An Alternative Approach to Understanding the Observed Positron Fraction

Space-based observations by PAMELA (Adriani et al., Nature 458, 607, 2009), Fermi-LAT (Ackerman et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 01103, 2012), and AMS (Aguilar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 141102, 2013) have demonstrated that the positron fraction (e+/total-e) increases with increasing energy above about 10 GeV. According to the propagation model for Galactic cosmic rays in widespread use (Moskalenko & Strong, Astrophys. J. 493, 693, 1998), the production of secondary positrons from interaction of cosmic-ray protons and heavier nuclei with the interstellar medium gives a generally falling positron fraction between 10 and 100 GeV, with secondary positrons accounting for only ～20 % of the observed positron fraction at 100 GeV; so some other physical phenomena have been proposed to explain the data. An alternative approach to interpreting the positron observations is to consider these data as presenting an opportunity for re-examining models of Galactic cosmic-ray propagation. Following release of the PAMELA data, three groups published propagation models (Shaviv, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 111302, 2009, Cowsik and Burch, Phys. Rev. D. 82, 023009, 2010, Katz et al., Mon. Not. R. Aston. Soc. 405, 1458 2010) in which the observed positron fraction is explained entirely by secondary positrons produced in the interstellar medium. In May of this year, stimulated by the AMS extension of the positron data to higher energy with excellent statistics, two of those groups presented further development of their calculations (Cowsik et al. 2013, Blum et al. 2013), again concluding that the observed positrons can be understood as secondaries. None of the authors of these five papers was registered for the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC). Although I am not an author of any of these papers, I have some close familiarity with one of these recent papers, so the conference organizers invited me to bring this alternative approach to the attention of the conference. The present paper is a summary of the material I presented, along with a brief comment about reaction at the conference to this approach.     

High harmonic generation in a gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

High harmonic generation (HHG) of intense infrared laser radiation (Ferray et al., J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 21:L31, 1988; McPherson et al., J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 4:595, 1987) enables coherent vacuum-UV (VUV) to soft-X-ray sources. In the usual setup, energetic femtosecond laser pulses are strongly focused into a gas jet, restricting the interaction length to the Rayleigh range of the focus. The average photon flux is limited by the low conversion efficiency and the low average power of the complex laser amplifier systems (Keller, Nature 424:831, 2003; Südmeyer et al., Nat. Photonics 2:599, 2008; Röser et al., Opt. Lett. 30:2754, 2005; Eidam et al., IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 15:187, 2009) which typically operate at kilohertz repetition rates. This represents a severe limitation for many experiments using the harmonic radiation in fields such as metrology or high-resolution imaging. Driving HHG with novel high-power diode-pumped multi-megahertz laser systems has the potential to significantly increase the average photon flux. However, the higher average power comes at the expense of lower pulse energies because the repetition rate is increased by more than a thousand times, and efficient HHG is not possible in the usual geometry. So far, two promising techniques for HHG at lower pulse energies were developed: external build-up cavities (Gohle et al., Nature 436:234, 2005; Jones et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94:193, 2005) and resonant field enhancement in nanostructured targets (Kim et al., Nature 453:757, 2008). Here we present a third technique, which has advantages in terms of ease of HHG light extraction, transverse beam quality, and the possibility to substantially increase conversion efficiency by phase-matching (Paul et al., Nature 421:51, 2003; Ren et al., Opt. Express 16:17052, 2008; Serebryannikov et al., Phys. Rev. E (Stat. Nonlinear Soft Matter Phys.) 70:66611, 2004; Serebryannikov et al., Opt. Lett. 33:977, 2008; Zhang et al., Nat. Phys. 3:270, 2007). The interaction between the laser pulses and the gas occurs in a Kagome-type Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber (HC-PCF) (Benabid et al., Science 298:399, 2002), which reduces the detection threshold for HHG to only 200 nJ. This novel type of fiber guides nearly all of the light in the hollow core (Couny et al., Science 318:1118, 2007), preventing damage even at intensities required for HHG. Our fiber guided 30-fs pulses with a pulse energy of more than 10 μJ, which is more than five times higher than for any other photonic crystal fiber (Hensley et al., Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), IEEE Press, New York, 2008).     

