Mesons and tachyons with confinement and chiral restoration, and NA60

In this paper the spectrum of quark-antiquark systems, including light mesons and tachyons, is studied in the true vacuum and in the chiral invariant vacuum. The mass gap equation for the vacua and the Salpeter-RPA equation for the mesons are solved for a simple chiral invariant and confining quark model. At T=0 and in the true vacuum, the scalar and pseudoscalar, or the vector and axial vector are not degenerate, and in the chiral limit, the pseudoscalar groundstates are Goldstone bosons. At T=0 the chiral invariant vacuum is an unstable vacuum, decaying through an infinite number of scalar and pseudoscalar tachyons. Nevertheless the axialvector and vector remain mesons, with real masses. To illustrate the chiral restoration, an arbitrary path between the two vacua is also studied. Different families of light-light and heavy-light mesons, sensitive to chiral restoration, are also studied. At higher temperatures the potential must be suppressed, and the chiral symmetry can be restored without tachyons, but then all mesons have small real masses. Implications for heavy-ion collisions, in particular for the recent vector meson spectra measured by the NA60 collaboration, are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 3 table

Improved results for N=(2,2) super Yang-Mills theory using supersymmetric discrete light-cone quantization

We consider the (1+1)-dimensional ${\cal N}=(2,2)$ super Yang--Mills theory which is obtained by dimensionally reducing ${\cal N}=1$ super Yang--Mills theory in four dimension to two dimensions. We do our calculations in the large-$N_c$ approximation using Supersymmetric Discrete Light Cone Quantization. The objective is to calculate quantities that might be investigated by researchers using other numerical methods. We present a precision study of the low-mass spectrum and the stress-energy correlator $$. We find that the mass gap of this theory closes as the numerical resolution goes to infinity and that the correlator in the intermediate $r$ region behaves like $r^{-4.75}$.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure

Thermodynamic potential with correct asymptotics for PNJL model

An attempt is made to resolve certain incongruities within the Nambu - Jona-Lasinio (NJL) and Polyakov loop extended NJL models (PNJL) which currently are used to extract the thermodynamic characteristics of the quark-gluon system. It is argued that the most attractive resolution of these incongruities is the possibility to obtain the thermodynamic potential directly from the corresponding extremum conditions (gap equations) by integrating them, an integration constant being fixed in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The advantage of the approach is that the regulator is kept finite both in divergent and finite valued integrals at finite temperature and chemical potential. The Pauli-Villars regularization is used, although a standard 3D sharp cutoff can be applied as well.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, extended version, title change

Mechanisms for Stable Sonoluminescence

A gas bubble trapped in water by an oscillating acoustic field is expected to either shrink or grow on a diffusive timescale, depending on the forcing strength and the bubble size. At high ambient gas concentration this has long been observed in experiments. However, recent sonoluminescence experiments show that in certain circumstances when the ambient gas concentration is low the bubble can be stable for days. This paper presents mechanisms leading to stability which predict parameter dependences in agreement with the sonoluminescence experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures on request (2 as .ps files

The Vacuum in Light-Cone Field Theory

This is an overview of the problem of the vacuum in light-cone field theory, stressing its close connection to other puzzles regarding light-cone quantization. I explain the sense in which the light-cone vacuum is ``trivial,'' and describe a way of setting up a quantum field theory on null planes so that it is equivalent to the usual equal-time formulation. This construction is quite helpful in resolving the puzzling aspects of the light-cone formalism. It furthermore allows the extraction of effective Hamiltonians that incorporate vacuum physics, but that act in a Hilbert space in which the vacuum state is simple. The discussion is fairly informal, and focuses mainly on the conceptual issues. [Talk presented at {\sc Orbis Scientiae 1996}, Miami Beach, FL, January 25--28, 1996. To appear in the proceedings.]Comment: 20 pages, RevTeX, 4 Postscript figures. Minor typos correcte

Casimir Energy for a Spherical Cavity in a Dielectric: Applications to Sonoluminescence

