Beauty, disinterested pleasure, and universal communicability: Kant's response to Burke

Although Kant (wrongly) holds that the universal communicability of aesthetic judgments logically follows from the disinterested character of the pleasure upon which they are based, Kant's emphasis on the a priori validity of judgments of beauty can be viewed as a rebuttal of the kind of empiricist arguments that Burke offers to justify the social nature of the experience of beauty. I argue that the requirement of universal communicability is not a mere addition to the requirement of universal validity and is far more relevant to an adequate characterisation of the beautiful than has customarily been assumed. I further argue that the 'exemplary necessity' of pure judgments of taste, if understood correctly, reveals beauty's primordial social significance, enabling us to become alive to a profound universal solidarity among aesthetic subjects

2-Dimensional Dipolar Scattering

We characterize the long range dipolar scattering in 2-dimensions. We use the analytic zero energy wavefunction including the dipolar interaction; this solution yields universal dipolar scattering properties in the threshold regime. We also study the semi-classical dipolar scattering and find universal dipolar scattering for this energy regime. For both energy regimes, we discuss the validity of the universality and give physical examples of the scattering.Comment: 4 pages 4 figure

Extended Universality of the Surface Curvature in Equilibrium Crystal Shapes

We investigate the universal property of curvatures in surface models which display a flat phase and a rough phase whose criticality is described by the Gaussian model. Earlier we derived a relation between the Hessian of the free energy and the Gaussian coupling constant in the six-vertex model. Here we show its validity in a general setting using renormalization group arguments. The general validity of the relation is confirmed numerically in the RSOS model by comparing the Hessian of the free energy and the Gaussian coupling constant in a transfer matrix finite-size-scaling study. The Hessian relation gives clear understanding of the universal curvature jump at roughening transitions and facet edges and also provides an efficient way of locating the phase boundaries.Comment: 19 pages, RevTex, 3 Postscript Figures, To appear in Phys. Rev.

A General Argument Against the Universal Validity of the Superposition Principle

We reconsider a well known problem of quantum theory, i.e. the so called measurement (or macro-objectification) problem, and we rederive the fact that it gives rise to serious problems of interpretation. The novelty of our approach derives from the fact that the relevant conclusion is obtained in a completely general way, in particular, without resorting to any of the assumptions of ideality which are usually done for the measurement process. The generality and unescapability of our assumptions (we take into account possible malfunctionings of the apparatus, its unavoidable entanglement with the environmment, its high but not absolute reliability, its fundamentally uncontrollable features) allow to draw the conclusion that the very possibility of performing measurements on a microsystem combined with the assumed general validity of the linear nature of quantum evolution leads to a fundamental contradiction.Comment: 17 pages, Latex, to appear in Phys. Lett.

A Remark on "Two-Sided" Monotonicity Condition: An Application to LpL^{p} Convergence

To verify the universal validity of the "two-sided" monotonicity condition introduced in [8], we will apply it to include more classical examples. The present paper selects the $L^{p}$ convergence case for this purpose. Furthermore, Theorem 3 shows that our improvements are not trivial.Comment: 10 page

Fundamental oscillation modes of neutron stars: validity of universal relations

We study the $f$-mode frequencies and damping times of nonrotating neutron stars (NS) in general relativity (GR) by solving the linearized perturbation equations, with the aim to establish "universal" relations that depend only weakly on the equations of state (EOS). Using a more comprehensive set of EOSs, we re-examine some proposed linearizations that describe the $f$-mode parameters in terms of mass and radius of the neutron star (NS), and we test a more recent proposal for expressing the $f$-mode parameters as quadratic functions of the effective compactness. Our extensive results for each equation of state considered allow us to study the accuracy of each proposal. In particular, we find that the damping time deviates quite considerably from the proposed linearization. We introduce a new universal relation for the product of the $f$-mode frequency and damping time as a function of the (ordinary) compactness, which proved to be more accurate. The relations using the effective compactness on the other hand also fit our data accurately. Our results show that the maximum oscillation frequency depends strongly on the EOS, such that the measurement of a high oscillation frequency would rule out several EOSs. Lastly, we compare the exact mode frequencies to those obtained in the Cowling approximation, and also to results obtained with a nonlinear evolution code, validating the implementations of the different approaches.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, v2: final version accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

Parton Distributions in the Valon Model

The parton distribution functions determined by CTEQ at low $Q^2$ are used as inputs to test the validity of the valon model. The valon distributions in a nucleon are first found to be nearly $Q$ independent. The parton distribution in a valon are shown to be consistent with being universal, independent of the valon type. The momentum fractions of the partons in the valon add up separately to one. These properties affirm the validity of the valon model. The various distributions are parameterized for convenient application of the model.Comment: 9 pages + 9 figures in ep

Universal properties and the first law of black hole inner mechanics

We show by explicit computations that the product of all the horizon areas is independent of the mass, regardless of the topology of the horizons. The universal character of this relation holds for all known five dimensional asymptotically flat black rings, and for black strings. This gives further evidence for the crucial role that the thermodynamic properties at each horizon play in understanding the entropy at the microscopic level. To this end we propose a "first law" for the inner Cauchy horizons of black holes. The validity of this formula, which seems to be universal, was explicitly checked in all cases.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor corrections, references added; v3: minor corrections, references adde

Shot noise in semiclassical chaotic cavities

We construct a trajectory-based semiclassical theory of shot noise in clean chaotic cavities. In the universal regime of vanishing Ehrenfest time \tE, we reproduce the random matrix theory result, and show that the Fano factor is exponentially suppressed as \tE increases. We demonstrate how our theory preserves the unitarity of the scattering matrix even in the regime of finite \tE. We discuss the range of validity of our semiclassical approach and point out subtleties relevant to the recent semiclassical treatment of shot noise in the universal regime by Braun et al. [cond-mat/0511292].Comment: Final version, to appear in Physical Review Letter

Universality of Sparse d>2d>2 Conformal Field Theory at Large NN

We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for large $N$ conformal field theories to have a universal free energy and an extended range of validity of the higher-dimensional Cardy formula. These constraints are much tighter than in two dimensions and must be satisfied by any conformal field theory dual to Einstein gravity. We construct and analyze symmetric product orbifold theories on $\mathbb{T}^d$ and show that they only realize the necessary phase structure and extended range of validity if the seed theory is assumed to have a universal vacuum energy.Comment: 32 pages + appendice