A Note on Permutation Twist Defects in Topological Bilayer Phases

We present a mathematical derivation of some of the most important physical quantities arising in topological bilayer systems with permutation twist defects as introduced by Barkeshli et al. (Phys Rev B 87:045130_1-23, 2013). A crucial tool is the theory of permutation equivariant modular functors developed by Barmeier et al. (Int Math Res Notices 2010:3067–3100, 2010; Transform Groups 16:287–337, 2011).     

Study of the polarization degree for the p ⃗ p → ppη measurement with WASA

Understanding of the production processes of the η meson will strongly rely on the precise determination of spin observables. So far these observables have been determined only for few excess energies and with low statistics (Winter et al. Eur. Phys. J. A18, 355 2003; Czyzykiewicz et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 122003 2007; Balestra et al. Phys. Rev. C69, 064003 2004). In the year 2010 WASA detector was used for the measurement of the \(\overrightarrow {p}p\rightarrow pp\eta \) reaction with the polarized proton beam of COSY (Moskal and Hodana J. Phys. Conf. Ser 295, 012080 2011). The measurement was done for the excess energy of Q = 15 MeV and Q = 72 MeV. In total about 10⁶ events corresponding to the \(\overrightarrow {p}p\rightarrow pp\eta \) reaction have been collected.     

Decoherent Histories of Spin Networks

The decoherent histories formalism, developed by Griffiths, Gell-Mann, and Hartle (in Phys. Rev. A 76:022104, 2007; arXiv:1106.0767v3 [quant-ph], 2011; Consistent Quantum Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2003; arXiv:gr-qc/9304006v2, 1992) is a general framework in which to formulate a timeless, ‘generalised’ quantum theory and extract predictions from it. Recent advances in spin foam models allow for loop gravity to be cast in this framework. In this paper, I propose a decoherence functional for loop gravity and interpret existing results (Bianchi et al. in Phys. Rev. D 83:104015, 2011; Phys. Rev. D 82:084035, 2010) as showing that coarse grained histories follow quasiclassical trajectories in the appropriate limit.     

Thermodynamics and holography of tachyon cosmology

Recently, we have investigated the dynamics of the universe in tachyon cosmology with non-minimal coupling to matter (Farajollahi et al. in Mod Phys Lett A 26(15):1125–1135, 2011; Phys Lett B 711(3–4)15:225–231,2012; Phys Rev D 83:124042, 2011; JCAP 10:014, 20112011; JCAP 05:017, 2011). In particular, for the interacting holographic dark energy (IHDE), the model is studied in Farajollahi et al. (Astrophys Space Sci 336(2):461–467, 2011). In the current work, a significant observational program has been conducted to unveil the model’s thermodynamic properties. Our result shows that the IHDE version of our model better fits the observational data than $\Lambda $ CDM model. The first and generalized second thermodynamics laws for the universe enveloped by cosmological apparent and event horizon are revisited. From the results, both first and generalized second laws, constrained by the observational data, are satisfied on cosmological apparent horizon.In addition, the total entropy is verified with the observation only if the horizon of the universe is taken as apparent horizon. Then, due to validity of generalized second law, the current cosmic acceleration is also predicted.     

Improvement of Efficient Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing Based on Bell States and Continuous Variable Operations

Yuan et al. (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 51:3443, 2012) proposed a multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol using Bell states and continuous variable operations. Zhang and Qin (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 52:3953, 2013) showed that their protocol is not secure. In this paper, we will give an improvement of Yuan et al. protocol. Our improved protocol can stand against not only Zhang et al. attack strategies, but also the other ones efficiently.     

Composite and Elementary Components in Hadron Resonances

In hadron resonances different structures of hadronic composite (molecule) and elementary (quark-intrinsic) natures may coexist. We sketch discussions based on our previous publications on the origin of hadron resonances (Hyodo et al. Phys. Rev. C 78:025203, 2008) on exotic ${\bar D (B)}$ meson–nucleons as candidates of hadronic composites (Yamaguchi et al. Phys. Rev. D 84:014032, 2011) and on a ₁ for the coexistence/mixing of the two different natures (Nagahiro et al. Phys. Rev. D 83:111504, 2011).     

