First measurement of the ϱ spectral function in nuclear collisions

The NA60 experiment at the CERN SPS has studied low-mass muon pairs in 158 A GeV In–In collisions. A strong excess of pairs is observed above the yield expected from neutral meson decays. The unprecedented sample size close to 400000 events and the good mass resolution of about 2% made it possible to isolate the excess by subtraction of the decay sources. The shape of the resulting mass spectrum shows some non-trivial centrality dependence, but is largely consistent with a dominant contribution from π⁺π^-→ϱ→μ⁺μ^- annihilation. The associated ϱ spectral function exhibits considerable broadening, but essentially no shift in mass. The p_T-differential mass spectra show the excess to be much stronger at low p_T than at high p_T. The results are compared to theoretical model predictions; they tend to rule out models linking hadron masses directly to the chiral condensate. PACS 25.75.-q; 12.38.Mh; 13.85.Qk     

Spectral methods with sparse matrices

Summary Spectral methods employ global polynomials for approximation. Hence they give very accurate approximations for smooth solutions. Unfortunately, for Dirichlet problems the matrices involved are dense and have condition numbers growing asO(N ⁴) for polynomials of degree N in each variable. We propose a new spectral method for the Helmholtz equation with a symmetric and sparse matrix whose condition number grows only asO(N ²). Certain algebraic spectral multigrid methods can be efficiently used for solving the resulting system. Numerical results are presented which show that we have probably found the most effective solver for spectral systems.     

On the solution of singular linear systems of algebraic equations by semiiterative methods

Summary For a square matrixT ^n,n , where (I–T) is possibly singular, we investigate the solution of the linear fixed point problemx=T x+c by applying semiiterative methods (SIM's) to the basic iterationx ₀ ⁿ ,x _k T c _k–1+c(k1). Such problems arise if one splits the coefficient matrix of a linear systemA x=b of algebraic equations according toA=M–N (M nonsingular) which leads tox=M ^–1 N x+M ^–1 bT x+c. Even ifx=T x+c is consistent there are cases where the basic iteration fails to converge, namely ifT possesses eigenvalues 1 with ||1, or if =1 is an eigenvalue ofT with nonlinear elementary divisors. In these cases — and also ifx=T x+c is incompatible — we derive necessary and sufficient conditions implying that a SIM tends to a vector which can be described in terms of the Drazin inverse of (I–T). We further give conditions under which is a solution or a least squares solution of (I–T)x=c.Research supported in part by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung