Quasielastic electron scattering and vacuum polarization.
The longitudinal response function for quasielastic electron scattering from /sup 12/C and /sup 40/Ca at a momentum transfer q = 550 MeV is calculated in a relativistic random-phase approximation (RPA). The particle-hole response is calculated exactly in the finite system while vacuum-polarization effects are included in a local-density approximation. The RPA result with vacuum polarization is about 25% below the Hartree response and comparable to Saclay data.

title: Breaking strain of neutron star crust and gravitational waves.
abstract: Mountains on rapidly rotating neutron stars efficiently radiate gravitational waves. The maximum possible size of these mountains depends on the breaking strain of the neutron star crust. With multimillion ion molecular dynamics simulations of Coulomb solids representing the crust, we show that the breaking strain of pure single crystals is very large and that impurities, defects, and grain boundaries only modestly reduce the breaking strain to around 0.1. Because of the collective behavior of the ions during failure found in our simulations, the neutron star crust is likely very strong and can support mountains large enough so that their gravitational wave radiation could limit the spin periods of some stars and might be detectable in large-scale interferometers. Furthermore, our microscopic modeling of neutron star crust material can help analyze mechanisms relevant in magnetar giant flares and microflares.

title: Equation of state of dense matter from a density dependent relativistic mean field model
abstract: We calculate the equation of state (EOS) of dense matter using a relativistic mean field (RMF) model with a density dependent coupling that is a slightly modified form of the original NL3 interaction. For nonuniform nuclear matter we approximate the unit lattice as a spherical Wigner-Seitz cell, wherein the meson mean fields and nucleon Dirac wave functions are solved fully self-consistently. We also calculate uniform nuclear matter for a wide range of temperatures, densities, and proton fractions, and match them to nonuniform matter as the density decreases. The calculations took over 6000 CPU days in Indiana University's supercomputer clusters. We tabulate the resulting EOS at over 107,000 grid points in the proton fraction range Y{sub P}=0 to 0.56. For the temperature range T=0.16 to 15.8 MeV, we cover the density range n{sub B}=10{sup -4} to 1.6 fm{sup -3}; and for the higher temperature range T=15.8 to 80 MeV, we cover the larger density range n{sub B}=10{sup -8} to 1.6 fm{sup -3}. In the future we plan to study low density, low temperature (T<15.8 MeV), nuclear matter using a Virial expansion, and we will match the low-density and high-density results to generate a complete EOS table for use in astrophysical simulationsmore » of supernova and neutron star mergers.« less

title: Semiclassical quark model of the nuclear matter response
abstract: The longitudinal response function R(q,w) of nuclear matter is calculated in a semiclassical quark model. The model has a many‐body string‐flip potential that confines quarks into hadrons and avoids color van der Waals forces. Molecular dynamics simulations are used to calculate R(q,w) in one space dimension for a variety of momentum transfers q and excitation energies w. The response function decreases with density (compared to a free hadron response) because of quark exchange between hadrons.

title: Structure of accreted neutron star crust
abstract: Using molecular dynamics simulations, we determine the structure of neutron star crust made of rapid proton capture nucleosynthesis material. We find a regular body-centered cubic lattice, even with the large number of impurities that are present. Low-charge-Z impurities tend to occupy interstitial positions, while high-Z impurities tend to occupy substitutional lattice sites. We find strong attractive correlations between low-Z impurities that could significantly increase the rate of pycnonuclear (density driven) nuclear reactions. The thermal conductivity is significantly reduced by electron impurity scattering. Our results will be used in future work to study the effects of impurities on mechanical properties such as the shear modulus and breaking strain.

title: Role of heavy-meson exchange in pion production near threshold.
abstract: Recent calculations of s-wave pion production have severely underestimated the accurately known pp → pp� 0 total cross section near threshold. In these calculations, only the single-nucleon axial-charge operator is considered. We have calculated, in addition to the one-body term, the two-body contributions to this reaction that arise from the exchange of mesons. We find that the inclusion of the scalar �-meson exchange current (and lesser contributions from other mesons) increases the cross section by about a factor of five, and leads to excellent agreement with the data. The results are neither very sensitive to changes in the distorting potential that generates the NN wave function, nor to different choices for the meson-nucleon form factors. We argue that pp → pp� 0 data provide direct experimental evidence for meson

title: Testing cosmic censorship with black hole collisions.
abstract: There exists an upper limit on the mass of black holes when the cosmological constant \ensuremath{\Lambda} is positive. We study the collision of two black holes whose total mass exceeds this limit. Our investigation is based on a recently discovered exact solution describing the collision of Q=M black holes with \ensuremath{\Lambda}g0. The global structure of this solution is analyzed. We find that if the total mass is less than the extremal limit, then the black holes coalesce. If it is greater, then a naked singularity forms to the future of a Cauchy horizon. However, the horizon is not smooth. Generically, there is a mild curvature singularity, which still allows geodesics to be extended. The implications of these results for cosmic censorship are discussed.

title: Pair creation of extremal black holes and Kaluza-Klein monopoles.
abstract: Classical solutions describing charged dilaton black holes accelerating in a background magnetic field have recently been found. They include the Ernst metric of the Einstein-Maxwell theory as a special case. We study the extremal limit of these solutions in detail, both at the classical and quantum levels. It is shown that near the event horizon the extremal solutions reduce precisely to the static extremal black hole solutions. For a particular value of the dilaton coupling, these extremal black holes are five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein monopoles. The Euclidean sections of these solutions can be interpreted as instantons describing the pair creation of extremal black holes and/or Kaluza-Klein monopoles in a magnetic field. The action of these instantons is calculated and found to agree with the Schwinger result in the weak-field limit. For the Euclidean Ernst solution, the action for the extremal solution differs from that of the previously discussed wormhole instanton by the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. However, in many cases quantum corrections become large in the vicinity of the black hole, and the precise description of the creation process is unknown.

title: Strings in strong gravitational fields.
abstract: String propagation in exact plane-wave solutions (with nonzero axion and dilaton fields) is analyzed. In these backgrounds, strings can undergo transitions from one state to another. Selection rules are derived which describe allowed and forbidden transitions of the string. It is shown that singular plane waves result in infinitely excited strings. An example is given of a solution whose singular properties are the opposite of an orbifold: it is geodesically complete, but still singular from the standpoint of string theory. Some implications of these results are discussed.

title: Statistical Entropy of Nonextremal Four-Dimensional Black Holes and U-Duality.
abstract: We identify the states in string theory which are responsible for the entropy of near-extremal rotating four-dimensional black holes in {ital N}=8 supergravity. For black holes far from extremality (with no rotation), the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is exactly matched by a mysterious duality invariant extension of the formulas derived for near-extremal black holes states. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society.

title: Rotating dilaton black holes.
abstract: It is shown that an arbitrarily small amount of angular momentum can qualitatively change the properties of extremal charged black holes coupled to a dilaton. In addition, the gyromagnetic ratio of these black holes is computed and an exact rotating black string solution is presented.