Frame-dragging fields and spin 1 gravitomagnetic radiation

Experimental results published in 2004 (Ciufolini and Pavlis in Nature 431:958–960, 2004) and 2011 (Everitt et al. in Phys Rev Lett 106:221101, 1–5, 2011) have confirmed the frame-dragging phenomenon for a spinning earth predicted by Einstein’s field equations. Since this is observed as a precession caused by the gravitomagnetic (GM) field of the rotating body, these experiments may be viewed as measurements of a GM field. The effect is encapsulated in the classic steady state solution for the vector potential field $\zeta $ of a spinning sphere–a solution applying to a sphere with angular momentum J and describing a field filling space for all time (Weinberg in Gravitation and Cosmology, Wiley, New York, 1972). In a laboratory setting one may visualise the case of a sphere at rest $(\zeta =0, \text{ t}<0)$ , being spun up by an external torque at $\text{ t}=0$ to the angular momentum J: the $\zeta $ field of the textbook solution cannot establish itself instantaneously over all space at $\text{ t}=0$ , but must propagate with the velocity c, implying the existence of a travelling GM wave field yielding the textbook $\zeta $ field for large enough t (Tolstoy in Int J Theor Phys 40(5):1021–1031, 2001). The linearized GM field equations of the post-Newtonian approximation being isomorphic with Maxwell’s equations (Braginsky et al. in Phys Rev D 15(6):2047–2060, 1977), such GM waves are dipole waves of spin 1. It is well known that in purely gravitating systems conservation of angular momentum forbids the existence of dipole radiation (Misner et al. in Gravitation, Freeman & Co., New York, 1997); but this rule does not prohibit the insertion of angular momentum into the system from an external source–e.g., by applying a torque to our laboratory sphere.     

Solution to Information Leakage in a Quantum Network System of QSS-QDC Using χ-Type Entangled States

Recently, Hong et al. (Chin. Phys. Lett. 29:050303, 2012) put forward two quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocols of quantum direct communication (QDC) by using χ-type entangled states. Later, some studies (Gao et al. in Chin. Phys. Lett. 29:110305, 2012; Chin. Phys. Lett. 30:079904, 2013; Liu et al. in Chin. Phys. Lett. 30:039901, 2013; Hong and Yang in Chin. Phys. Lett. 30:069901, 2013; Liu and Chen in Chin. Phys. Lett. 30:079903, 2013) made up for the drawbacks of Hong et al.’s two protocols to some extent. However, the information leakage weakness is still not thoroughly solved. In this Letter, the author analyzes the inner reason of information leakage weakness in detail at first. And then he suggests an effective encoding rule to avoid this weakness.     

Neutral kaon production in p+p and p+Nb collisions

The kaon nucleus (KN) interaction in dense nuclear matter is predicted to be repulsive and increasing with density. However, determined values for this potential are not yet consistent with each other (Benabderrahmane et al., Phys Rev Lett 102:182501, 2009; Agakishiev et?al., Phys Rev C 82:044907, 2010; Büscher et?al., Eur Phys J A 22:301–317, 2004). We analyze $K^0_S$ mesons identified with the HADES detector in p+p and p+?⁹³Nb reactions at 3.5?GeV kinetic beam energy. To determine the KN potential at normal nuclear density we propose to compare the $K^0_S$ differential distributions in p+?⁹³Nb and p+p collisions. High statistics of low p _t -kaons (p _t ?<?100?MeV/c) ensure the sensitivity of our measurements to the nuclear matter effects. We present the data analysis method and first results.     

On Entanglement Breaking Channels for Infinite Dimensional Quantum Systems

The topic of entanglement breaking channels plays an important role in quantum information. Horodecki et al. (Rev. Math. Phys. 15:629–641, 2003) gave a complete characterization of entanglement breaking channels for finite dimensional quantum systems. In the note, we will generalize the results in Horodecki et al. (Rev. Math. Phys. 15:629–641, 2003) to the infinite dimensional case. We first generalized the positive map criterion of the entanglement breaking channel from the finite dimensional case to the infinite dimensional case. As a generalization of entanglement breaking channels for finite dimensional quantum systems, the topic of the strong entanglement breaking channel for arbitrary (finite or infinite) dimensional systems is putted forward. We obtain the operator sum representation of the strong entanglement breaking quantum channel. Applying this operator sum representation, we characterize a category of extreme points of the convex set of all strong entanglement breaking channels, which generalizes corresponding results in the finite dimensional case from Horodecki et al. (Rev. Math. Phys. 15:629–641, 2003).     

