44004941
Analysis of chiral and thermal susceptibilities
We calculate the chiral and thermal susceptibilities for two confining Dyson-Schwinger equation models of QCD with two light flavors, a quantitative analysis of which yields the critical exponents {beta} and {delta} that characterize the second-order chiral symmetry restoration transition. The method itself is of interest, minimizing the influence of numerical noise in the calculation of the order parameter for chiral symmetry breaking near the critical temperature. For the more realistic of the two models we estimate T{sub c}{approx}153 MeV and the non-mean-field values {beta}=0.46{plus_minus}0.04, {delta}=4.3{plus_minus}0.3, and 1/({beta}{delta})=0.54{plus_minus}0.05, which we discuss in comparison with the results of other models. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}
32252191
Memory effects and thermodynamics in strong field plasmas
We study the evolution of a strong field plasma using a quantum Vlasov equation with a non-Markovian source term and a simple collision term, and calculate the time dependence of the energy and number density, and the temperature. The evolution of a plasma produced with BNL RHIC-like initial conditions is well described by a low density approximation to the source term. However, non-Markovian aspects should be retained to obtain an accurate description of the early stages of a CERN LHC-like plasma. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.
14771019
Pair production and optical lasers.
Electron-positron pair creation in a standing wave is explored using a parameter-free quantum kinetic equation. Field strengths and frequencies corresponding to modern optical lasers induce a material polarization of the QED vacuum, which may be characterized as a plasma of e+e- quasiparticle pairs with a density of approximately 10(20) cm-3. The plasma vanishes almost completely when the laser field is zero, leaving a very small residual pair density n(r) which is the true manifestation of vacuum decay. The average pair density per period is proportional to the laser intensity but independent of the frequency nu. The density of residual pairs also grows with laser intensity but n(r) proportional to nu(2). With optical lasers at the forefront of the current generation, these dynamical QED vacuum effects can plausibly generate 5-10 observable two-photon annihilation events per laser pulse.
20951768
Selected nucleon form factors and a composite scalar diquark
A covariant, composite scalar diquark, Fadde'ev amplitude model for the nucleon is used to calculate pseudoscalar, isoscalar- and isovector-vector, axial-vector and scalar nucleon form factors. The last yields the nucleon {sigma} term and on-shell {sigma}-nucleon coupling. The calculated form factors are soft, and the couplings are generally in good agreement with experiment and other determinations. Elements in the dressed-quark-axial-vector vertex that are not constrained by the Ward-Takahashi identity contribute {approx}20% to the magnitude of g{sub A}. The calculation of the nucleon {sigma} term elucidates the only unambiguous means of extrapolating meson-nucleon couplings off the meson mass shell. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.
14279889
The distribution function of the strong non-equilibrium systems of particles and anti-particles created from vacuum by electromagnetic field
We investigate some details of the back reaction (BR) problem formulated on the basis of the kinetic approach of authors to description of vacuum pair production in a strong electromagnetic field (Schwinger’s mechanism). Here we study numerically an evolution on the distribution functions of strong non-equilibrium systems bosons and fermions. The realized analysis is shown the regular dynamics in an absence of BR mechanism is destroyed at its account. As the result some large-scale structure is arisen an a background of small-scale chaotic motions. A Back-Reaction (BR) problem has been studied intensively in recent years in both high energy particle physics and especially in early cosmology. For simplicity, in this contribution we do not take into account the non-Abelian structure of color electric fields and concentrate on the back-reaction problem in application only to strong electromagnetic fields. However, the characteristics considered and the region of the field parameters used are of interest for the flux tube model applications to hadronic processes. We restrict ourselves to a simplest situation of a time-dependent space-homogeneous field. Under these restrictions, the peculiarity of our approach is based on making use of the exact kinetic equation (KE) [1, 2] which describes the evolution process of particle-antiparticle pair creation and annihilation in strong fields with the full zero charge. Our approach to the BR problem is based on the following exact Vlasov-like KE for vacuum pair creation and annihilation processes in a strong time-dependent space-homogeneous electric field [1, 2] 1) df(~ P , t) dt = ∂f(~ P , t) ∂t + eE(t) ∂f(~ P , t) ∂P3(t) = S(~ P , t) , (1) ) We use the units h̄ = c = 1 and the metric is chosen to be g = diag(1,−1,−1,−1).
14922942
Diquarks and Density
We describe aspects of the role that diquark correlations play in understanding baryon structure and interactions. The significance of diquarks in that application motivates a study of the possibility that dense hadronic matter may exhibit diquark condensation; i.e., quark-quark pairing promoted by a quark chemical potential. A Gorkov-Nambu-like gap equation is introduced for QCD and analysed for 2-colour QCD (QC2D) and, in two qualitatively different truncations, for QCD itself. Among other interesting features, we illustrate that QC2D with massive fermions undergoes a second-order transition to a superfluid phase when the chemical potential exceeds 0.5 m.pi. In the QCD application we illustrate that the sigma= .neq. 0 phase, which determines the properties of the mass spectrum at zero temperature and chemical potential, is unstable with respect to the superfluid phase when the chemical potential exceeds approx. 2 sigma, and that at this point the diquark gap is large, approx. 0.5 sigma. The superfluid phase survives to temperatures greater than that expected in the core of compact stars.
