Explanation of the RHIC HBT Puzzle by a Granular Source of Quark-Gluon Plasma Droplets
We present a review on the explanation of the RHIC HBT puzzle by a granular pion-emitting source of quark-gluon plasma droplets. The evolution of the droplet is described by relativistic hydrodynamics with an equation of state suggested by lattice gauge results. The granular source evolution is obtained by superposing all of the evolutions of individual droplets. Pions are assumed to be emitted thermally from the droplets at the freeze-out configuration characterized by a freeze-out temperature $T_f$. We find that the average particle emission time scales with the initial radius of the droplet. Pions will be emitted earlier if the droplet radius is smaller. An earlier emission time will lead to a smaller extracted HBT radius $R_{\rm out}$, while the extracted HBT radius $R_{\rm side}$ is determined by the scale of the distribution of the droplet centers. However, a collective expansion of the droplets can further decrease $R_{\rm out}$. As a result, the value of $R_{\rm out}/R_{\rm side}$ can be close to, or even less than 1 for the

title: Tests of two-body Dirac equation wave functions in the decays of quarkonium and positronium into two photons
abstract: Two-body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics provide a covariant framework to investigate the problem of highly relativistic quarks in meson bound states. This formalism eliminates automatically the problems of relative time and energy, leading to a covariant three dimensional formalism with the same number of degrees of freedom as appears in the corresponding nonrelativistic problem. It provides bound state wave equations with the simplicity of the nonrelativistic Schr\"odinger equation. Here we begin important tests of the relativistic 16 component wave function solutions obtained in a recent work on meson spectroscopy, extending a method developed previously for positronium decay into two photons. Preliminary to this we examine the positronium decay in the $^{3}P_{0,2}$ states as well as the $^{1}S_{0}$. The two-gamma quarkonium decays that we investigate are for the ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{c}$, ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{c}^{\ensuremath{'}}$, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c0}$, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c2}$, ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$, ${\ensuremath{\pi}}_{2}$, ${a}_{2}$, and ${f}_{2}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ mesons. Our results for the four charmonium states compare well with those from other quark models and show the particular importance of including all components of the wave function as well as strong and c.m. energy dependent potential effects on the norm and amplitude. The results for the ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$, although off the experimental rate by 13%, are much closer than the usual expectations from a potential model. We conclude that the two-body Dirac equations lead to wave functions which provide good descriptions of the two-gamma decay amplitude and can be used with some confidence for other purposes.

title: Quantum Treatment of the Multiple Scattering and Collective Flow in Intensity Interferometry
abstract: We apply the path‐integral method to study the multiple scattering and collective flow in intensity interferometry in high‐energy heavy‐ion collisions. We show that the Glauber model and eikonal approximation in an earlier quantum treatment are special examples of the more general path‐integral method. The multiple scattering and collective flow lead essentially to an initial source at a shifted momentum, with a multiple collision absorption factor that depends on the pion absorption cross section and a phase factor that depends on the deviations of the in‐medium particle momenta from their asymptotic values.

title: Potential Models and Lattice Gauge Current-Current Correlators
abstract: We compare current-current correlators in lattice gauge calculations with correlators in different potential models for a pseudoscalar charmonium in the quark-gluon plasma. An important ingredient in the evaluation of the current-current correlator in the potential model is the basic principle that, out of the set of continuum states, only resonance states and Gamow states with lifetimes of sufficient magnitudes can propagate as composite objects and can contribute to the current-current correlator. When the contributions from the bound states and continuum states are properly treated, the potential model current-current correlators obtained with the potential proposed by Wong [ (2005)] are consistent with the lattice gauge correlators. The proposed potential model thus gains support to be a useful tool to complement lattice gauge calculations for the study of QQ{bar} states at high temperatures.

title: Singularity structures in Coulomb-type potentials in two-body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics
abstract: Two-body Dirac equations (TBDE) of Dirac's relativistic constraint dynamics have been successfully applied to obtain a covariant nonperturbative description of QED and QCD bound states. Coulomb-type potentials in these applications lead naively in other approaches to singular relativistic corrections at short distances that require the introduction of either perturbative treatments or smoothing parameters. We examine the corresponding singular structures in the effective potentials of the relativistic Schroedinger equation obtained from the Pauli reduction of the TBDE. We find that the relativistic Schroedinger equation leads in fact to well-behaved wave function solutions when the full potential and couplings of the system are taken into account. The most unusual case is the coupled triplet system with S=1 and L={l_brace}(J-1),(J+1){r_brace}. Without the inclusion of the tensor coupling, the effective S-state potential would become attractively singular. We show how including the tensor coupling is essential in order that the wave functions be well-behaved at short distances. For example, the S-state wave function becomes simply proportional to the D-state wave function and dips sharply to zero at the origin, unlike the usual S-state wave functions. Furthermore, this behavior is similar in both QED and QCD, independent of the asymptotic freedom behavior of the assumed QCDmore » vector potential. Light- and heavy-quark meson states can be described well by using a simplified linear-plus-Coulomb-type QCD potential apportioned appropriately between world scalar and vector potentials. We use this potential to exhibit explicitly the origin of the large pi-rho splitting and effective chiral symmetry breaking. The TBDE formalism developed here may be used to study quarkonia in quark-gluon plasma environments.« less