Thick-film technology for ultra high vacuum interfaces of micro-structured traps

We adopt thick-film technology to produce ultra high vacuum compatible interfaces for electrical signals. These interfaces permit voltages of hundreds of volts and currents of several amperes and allow for very compact vacuum setups, useful in quantum optics in general, and in particular for quantum information science using miniaturized traps for ions (Kielpinski et al. in Nature 417:709, 2002) or neutral atoms (Folman et al. in Phys. Rev. Lett. 84:4749, 2000; Treutlein et?al. in Fortschr. Phys. 54:702, 2006; Hofferberth et al. in Nat. Phys. 2:710, 2006). Such printed circuits can also be useful as pure in-vacuum devices. We demonstrate a specific interface which provides 11 current feedthroughs, more than 70?dc feedthroughs and a feedthrough for radio frequencies. We achieve a pressure in the low 10^-11?mbar range and demonstrate the full functionality of the interface by trapping chains of cold ytterbium ions, which requires the presence of all of the above mentioned signals. In order to supply precise time-dependent voltages to the ion trap, a versatile multi-channel device has been developed.     

A Complete Proof of the Confinement Limit of One-Dimensional Dirac Particles

The validity of the confinement limit obtain by Unanyan et al. (Phys Rev A 79:044101, 2009) is extended by including non-symmetric vector and scalar potentials. It shows that the confinement limit of one-dimensional Dirac particles in vector and scalar potentials is \(\lambda _C/\sqrt{2}\) , with \(\lambda _C\) being the Compton wavelength.     

A note on the area spectrum of d-dimensional pure de Sitter Space-time

Consistent supercurrent multiplets are naturally associated with linearized off-shell supergravity models. In S.M. Kuzenko, J. High Energy Phys. 1004, 022 (2010) we presented the hierarchy of such supercurrents which correspond to all the models for linearized 4D $\mathcal{N}=1$ supergravity classified a few years ago. Here we analyze the correspondence between the most general supercurrent given in S.M. Kuzenko, J. High Energy Phys. 1004, 022 (2010) and the one obtained eight years ago in M. Magro et al., Ann. Phys. 298, 123 (2002) using the superfield Noether procedure. We apply the Noether procedure to the general $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric nonlinear sigma-model and show that it naturally leads to the so-called $\mathcal{S}$ -multiplet, revitalized in Z. Komargodski, N. Seiberg, J. High Energy Phys. 1007, 017 (2010).     

Quantum Correlations and the Measurement Problem

The transition from classical to quantum mechanics rests on the recognition that the structure of information is not what we thought it was: there are operational, i.e., phenomenal, probabilistic correlations that lie outside the polytope of local correlations. Such correlations cannot be simulated with classical resources, which generate classical correlations represented by the points in a simplex, where the vertices of the simplex represent joint deterministic states that are the common causes of the correlations. The ‘no go’ hidden variable theorems tell us that we can’t shoe-horn phenomenal correlations outside the local polytope into a classical simplex by supposing that something has been left out of the story. The replacement of the classical simplex by the quantum convex set as the structure representing probabilistic correlations is the analogue for quantum mechanics of the replacement of Newton’s Euclidean space and time by Minkowski spacetime in special relativity. The nonclassical features of quantum mechanics, including the irreducible information loss on measurement, are generic features of correlations that lie outside the classical simplex. This paper is an elaboration of these ideas, which have their source in work by Pitowsky (J. Math. Phys. 27:1556, 1986; Math. Program. 50:395, 1991; Phys. Rev. A 77:062109, 2008), Garg and Mermin (Found. Phys. 14:1–39, 1984), Barrett (Phys. Rev. A 75:032304, 2007; Phys. Rev. A 7:022101, 2005) and others, e.g., Brunner et al. (arXiv:1303.2849, 2013), but the literature goes back to Boole (An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, Dover, New York, 1951). The final section looks at the measurement problem of quantum mechanics in this context. A large part of the problem is removed by seeing that the inconsistency in reconciling the entangled state at the end of a quantum measurement process with the definiteness of the macroscopic pointer reading and the definiteness of the correlated value of the measured micro-observable depends on a stipulation that is not required by the structure of the quantum possibility space. Replacing this stipulation by an alternative consistent stipulation is the first step to resolving the problem.     