119204525
Tomographic magnification of Lyman-break galaxies in the Deep Lens Survey
Using about 450 000 galaxies in the Deep Lens Survey, we present a detection of the gravitational magnification of z > 4 Lyman-break galaxies by massive foreground galaxies with 0.4 7.5σ with a fixed σ8 and is found to be consistent with the expected redshift dependence of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 Λ cold dark matter cosmology.
119209443
Clustering-based redshift estimation: method and application to data
We present a data-driven method to infer the redshift distribution of an arbitrary dataset based on spatial cross-correlation with a reference population and we apply it to various datasets across the electromagnetic spectrum to show its potential and limitations. Our approach advocates the use of clustering measurements on all available scales, in contrast to previous works focusing only on linear scales. We also show how its accuracy can be enhanced by optimally sampling a dataset within its photometric space rather than applying the estimator globally. We show that the ultimate goal of this technique is to characterize the mapping between the space of photometric observables and redshift space as this characterization then allows us to infer the clustering-redshift p.d.f. of a single galaxy. We apply this technique to estimate the redshift distributions of luminous red galaxies and emission line galaxies from the SDSS, infrared sources from WISE and radio sources from FIRST. We show that consistent redshift distributions are found using both quasars and absorber systems as reference populations. This technique brings valuable information on the third dimension of astronomical datasets. It is widely applicable to a large range of extra-galactic surveys.
119232505
Cosmic shear results from the deep lens survey - I: Joint constraints on omega_m and sigma_8 with a two-dimensional analysis
We present a cosmic shear study from the Deep Lens Survey (DLS), a deep BVRz multi-band imaging survey of five 4 deg2 fields with two National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) 4 m telescopes at Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo. For both telescopes, the change of the point-spread-function (PSF) shape across the focal plane is complicated, and the exposure-to-exposure variation of this position-dependent PSF change is significant. We overcome this challenge by modeling the PSF separately for individual exposures and CCDs with principal component analysis (PCA). We find that stacking these PSFs reproduces the final PSF pattern on the mosaic image with high fidelity, and the method successfully separates PSF-induced systematics from gravitational lensing effects. We calibrate our shears and estimate the errors, utilizing an image simulator, which generates sheared ground-based galaxy images from deep Hubble Space Telescope archival data with a realistic atmospheric turbulence model. For cosmological parameter constraints, we marginalize over shear calibration error, photometric redshift uncertainty, and the Hubble constant. We use cosmology-dependent covariances for the Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis and find that the role of this varying covariance is critical in our parameter estimation. Our current non-tomographic analysis alone constrains the Ω M -σ8 likelihood contour tightly, providing a joint constraint of Ω M = 0.262 ± 0.051 and σ8 = 0.868 ± 0.071. We expect that a future DLS weak-lensing tomographic study will further tighten these constraints because explicit treatment of the redshift dependence of cosmic shear more efficiently breaks the Ω M -σ8 degeneracy. Combining the current results with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 year (WMAP7) likelihood data, we obtain Ω M = 0.278 ± 0.018 and σ8 = 0.815 ± 0.020.
119184968
Clustering-based redshift estimation: comparison to spectroscopic redshifts
We investigate the potential and accuracy of clustering-based redshift estimation using the method proposed by M\'enard et al. (2013). This technique enables the inference of redshift distributions from measurements of the spatial clustering of arbitrary sources, using a set of reference objects for which redshifts are known. We apply it to a sample of spectroscopic galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and show that, after carefully controlling the sampling efficiency over the sky, we can estimate redshift distributions with high accuracy. Probing the full colour space of the SDSS galaxies, we show that we can recover the corresponding mean redshifts with an accuracy ranging from $\delta$z=0.001 to 0.01. We indicate that this mapping can be used to infer the redshift probability distribution of a single galaxy. We show how the lack of information on the galaxy bias limits the accuracy of the inference and show comparisons between clustering redshifts and photometric redshifts for this dataset. This analysis demonstrates, using real data, that clustering-based redshift inference provides a powerful data-driven technique to explore the redshift distribution of arbitrary datasets, without any prior knowledge on the spectral energy distribution of the sources.
118578896
CHARACTERIZING AND PROPAGATING MODELING UNCERTAINTIES IN PHOTOMETRICALLY-DERIVED REDSHIFT DISTRIBUTIONS
The uncertainty in the redshift distributions of galaxies has a significant potential impact on the cosmological parameter values inferred from multi-band imaging surveys. The accuracy of the photometric redshifts measured in these surveys depends not only on the quality of the flux data, but also on a number of modeling assumptions that enter into both the training set and spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting methods of photometric redshift estimation. In this work we focus on the latter, considering two types of modeling uncertainties: uncertainties in the SED template set and uncertainties in the magnitude and type priors used in a Bayesian photometric redshift estimation method. We find that SED template selection effects dominate over magnitude prior errors. We introduce a method for parameterizing the resulting ignorance of the redshift distributions, and for propagating these uncertainties to uncertainties in cosmological parameters.