Conformal off-mass-shell extension and elimination of conformal anomalies in quantum gravity

Radiative corrections in the Einstein quantum gravity are made manifestly conformally invariant without changing the S matrix. The conformally invariant form of the classical gravitational action is restored. It is shown, that conformal anomalies, discovered in gravitating systems, do not affect the S matrix. Off the mass shell these anomalies are eliminated by the appropriate choice of a regularization.     

Solution of the Schrödinger equation in terms of classical paths

An expression in terms of classical paths is derived for the Laplace transform $\text{Ω(s)}$ of the Green function G of the Schrödinger equation with respect to $\text{1}\text{h}\text{?}$. For an analytic potential V(r), the function Ω is also analytic in the plane of the complex action variable s; its singularities lie at the values $\text{S}$ of the action along each possible (complex) classical path, including the paths which reflect from singularities of the potential. Accordingly, G may be written as a sum of terms, each of which is associated with such a classical path, and contains the factor $\text{exp}\text{(}\text{iS}\text{h}\text{?}\text{)}$. This expansion formally solves the problem of constructing waves out of the corresponding (complex) classical paths. A similar expression, in terms of closed paths, is derived for the density ? of eigenvalues of the Schrödinger equation. In situations when the eigenvalues are dense, ? is well approximated by the contributions of the shortest closed paths: while the path of vanishing length corresponds to the Thomas-Fermi approximation and its smooth corrections, the other paths yield contributions which oscillate and are damped as $\text{exp}\text{(}\text{iS}\text{h}\text{?}\text{)}$. This result also holds for nonanalytic potentials V(r). If the spectrum is continuous, closed classical paths yield oscillations in the scattering phase-shift. The analysis is also extended to multicomponent wave functions (describing, e.g., motion of particles with spin, or coupled channel scattering); along a classical path, the internal degree of freedom varies adiabatically, except through points at which it is not coupled to the potential, where it may undergo discrete changes.     

Systematics of nuclear level density parameters of nuclei deficient in one neutron

Photoneutron mean energies of 38 elements were measured as a function of peak bremsstrahlung energy for elements with 23 ≦ Z ≦ 83. Results are compared with neutron mean energies calculated from statistical theory, using for nuclear level densities modified Fermi gas formulae with and without pairing corrections and a constant temperature formula. Except near closed shells the Fermi gas formula with pairing corrections gives reasonable to good correlation between experimental and theoretical data. Derived values of the nuclear level density parameter a-except near Z = 82-are in quantitative agreement with those from recent neutron resonance data.     

Electromagnetic waves near perfect conductors. I. Multiple scattering expansions. Distribution of modes

An expansion is established for the Green functions describing electromagnetic waves in the presence of a perfectly conducting boundary. Each term represents a process for which the wave scatters several times on the boundary and propagates freely in between. This multiple scattering expansion reduces to ray optics in the high frequency limit, and thus provides a general framework to study diffraction corrections. It also allows one to evaluate quantities averaged over the spectrum. Some symmetry properties of the expansion are exhibited, in particular, the replacement of magnetic fields by electric fields results in a change of sign at each scattering. Convergence is proven for any smooth boundary in the domain Im k ? | Re k | of complex wavenumbers k. The continuation of the convergence domain around k = 0 is shown to depend upon the topology of the boundary. The multiple scattering expansion method is applied to determine the distribution of electromagnetic eigenmodes in a conducting cavity. The density of modes ?(k) is analyzed in terms of closed classical rays, bouncing off the walls with mirror reflections. Paths of zero length yield the smooth part of ?, expanded as $\text{π}{}^{\mathrm{?2}}\text{[Vk}{}^2\text{-}\text{2}\text{3}\text{∫ dα / R}$ + $\text{O}$(k^?2)] where V is the volume of the cavity, and ∫ dα/R is the integral over the boundary of the mean curvature. Paths of finite length L yield contributions to the density ?(k), of the form Im(a exp ikL) appearing as regular oscillations in the bunching of eigenmodes. For an analytic boundary, inclusion of complex classical rays renders exact the analysis of the eigenmodes in terms of closed paths. As a consequence, the high temperature expansion for the energy of a small blackbody is obtained.     