Probing compositeness with Higgs Boson decays at the LHC

We study how massive ghost-free gravity \(f(R)\) -modified theories, MGFTs, can be encoded into generic off-diagonal Einstein spaces. Using “auxiliary” connections completely defined by the metric fields and adapted to nonholonomic frames with associated nonlinear connection structure, we decouple and integrate in certain general forms the field equations in MGFT. Imposing additional nonholonomic constraints, we can generate Levi-Civita, LC, configurations and mimic MGFT effects via off-diagonal interactions of effective Einstein and/or Einstein–Cartan gravity with nonholonomically induced torsion. We show that imposing nonholonomic constraints it is possible reproduce very specific models of massive \(f(R)\) gravity studied in Cai et al. (arXiv:1307.7150, 2013), Klusoňet al. (Phys Lett B 726:918, 2013), Nojiri and Odintov (Phys Lett B 716:377, 2012) and Nojiri et al. (JCAP 1305:020, 2013). The cosmological evolution of ghost-free off-diagonal Einstein spaces is investigated. Certain compatibility of MGFT cosmology to small off-diagonal deformations of \(\Lambda \) CDM models is established.     

First principles electronic structure investigation of order of singlet and triplet states of oxyhemoglobin and analysis of possible influence of muon trapping

Interest in the possibility of magnetic character for oxyhemoglobin (OxyHb) has been recently stimulated by the observations of muon spin-lattice relaxation effects studied (Nagamine et al., Proc Jpn Acad Ser B Phys Biol Sci 83:120–126, 2007) with the muon-spin rotation (μSR) technique. In view of this, we have carried out first-principles electronic structure investigations involving Hartree–Fock theory combined with many body perturbation effects for the singlet and triplet states of OxyHb. Our results indicate that using two recent x-ray structural data (Paoli et al., J Mol Biol 256:775, 1996; Park et al., J Mol Biol 360:690, 2006) for OxyHb, for only Hartree–Fock theory without many-body effects included, the singlet state lies above the triplet state by energies of about 0.08 and 0.13 a.u. for the two structures in Paoli et al. (J Mol Biol 256:775, 1996) and Park et al. (J Mol Biol 360:690, 2006). Incorporation of many-body effects by the perturbation method reverses the order, with the triplet state located 0.18 and 0.14 a.u. above the singlet state for the structures in Paoli et al. (J Mol Biol 256:775, 1996) and Park et al. (J Mol Biol 360:690, 2006). Physical reasons for these relative orderings of the singlet and triplet states will be discussed. It is clear that OxyHb by itself would be in a singlet state at room temperature or below, since from our calculation, the triplet state lies about KT above the singlet state with T having the value of 44,098 K and 56,449 K for the two structural data in Paoli et al. (J Mol Biol 256:775, 1996) and Park et al. (J Mol Biol 360:690, 2006). As regards the muon spin-lattice relaxation effects obtained by recent μSR measurements (by Nagamine et al., Proc Jpn Acad Ser B Phys Biol Sci 83:120–126, 2007) at room temperature, the sensitive dependence of the singlet-triplet separation on many-body effects in our investigation suggests that it is possible that the singlet-triplet separation could be reversed or reduced significantly when a muon is trapped near an oxygen atom of the oxygen molecule, allowing the triplet to be occupied at room temperature and lead to significant muon spin-lattice relaxation.     

Cryptanalysis and Improvement of the Controlled Quantum Secure Direct Communication by Using Four Particle Cluster States

In a recent study (Yang et al. in Int. J. Theor. Phys. 50:395–400, 2011), Yang et al. pointed out that the controller’s role in the quantum secure direct communication protocol (Zhang et al. in Int. J. Theor. Phys. 48:2971–2976, 2009) could be excluded unknowingly, the receiver can directly obtain the sender’s message without the permission of the controller, and then they presented an improved protocol. However, in this paper, we show that the dishonest controller in the improved protocol can steal the sender’s secret message without being detected. Meanwhile, we show that the controller’s role still can be excluded unknowingly in the improved protocol. An improvement is proposed to avoid these two flaws.     

Conformal linear gravity in de Sitter space II

From the group theoretical point of view, it is proved that the theory of linear conformal gravity should be written in terms of a tensor field of rank-3 and mixed symmetry (Binegar et al. in Phys. Rev. D 27:2249, 1983). We obtained such a field equation in de Sitter space (Takook et al. in J. Math. Phys. 51:032503, 2010). In this paper, a proper solution to this equation is obtained as a product of a generalized polarization tensor and a massless scalar field and then the conformally invariant two-point function is calculated. This two-point function is de Sitter invariant and free of any pathological large-distance behavior.