Landowner Liability in Montana

Landowner Liability in Montan

Conformal smectics and their many metrics

We establish that equally spaced smectic configurations enjoy an infinite-dimensional conformal symmetry and show that there is a natural map between them and null hypersurfaces in maximally symmetric spacetimes. By choosing the appropriate conformal factor it is possible to restore additional symmetries of focal structures only found before for smectics on flat substrates

The cubic period-distance relation for the Kater reversible pendulum

We describe the correct cubic relation between the mass configuration of a Kater reversible pendulum and its period of oscillation. From an analysis of its solutions we conclude that there could be as many as three distinct mass configurations for which the periods of small oscillations about the two pivots of the pendulum have the same value. We also discuss a real compound Kater pendulum that realizes this property.Comment: 25 pages 4figure

Unity of Supersymmetry Breaking Models

We examine the models with gauge group U(1)^{k-1}\times\prod_{i=1}^k SU(n_i), which are obtained from decomposing the supersymmetry breaking model of Affleck, Dine and Seiberg containing an antisymmetric tensor field. We note that all of these models are distinct vacua of a single SU(N) gauge theory with an adjoint superfield. The dynamics of this model may be analyzed using the duality of Kutasov and Schwimmer and the deconfinement trick of Berkooz. This analysis leads to a simple picture for supersymmetry breaking for k=2, complementing that of previous work. We examine the flat directions of these models, and give straightforward criteria for lifting them, explaining the requisite peculiar form of the superpotential. For all cases with k>2, the duality argument fails to give supersymmetry breaking dynamics, and we identify a class of problematic flat directions, which we term 2m-baryons. We study in some detail the requirements for lifting these directions, and uncover some surprising facts regarding the relationship between R-symmetry and supersymmetry breaking in models with several gauge groups.Comment: harvmac, 40 page

Iterated Moire Maps and Braiding of Chiral Polymer Crystals

In the hexagonal columnar phase of chiral polymers a bias towards cholesteric twist competes with braiding along an average direction. When the chirality is strong, screw dislocations proliferate, leading to either a tilt grain boundary phase or a new "moire state" with twisted bond order. Polymer trajectories in the plane perpendicular to their average direction are described by iterated moire maps of remarkable complexity.Comment: 10 pages (plain tex) 3 figures uufiled and appende

Anomalous Elasticity of Polymer Cholesterics

We show that polymer cholesterics have much longer pitches than comparable short molecule cholesterics, due to their anomalous elasticity. The pitch $P$ of a chiral mixture with concentration $c$ near the racemic (non-chiral) concentration $c^*$ diverges like $\vert c-c^*\vert^{-\nu}$ with $\nu=1.43 \pm 0.04$ (for short molecule cholesterics $\nu=1$). The short molecule law is recovered for polymers of finite molecular length $\ell$ once the pitch is longer than a length that diverges like $\ell^\gamma$ with $\gamma=0.67 \pm 0.01$. Our predictions could be tested by measurements of the pitch in DNA.Comment: 12 pages, Plain TeX, (1 postscript figure, compressed, uuencoded and appended to paper), minor corrections, IASSNS-HEP-94/4

Bulk Physics at a Graviton Factory

A general prediction of the 5-d Randall-Sundrum (RS) hierarchy model is the emergence of spin-2 Kaluza Klein (KK) gravitons with weak scale masses and couplings. The lowest order effective theory of the RS model is given by 5-d Einstein gravity which uniquely fixes the self-interactions of gravitons. We demonstrate that large numbers of light KK resonances could be produced at a future lepton-collider-based ``Graviton Factory''. Measuring the self-interactions of these KK gravitons will probe the accuracy of the 5-d Einstein gravity picture and, in addition, yield indirect information on the as yet untested self-coupling of the 4-d graviton. The self-interactions of the gravitons can be studied by measuring the decays of the heavier states to the lighter ones. Using the AdS/CFT picture, these can be interpretted as the decays of heavier resonances to lighter ones, in a strongly coupled 4-d CFT. We show that these decays have sufficient rates to be studied at future colliders and that they are also, in principle, sensitive to higher derivative operators, such as the Gauss-Bonnet term. In a generalized RS model, with non-universal 5-d fermion masses, FCNC's will be induced. We show that precise measurements of the rare decays of KK graviton/gauge states into flavor non-diagonal final states at a Graviton Factory can be used to map the 5-d fermion mass matrix.Comment: Latex, 11 pages, 2 figures. Comments regarding the calculation and the AdS/CFT correspondence adde

"Gaugomaly" Mediated SUSY Breaking and Conformal Sequestering

Anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking in the context of 4D conformally sequestered models is combined with Poppitz-Trivedi D-type gauge-mediation. The implementation of the two mediation mechanisms naturally leads to visible soft masses at the same scale so that they can cooperatively solve the mu and flavor problems of weak scale supersymmetry, as well as the tachyonic slepton problem of pure anomaly-mediation. The tools are developed in a modular fashion for more readily fitting into the general program of optimizing supersymmetric dynamics in hunting for the most attractive weak scale phenomenologies combined with Planck-scale plausibility.Comment: 14 pages, Late

Gauge/string duality and scalar glueball mass ratios

It has been shown by Polchinski and Strassler that the scaling of high energy QCD scattering amplitudes can be obtained from string theory. They considered an AdS slice as an approximation for the dual space of a confining gauge theory. Here we use this approximation to estimate in a very simple way the ratios of scalar glueball masses imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions on the string dilaton field. These ratios are in good agreement with the results in the literature. We also find that they do not depend on the size of the slice.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. References updated. Version published in JHE

Rotational Invariance and the Theory of Directed Polymer Nematics

The consequences of rotational invariance in a recent theory of fluctuations in dilute polymer nematics are explored. A correct rotationally invariant free energy insures that anomalous couplings are not generated in a one-loop renormalization group calculation.Comment: 4 Pages, latex file (requires REVTEX 3.0), two postscript figures (attached), IASSNS-HEP-93/2