Quantizing a classically ergodic system: Sinai's billiard and the KKR method

Sinai's “billiards on a torus,” i.e., free motion of a particle in a plane amongst reflecting discs of radius R centred on points of the unit square lattice, is a classically ergodic system with two freedoms, parametrized by R. Quantal energy levels E_n are given by the vanishing of the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker (KKR) determinant of solid state theory. This gives a rapid computational scheme for computing E_n as functions of R. Except for the integrable case R = 0, no degeneracies are found, illustrating the theorem that two parameters, not one, are required to make levels cross in a generic system. The same theorem leads to the prediction that the probability distribution of the spacings S of neighbouring levels is $\text{O}$(S) as S → 0, in good agreement with computation. The KKR determinant is transformed analytically to give the level density d(E) semiclassically (i.e., as ? → 0) as the sum of a steady contribution $\text{d}\text{?}\text{(E)}$ and an oscillatory contribution d_osc(E). $\text{d}\text{?}$ is $\text{O}$(?^?2) and is given by the Weyl “area” formula plus “edge,” “corner” and “curvature” corrections, in excellent agreement with computation. d_osc is given by a sum over classical closed orbits (all unstable). Nonisolated closed orbits (not hitting discs) contribute terms with $\text{O}$$\text{(?}{}^{\mathrm{<mtext>?3</mtext><mtext>2</mtext><mtext>)</mtext>}}$ to d_osc, while isolated closed orbits (bouncing between discs) contribute terms with $\text{O}$(?^?1) to d_osc. The isolated orbits are vastly more numerous than the nonisolated orbits and their contributions cannot be neglected. As a means of calculating the individual E_n (rather than the smoothed spectrum), the KKR method is much more efficient than the classical path sum.     

On gravity’s role in the genesis of rest masses of classical fields

It is shown that in the Einstein-conformally coupled Higgs–Maxwell system with Friedman–Robertson–Walker symmetries the energy density of the Higgs field has stable local minimum only if the mean curvature of the \(t=\mathrm{const}\) hypersurfaces is less than a finite critical value \(\chi _c\), while for greater mean curvature the energy density is not bounded from below. Therefore, there are extreme gravitational situations in which even quasi-locally defined instantaneous vacuum states of the Higgs sector cannot exist, and hence one cannot at all define the rest mass of all the classical fields. On hypersurfaces with mean curvature less than \(\chi _c\) the energy density has the ‘wine bottle’ (rather than the familiar ‘Mexican hat’) shape, and the gauge field can get rest mass via the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism. The spacelike hypersurface with the critical mean curvature represents the moment of ‘genesis’ of rest masses.     

New features of a smectic-A-crystal-B phase transition in a homologous series of liquid crystals

The components L _j of the Lorentz tensor and the polarizability density of molecules G in the smectic-A and crystalline-B phases have been determined for homologues of the series of alkyl-p-(4-alkoxybenzylideneamino-)cinnamates. The quantity L _j (G) in both phases is a linear (quadratic) function of the orientational order parameter of molecules S, which is invariant (noninvariant) with respect to the A-B transition, which is manifested in the form of jumps δL _j and δG and enhancement of the G(S) dependence. An increase in the length of terminal molecular chains and weakening of interlayer correlation of molecules are accompanied by strengthening of the A-B transition of the first order and G(S) dependences in both phases together with an increase in δL _j and δG. Change δG and dependence G(S) in the B phase are related to change in the conformation (flattening) of aromatic molecular cores.     