title: Extended Glauber Model of Antiproton-Nucleus Annihilation for All Energies and Mass Numbers
abstract: Previous analytical formulas in the Glauber model for high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions developed by Wong are utilized and extended to study Antiproton-nucleus annihilations for both high and low energies, after taking into account the effects of Coulomb and nuclear interactions, and the change of the antiproton momentum inside a nucleus. The extended analytical formulas capture the main features of the experimental antiproton-nucleus annihilation cross sections for all energies and mass numbers. At high antiproton energies, they exhibit the granular property for the lightest nuclei and the black-disk limit for the heavy nuclei. At low antiproton energies, they display the effect of the antiproton momentum increase due to the nuclear interaction for the light nuclei, and the effect of the magnification due to the attractive Coulomb interaction for the heavy nuclei.

title: The Yang-Mills gradient flow in finite volume
abstract: A bstractThe Yang-Mills gradient flow is considered on the four dimensional torus T4 for SU(N) gauge theory coupled to Nf flavors of massless fermions in arbitrary representations. The small volume dynamics is dominated by the constant gauge fields. The expectation value of the field strength tensor squared TrFμνFμν (t) is calculated for positive flow time t by treating the non-zero gauge modes perturbatively and the zero modes exactly. The finite volume correction to the infinite volume result is found to contain both algebraic and exponential terms. The leading order result is then used to define a one parameter family of running coupling schemes in which the coupling runs with the linear size of the box. The new scheme is tested numerically in SU(3) gauge theory coupled to Nf = 4 flavors of massless fundamental fermions. The calculations are performed at several lattice spacings with a controlled continuum extrapolation. The continuum result agrees with the perturbative prediction for small renormalized coupling as expected.

title: Can the Higgs Impostor Hide Near the Conformal Window
abstract: We present a minimal candidate model for the composite Higgs mechanism with a fermion doublet in the two-index symmetric (sextet) representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. The model is known to be close to the conformal window with a small β-function. Chiral symmetry breaking with vacuum condensate becomes the origin of electroweak symmetry breaking from compositeness. Close to the conformal window, a light scalar state with Higgs quantum numbers is emerging. Associations with the recently observed 126 GeV Higgs boson, or with a dilaton state from broken scale invariance, are subjects of ongoing investigations.

title: Excited-state hadron masses using the stochastic LapH method
abstract: Progress in computing the spectrum of excited baryons and mesons in lattice QCD is described. Large sets of spatially-extended hadron operators are used. The need for multi-hadron operators in addition to single-hadron operators is emphasized, necessitating the use of a new stochastic method of treating the low-lying modes of quark propagation which exploits Laplacian Heaviside quark-field smearing. A new glueball operator is tested and computing the mixing of this glueball operator with a quark-antiquark operator and multiple two-pion operators is shown to be feasible. Some of our initial results show warning signs about extracting high-lying resonance energies using only single-hadron operators.

title: Can the nearly conformal sextet gauge model hide the Higgs impostor
abstract: New results are reported from large scale lattice simulations of a frequently discussed strongly interacting gauge theory with a fermion flavor doublet in the two-index symmetric (sextet) representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. We find that the chiral condensate and the mass spectrum of the sextet model are consistent with chiral symmetry breaking in the limit of vanishing fermion mass. In contrast, sextet fermion mass deformations of spectral properties are not consistent with leading conformal scaling behavior near the critical surface of a conformal theory. A recent paper could not resolve the conformal fixed point of the gauge coupling from the slowly walking scenario of a very small nearly vanishing β -function (DeGrand et al.  ). It is argued that overall consistency with our new results is resolved if the sextet model is close to the conformal window, staying outside with a very small non-vanishing β -function. The model would exhibit then the simplest composite Higgs mechanism leaving open the possibility of a light scalar state with quantum numbers of the Higgs impostor. It would emerge as the pseudo-Goldstone dilaton state from spontaneous symmetry breaking of scale invariance. We will argue that even without association with the dilaton, the scalar Higgs-like state can be light very close to the conformal window. A new Higgs project of sextet lattice simulations is outlined to resolve these important questions.

title: Spectrum of excited states using the stochastic LapH method
abstract: Progress in computing the spectrum of excited baryons and mesons in lattice QCD is described. Our first results in the zero-momentum bosonic I=1, S=0, T1u+ symmetry sector of QCD using a correlation matrix of 56 operators are presented. In addition to a dozen spatially-extended meson operators, 44 two-meson operators are used, involving a wide variety of light isovector, isoscalar, and strange meson operators of varying relative momenta. All needed Wick contractions are efficiently evaluated using a stochastic method of treating the low-lying modes of quark propagation that exploits Laplacian Heaviside quark-field smearing. Level identification is discussed.