Polarimetry of cosmic gamma-ray sources above $e^+e^-$ pair creation threshold
We examine the potential for gamma-ray conversion to electron-positron pairs, either in the field of a nucleus or of an electron of a detector, to measure the fraction P of linear polarization of cosmic gamma sources. For this purpose we implement, validate and use an event generator based on the HELAS amplitude calculator and on the SPRING event generator. We characterize several ways to measure P. Past proposals to increase the polarization sensitivity by the selection of a fraction of the events in a subset of the available phase space are found to be ine cient, due to the loss in statistics. The use of an optimal variable that includes the full 5D probability density function is found to improve the precision of the measurement of P of a factor of approximately 2. We then study the dilution of the asymmetry that parametrize the degradation of the precision due to experimental e ects such as multiple scattering. In a detector made with a succession of converter slabs and tracker foils, the dependence of the dilution is found to be di erent from that predicted assuming a given (the most probable) value of the pair opening angle. The limitations of a slab detector are avoided by the use of an active target, in which conversion and tracking are performed by the same device, in which case the dilution of the measurement of P is found to be manageable. Based on a realistic sizing of the detector, and for an e ective exposure of 1 year, we estimate the precision for a Crab-like source on the full energy range to be approximately 1.4 %.

title: Improved Measurement of CP Violation in Neutral B Decays to c cs

title: Operation of the Cherenkov detector DIRC of BABAR at high luminosity
abstract: The DIRC (acronym for Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov (light)) is the ring imaging Cherenkov detector of the BABAR detector at the PEP-II ring of SLAC. It provides the identification of pions, kaons and protons for momenta up to 4 GeV/c with high efficiency. This is needed to reconstruct CP-violating B-decay final states and to provide B-meson flavour tagging for time dependent asymmetry measurements. The DIRC radiators consists of long rectangular bars made of synthetic fused silica and the photon detector is a water tank equipped with an array of 10.752 conventional photomultipliers. At the end of the year 2000 BABAR has recorded about 22 million B~B pairs reaching the design luminosity of L=3/spl middot/10/sup 33//cm/sup 2/s. The ability to keep the beam background level low at highest collision rates and the long term reliability of the DIRC components during continuous data taking are requirements of BABAR to accomplish its physics program.

title: Measurements of branching fractions and CP-violating asymmetries in B-meson decays to the charmless two-body states K0 pi+, anti-K0 K+, and K0 anti-K0

title: Measurement of the CKM matrix element $|V_{ub}|$ with $B \to \rho e \nu$ decays

title: Branching fraction for $B^{+} \to \pi^0 \ell^{+} \nu$, measured in $\upsilon_{4S} \to B \bar{B}$ events tagged by $B^{-} \to D^0 \ell^{-}$ anti-v ($X$) decays

title: Quantum group symmetries and non-local currents in 2D QFT
abstract: We construct and study the implications of some new non-local conserved currents that exist is a wide variety of massive integrable quantum field theories in 2 dimensions, including the sine-Gordon theory and its generalization to affine Toda theory. These non-local currents provide a non-perturbative formulation of the theories. The symmetry algebras correspond to the quantum affine Kac-Moody algebras. TheS-matrices are completely characterized by these symmetries. FormalS-matrices for the imaginary-coupling affine Toda theories are thereby derived. The application of theseS-matrices to perturbed coset conformal field theory is studied. Non-local charges generating the finite dimensional Quantum Group in the Liouville theory are briefly presented. The formalism based on non-local charges we describe provides an algernative to the quantum inverse scattering method for solving integrable quantum field theories in 2d.

title: Renormalization group for network models of quantum Hall transitions
abstract: We analyze in detail the renormalization group flows which follow from the recently proposed all orders β functions for the Chalker–Coddington network model. The flows in the physical regime reach a true singularity after a finite scale transformation. Other flows are regular and we identify the asymptotic directions. One direction is in the same universality class as the disordered XY model. The all orders β function is computed for the network model of the spin quantum Hall transition and the flows are shown to have similar properties. It is argued that fixed points of general current–current interactions in 2d should correspond to solutions of the Virasoro master equation. Based on this we identify two coset conformal field theories osp (2 N |2 N ) 1 / u (1) 0 and osp (4 N |4 N ) 1 / su (2) 0 as possible fixed points and study the resulting multifractal properties. We also obtain a scaling relation between the typical amplitude exponent α 0 and the typical point contact conductance exponent X t which is expected to hold when the density of states is constant.

title: Twisted self-duality of dimensionally reduced gravity and vertex operators
abstract: The Geroch group, isomorphic to the SL(2, R ) affine Kac-Moody group, is an infinite-dimensional solution generating group of Einstein's equations with two surface orthogonal commuting Killing vectors. We introduce another solution generating group for these equations, the dressing group, and discuss its connection with the Geroch group. We show that it acts transitively on a dense subset of moduli space. We use a new Lax pair expressing a twisted self-duality of this system and we study the dressing problem associated to it. We also describe how to use vertex operators to solve the reduced Einstein's equations.

title: The Large N Random phase sine-Gordon model
abstract: At large distances and in the low-temperature phase, the quenched correlation functions in the 2d random phase sine-Gordon model have been argued to be of the form: , with = (T − Tc). However, renormalization group computations predict B ≠ 0, while variational approaches (which are supposed to be exact for models with a large number of components) give B = 0. We introduce a large-N version of the random phase sine-Gordon model. Using non-Abelian bosonization and renormalization group techniques, we show that the correlation functions of our models have the above form but with a coefficient B suppressed by a factor 1/N3 compared to A.

title: Fock representations and BRST cohomology inSL(2) current algebra
abstract: We investigate the structure of the Fock modules overA1(1) introduced by Wakimoto. We show that irreducible highest weight modules arise as degree zero cohomology groups in a BRST-like complex of Fock modules. Chiral primary fields are constructed as BRST invariant operators acting on Fock modules. As a result, we obtain a free field representation of correlation functions of theSU(2) WZW model on the plane and on the torus. We also consider representations of fractional level arising in Polyakov's 2D quantum gravity. Finally, we give a geometrical, Borel-Weil-like interpretation of the Wakimoto construction.