Radiative corrections to helicity amplitudes forW-pair production ine + e−-annihilation

Radiative corrections toW pair production ine ⁺ e^?-annihilation are investigated. In an earlier work we discussed only the weak corrections to this process. Here we present the complete calculation including QED corrections. Full agreement with other authors is achieved. We use the helicity formalism for the projection of theS-matrix into invariant amplitudes and study the dependence of cross sections on the Higgs and top masses. Effects due to the choice of the renormalization scheme are considered.     

Higher gauge theory and a non-Abelian generalization of 2-form electrodynamics

In conventional gauge theory, a charged point particle is described by a representation of the gauge group. If we propagate the particle along some path, the parallel transport of the gauge connection acts on this representation. The Lagrangian density of the gauge field depends on the curvature of the connection which can be calculated from the holonomy around (infinitesimal) loops. For Abelian symmetry groups, say G=U(1), there exists a generalization, known as p-form electrodynamics, in which (p−1)-dimensional charged objects can be propagated along p-surfaces and in which the Lagrangian depends on a generalized curvature associated with (infinitesimal) closed p-surfaces. In this article, we use Lie 2-groups and ideas from higher category theory in order to formulate a discrete gauge theory which generalizes these models at the level p=2 to possibly non-Abelian symmetry groups. An important feature of our model is that it involves both parallel transports along paths and generalized transports along surfaces with a non-trivial interplay of these two types of variables. Our main result is the geometric picture, namely the assignment of non-Abelian quantities to geometrical objects in a coordinate free way. We construct the precise assignment of variables to the curves and surfaces, the generalized local symmetries and gauge invariant actions and we clarify which structures can be non-Abelian and which others are always Abelian. A discrete version of connections on non-Abelian gerbes is a special case of our construction. Even though the motivation sketched so far suggests applications mainly in string theory, the model presented here is also related to spin foam models of quantum gravity and may in addition provide some insight into the role of centre monopoles and vortices in lattice QCD.     

Fluctuations in the Thermodynamic Limit of Focussing Cubic Schrödinger

We consider the statistical mechanics of a complex field Z whose dynamics are governed by the focussing cubic Schrödinger equation. Here the Hamiltonian $$H = \int {_\Omega } \left[ {\frac{1}{2}\left| {\nabla Z} \right|^2 - \frac{1}{4}\left| Z \right|^4 } \right]dx$$ is unbounded from below, preventing the natural Gibbs measure from being normalizable. This difficulty may be circumvented⁽⁵⁾ by taking Ω the circle of perimeter L and fixing the mean-square (which is conserved by the dynamics): $\int {_0^L } \left| Z \right|^2 dx = LD$ for positive “density” D. The resulting (probability) measure on paths is absolutely continuous to the two-dimensional Wiener measure and is known to be invariant under the flow.^{(2, 7)} One way to extend this picture to the whole-line flow is to take the thermodynamic limit (L↑∞). Unfortunately, the unboundedness of H causes vast local concentration of the field as L increases and leads to collapse at L=∞.⁽¹¹⁾ Here we attempt to capture fluctuations away from this collapse by performing a joint continuum and infinite-volume limit for an appropriate lattice ensemble. The result is that, for high density, the scaled paths go over into a White Noise.     

Signature of phase coherence in isolated mesoscopic systems

At low temperature, electronic wave functions in a metal keep their phase coherence on a length L_φ which can be of the order of few microns. Transport and thermodynamic properties of mesoscopic systems whose size are smaller than L_φ exhibit spectacular signatures of this coherence which can be revealed by instance through the sensitivity of the phase of the electrons to an applied vector potential. These quantum effects crucially depend on the way measurements are performed, in this paper we emphasize the difference between:• connected open systems, characterized by their transmission properties accessible through conductance measurements;• electrically isolated, closed systems caracterized by their energy level spectra and investigated through thermodynamic (mostly magnetization) and ac conductance (response to an electromagnetic wave) measurements.They correspond to different types of coupling to the measuring apparatus, and present different sensitivities to phase coherence. The amplitude of quantum oscillations of the magnetoconductance on a connected system are indeed only a small fraction of the classical conductance and can be much larger on an isolated system.     

