surface tension is absent, while the value of the viscosity reduces in the second scenario when a finite value for the surface tension is taken into account. In all cases, the r-mode instabilities of the corresponding hybrid star are suppressed.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, extended version in print on Phys.Rev.