arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Mikkel B. Johnson.
Starting from the QCD Lagrangian and the surface tension of QCD bubbles we derive the critical size of bubbles, the nucleation probability and the nucleation site separation distance. We find the separation of sites is more than an order of magnitude larger than previous QCD model estimates, which could lead to observable effects.
Bubble collisions in cosmological phase transitions are explored, taking the non-abelian character of the gauge fields into account. Both the QCD and electroweak phase transitions are considered. Numerical solutions of the field equations in several limits are presented.
The color dipole approach has been applied in the target rest frame to address the issues of transverse momentum broadening and energy loss of a fast quark propagating in the nuclear medium. A recent application of the theory to the FermiLab E772/E866 experimental data, determining the rate of energy loss of a quark propagating in the medium to be 2 to 3 GeV/fm, will be reviewed. Calculations for the transverse momentum distribution will be presented, and the results will be compared to the E866 data. The theory will be shown to compare favorably to the data, and these results will be shown to suggest that the momentum broadening of a quark is about twice the generally accepted size.
Starting from the QCD action in an instanton-like SU(2) Yang-Mills field theory, we derive equations of motion in Minkowski space. Possible bubble collisions are studued in a (1+1)-dimension reduction . We find gluonic structures like interior walls, which might give rise to CMBR effects.
The feasibility of a model-independent extraction of the forward strong amplitude from elastic nuclear cross section data in the Coulomb-nuclear interference region is assessed for $π$ and $K^+$ scattering at intermediate energies. Theoretically-generated "data" are analyzed to provide criteria for optimally designing experiments to measure these amplitudes, whose energy dependence (particularly that of the real parts) is needed for disentangling various sources of medium modifications of the projectile-nucleon interaction. The issues considered include determining the angular region over which to make the measurements, the role of the most forward angles measured, and the effects of statistical and systematic errors. We find that there is a region near the forward direction where Coulomb-nuclear interference allows reliable extraction of the strong forward amplitude for both pions and the $K^+$ from .3 to 1 GeV/c.
We include instanton effects in QCD sum rules for coupled scalar glueballs and mesons. We find a light glueball/sigma as in earlier studies without instantons, but in a lattice-type pure instanton model the light glueball/sigma is not found. In the 1-2 Gev region we now find that lightest I=0 meson, in the region of the f$_o$(1370), has no direct glueball mixing, with the instanton loop replacing the glueball component. The lightest scalar mainly glueball in the region of the f$_o$(1500) is sensitive to the choice of nonperturbative gluonic parameters.
We present the first application of statistical spectroscopy to study the root-mean-square value of the parity nonconserving (PNC) interaction matrix element M determined experimentally by scattering longitudinally polarized neutrons from compound nuclei. Our effective PNC interaction consists of a standard two-body meson-exchange piece and a doorway term to account for spin-flip excitations. Strength functions are calculated using realistic single-particle energies and a residual strong interaction adjusted to fit the experimental density of states for the targets, ^{238} U for A\sim 230 and ^{104,105,106,108} Pd for A\sim 100. Using the standard Desplanques, Donoghue, and Holstein estimates of the weak PNC meson-nucleon coupling constants, we find that M is about a factor of 3 smaller than the experimental value for ^{238} U and about a factor of 1.7 smaller for Pd. The significance of this result for refining the empirical determination of the weak coupling constants is discussed.
We propose an analog of the familiar gap equation for the case of four-quark condensates at finite temperature. The condensates of interest correspond to scalar, vector, psudoscalar, axial vector, and tensor Dirac structures. Working with correlators at zero chemical potential without factorization, we arrive at coupled equations for these four-quark condensates and the masses of certain light-quark mesons. We study the temperature dependence of the four-quark condensates and masses; in one of our models, factorization of the four-quark condensates is shown to be increasingly violated as the temperature is increased toward $T_c$. The 2$^{++}$ tensor mesons a$_2$(1320)-f$_2$(1270) are identified as especially sensitive probes of the four-quark condensates.
We discuss a relation between the light-front quark model and QCD. We argue that this model can be used for an evaluation of the light-cone wave functions for moderate values of "u", but that it is inapplicable for this purpose in the region near the ends points u=0,1. We find additional support for a recent analysis in which it was claimed that the twist-two pion wave function attains its asymptotic form. The asymptotic twist-four two-particle wave function is also in good agreement with the light-front quark model.
We develop a three-point formalism to treat vacuum susceptibilities used for the coupling of currents to hadrons within the method of QCD Sum Rules. By introducing nonlocal condensates, with the space-time structure taken from fits to experimental parton distrbutions, we show that one can treat hadronic coupling at zero or low momentum transfer as well as medium and asmptotic momentum transfers and obtain a general expression for the vacuum susceptibilities of the two-point formalism. The pion susceptibility, for which there has been a major uncertainty, is evaluated successfully with no new parameters.
We present an analysis of the existing constraints for the twist-2 light-cone pion wave function. We find that existing information on the pion wave function does not exclude the possibility that the pion wave function attains its asymptotic form. New bounds on the parameters of the pion wave function are presented.
A method for calculating the pion structure function directly in terms of light-cone wave functions is suggested. Taking twist-2 and twist-4 pion light-cone wave functions into account, it is shown that the QCD sum rule prediction is in agreement with quark distribution obtained from analysis of the Drell-Yan process. Twist-4 quark-gluon light-cone wave functions give a large positive contribution to the pion structure function for x_B<0.2. A new constraint on the twist-2 pion light-cone wave function is obtained. We argue that the leading twist pion wave function ϕ_π(u) \simeq 1 for u=0.3 with an accuracy of about 20-30%.
In the framework of light-cone QCD sum rules, we study the valence quark distribution function $q(x_B)$ of a pion for moderate $x_B$. The sum rule with the leading twist-2 wave function gives $q(x_B)=φ_π(x_B)$. Twist-4 wave functions give about 30\% for $x_B\sim 0.5$. It is shown that QCD sum rule predictions, with the asymptotic pion wave function, are in good agreement with experimental data. We found that a two-hump profile for the twist-2 wave function leads to a valence quark disribution function that contradicts experimental data.