Simmering Unrest and Succession Challenges in Oman

This is the final version of the paper. Freely available from the publisher via the link in this record.The uncertain health of the sultan of Oman has heightened concern about the future of the country, the most personalized of all Gulf monarchies. Many Omanis have long equated the country with its ruler, Qaboos bin Said Al Said, who won their loyalty by building up a state and a national identity centered on himself. However, amid mounting popular frustration, criticism of Qaboos has emerged, as has anxiety about what will follow his reign. There are several measures the regime can undertake to avoid further unrest. [...

The Gulf Monarchies and Iran: Between Confrontation and Geostrategic Realities

This is the final version of the article. Available from European University Institute via the DOI in this record.

So Close, So Far. National Identity and Political Legitimacy in UAE-Oman Border Cities

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.Since the accession of Oman and the United Arab Emirates to the independence in the early 1970s, the building of both a state apparatus and a nation has lain at the heart of the political projects of respective rulers of these countries to assert their legitimacy and control over their respective territory. This issue of the mutual relationship has been particularly crucial, given the two countries’ shared modern history, and the tribal and ethnic proximity between inhabitants living across the new international boundary. The study of the two border towns of al-Ayn (United Arab Emirates) and al-Buraymi (Oman) provides a unique window onto unfolding patterns of the construction of political sovereignty in post-colonial states and the link between the building of national identity and the physical demarcation from the (br)other. These two towns existed as a single oasis prior to the 1970s. However, the act of drawing an international demarcation across the oasis has led to the sprouting of new dynamics resulting from the increasing difference of social and economic development. This article argues that the adversarial political and economic trajectories of al-Ayn and al-Buraymi have been epitomising the evolution of the relationship between the two countries. While the UAE authorities have been pushing for a stricter regulation of the flow of migrants, it has been in the interest of Oman to keep fluidity in order to alleviate the social and economic challenges on its side of the border. This disparity of interests has impacted bilateral political relationships, as the Omani authorities have had to face the question of the strong extraversion of northern Oman towards the UAE globalised cities and the possibility that these areas could escape Muscat’s allegiance. Growing suspicions and mistrust in both capitals have been accompanied by renewed questioning related to respective national identities, especially when dealing with the relation to the ‘brother.’This research was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J012696/1]

Polarization Charge Distribution in Gapped Graphene

We study the distribution of vacuum polarization charge induced by a Coulomb impurity in massive graphene. By analytically computing the polarization function, we show that the charge density is distributed in space in a non-trivial fashion, and on a characteristic length-scale set by the effective Compton wavelength. The density crosses over from a logarithmic behavior below this scale, to a power law variation above it. Our results in the continuum limit are confirmed by explicit diagonalization of the corresponding tight-binding model on a finite-size lattice. Electron-electron interaction effects are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; expanded versio

Merger Transitions in Brane--Black-Hole Systems: Criticality, Scaling, and Self-Similarity

We propose a toy model for study merger transitions in a curved spaceime with an arbitrary number of dimensions. This model includes a bulk N-dimensional static spherically symmetric black hole and a test D-dimensional brane interacting with the black hole. The brane is asymptotically flat and allows O(D-1) group of symmetry. Such a brane--black-hole (BBH) system has two different phases. The first one is formed by solutions describing a brane crossing the horizon of the bulk black hole. In this case the internal induced geometry of the brane describes D-dimensional black hole. The other phase consists of solutions for branes which do not intersect the horizon and the induced geometry does not have a horizon. We study a critical solution at the threshold of the brane-black-hole formation, and the solutions which are close to it. In particular, we demonstrate, that there exists a striking similarity of the merger transition, during which the phase of the BBH-system is changed, both with the Choptuik critical collapse and with the merger transitions in the higher dimensional caged black-hole--black-string system.Comment: 9 pages 2 figures; additional remarks and references are added at Section IX "Discussion

String Gyratons in Supergravity

We study solutions of the supergravity equations with the string-like sources moving with the speed of light. An exact solution is obtained for the gravitational field of a boosted ring string in any dimension greater than three.Comment: 7 pages;v2 minor changes & references added, final in PR