Non-degenerated Ground States and Low-degenerated Excited States in the Antiferromagnetic Ising Model on Triangulations

We study the unexpected asymptotic behavior of the degeneracy of the first few energy levels in the antiferromagnetic Ising model on triangulations of closed Riemann surfaces. There are strong mathematical and physical reasons to expect that the number of ground states (i.e., degeneracy) of the antiferromagnetic Ising model on the triangulations of a fixed closed Riemann surface is exponential in the number of vertices. In the set of plane triangulations, the degeneracy equals the number of perfect matchings of the geometric duals, and thus it is exponential by a recent result of Chudnovsky and Seymour. From the physics point of view, antiferromagnetic triangulations are geometrically frustrated systems, and in such systems exponential degeneracy is predicted. We present results that contradict these predictions. We prove that for each closed Riemann surface S of positive genus, there are sequences of triangulations of S with exactly one ground state. One possible explanation of this phenomenon is that exponential degeneracy would be found in the excited states with energy close to the ground state energy. However, as our second result, we show the existence of a sequence of triangulations ${(\mathcal{T}_n)}$ of a closed Riemann surface of genus 10 with exactly one ground state such that the degeneracy of each of the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th excited energy levels belongs to O(n), O(n ²), O(n ³) and O(n ⁴), respectively.     

Penguin effects inΔ S≠0B decays in a five flavourSU(2)×U(1) model

The leading QCD corrections to the tree level interaction density for the ΔS≠0, ΔB≠0 couplings in anSU(2)×U(1) five flavour model due to Gorn and Paschos are evaluated.     

Quantum and Classical Correlations in the Solid-State NMR Free Induction Decay

The free induction decay (FID) of the transverse magnetization in a dipolar-coupled rigid lattice is a fundamental problem in magnetic resonance and in the theory of many-body systems. As it was shown earlier the FID shapes for the systems of classical magnetic moments and for quantum nuclear spin ones coincide if there are many nearly equivalent nearest neighbors n in a solid lattice. In this paper, we reduce a multispin density matrix of above system to a two-spin matrix. Then we obtain analytic expressions for the mutual information and the quantum and classical parts of correlations at the arbitrary spin quantum number S, in the high-temperature approximation. The time dependence of these functions is expressed via the derivative of the FID shape. To extract classical correlations for S > 1/2 we provide generalized POVM measurement (positive-operator-valued measure) using the basis of spin coherent states. We show that in every pair of spins the portion of quantum correlations changes from 1/2 to 1/(S + 1) when S is growing up, and quantum properties disappear completely only if S → ∞.     

A Gribov equation for the photon Green’s function

We present a derivation of the Gribov equation for the gluon/photon Green’s function D(q). Our derivation is based on the second derivative of the gauge-invariant quantity Trln?D(q), which we interpret as the gauge-boson ‘self-loop’. By considering the higher-order corrections to this quantity, we are able to obtain a Gribov equation which sums the logarithmically enhanced corrections. By solving this equation, we obtain the non-perturbative running coupling in both QCD and QED. In the case of QCD, α _S has a singularity in the space-like region corresponding to super-criticality, which is argued to be resolved in Gribov’s light-quark confinement scenario. For the QED coupling in the UV limit, we obtain a ∝ Q ² behavior for space-like Q ²=?q ². This implies the decoupling of the photon and an NJLVL-type effective theory in the UV limit.     

Classical and quantum pumping in closed systems

Pumping of charge (Q) in a closed ring geometry is not quantized even in the strict adiabatic limit. The deviation form exact quantization can be related to the Thouless conductance. We use the Kubo formalism as a starting point for the calculation of both the dissipative and the adiabatic contributions to Q. As an application we bring examples for classical dissipative pumping, classical adiabatic pumping, and in particular we make an explicit calculation for quantum pumping in case of the simplest pumping device, which is a three site lattice model. We make a connection with the popular S-matrix formalism which has been used to calculate pumping in open systems.