In the final few years of his life, Julian Schwinger proposed that the ``dynamical Casimir effect'' might provide the driving force behind the puzzling phenomenon of sonoluminescence. Motivated by that exciting suggestion, we have computed the static Casimir energy of a spherical cavity in an otherwise uniform material. As expected the result is divergent; yet a plausible finite answer is extracted, in the leading uniform asymptotic approximation. This result agrees with that found using zeta-function regularization. Numerically, we find far too small an energy to account for the large burst of photons seen in sonoluminescence. If the divergent result is retained, it is of the wrong sign to drive the effect. Dispersion does not resolve this contradiction. In the static approximation, the Fresnel drag term is zero; on the mother hand, electrostriction could be comparable to the Casimir term. It is argued that this adiabatic approximation to the dynamical Casimir effect should be quite accurate.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, REVTe

Observability of the Bulk Casimir Effect: Can the Dynamical Casimir Effect be Relevant to Sonoluminescence?

The experimental observation of intense light emission by acoustically driven, periodically collapsing bubbles of air in water (sonoluminescence) has yet to receive an adequate explanation. One of the most intriguing ideas is that the conversion of acoustic energy into photons occurs quantum mechanically, through a dynamical version of the Casimir effect. We have argued elsewhere that in the adiabatic approximation, which should be reliable here, Casimir or zero-point energies cannot possibly be large enough to be relevant. (About 10 MeV of energy is released per collapse.) However, there are sufficient subtleties involved that others have come to opposite conclusions. In particular, it has been suggested that bulk energy, that is, simply the naive sum of ${1\over2}\hbar\omega$, which is proportional to the volume, could be relevant. We show that this cannot be the case, based on general principles as well as specific calculations. In the process we further illuminate some of the divergence difficulties that plague Casimir calculations, with an example relevant to the bag model of hadrons.Comment: 13 pages, REVTe

Dark Matter, Muon g-2 and Other SUSY Constraints

Recent developments constraining the SUSY parameter space are reviewed within the framework of SUGRA GUT models. The WMAP data is seen to reduce the error in the density of cold dark matter by about a factor of four, implying that the lightest stau is only 5 -10 GeV heavier than the lightest neutralino when m_0, m_{1/2} < 1 TeV. The CMD-2 re-analysis of their data has reduced the disagreement between the Standard Model prediction and the Brookhaven measurement of the muon magnetic moment to 1.9 sigma, while using the tau decay data plus CVC, the disagreement is 0.7 sigma. (However, the two sets of data remain inconsistent at the 2.9 sigma level.) The recent Belle and BABAR measurements of the B -> phi K CP violating parameters and branching ratios are discussed. They are analyzed theoretically within the BBNS improved factorization method. The CP parameters are in disagreement with the Standard Model at the 2.7 sigma level, and the branching ratios are low by a factor of two or more over most of the parameter space. It is shown that both anomalies can naturally be accounted for by adding a non-universal cubic soft breaking term at M_G mixing the second and third generations.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, plenary talk at Beyond The Desert '03, Castle Ringberg, Germany, June 9, 2003. Typos correcte

A light-front coupled cluster method

A new method for the nonperturbative solution of quantum field theories is described. The method adapts the exponential-operator technique of the standard many-body coupled-cluster method to the Fock-space eigenvalue problem for light-front Hamiltonians. This leads to an effective eigenvalue problem in the valence Fock sector and a set of nonlinear integral equations for the functions that define the exponential operator. The approach avoids at least some of the difficulties associated with the Fock-space truncation usually used.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure; to appear in the proceedings of LIGHTCONE 2011, 23-27 May 2011, Dalla

Sonoluminescing air bubbles rectify argon

The dynamics of single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) strongly depends on the percentage of inert gas within the bubble. We propose a theory for this dependence, based on a combination of principles from sonochemistry and hydrodynamic stability. The nitrogen and oxygen dissociation and subsequent reaction to water soluble gases implies that strongly forced air bubbles eventually consist of pure argon. Thus it is the partial argon (or any other inert gas) pressure which is relevant for stability. The theory provides quantitative explanations for many aspects of SBSL.Comment: 4 page