Phenomenology of stochastic exponential growth.

Stochastic exponential growth is observed in a variety of contexts, including molecular autocatalysis, nuclear fission, population growth, inflation of the universe, viral social media posts, and financial markets. Yet literature on modeling the phenomenology of these stochastic dynamics has predominantly focused on one model, geometric Brownian motion (GBM), which can be described as the solution of a Langevin equation with linear drift and linear multiplicative noise. Using recent experimental results on stochastic exponential growth of individual bacterial cell sizes, we motivate the need for a more general class of phenomenological models of stochastic exponential growth, which are consistent with the observation that the mean-rescaled distributions are approximately stationary at long times. We show that this behavior is not consistent with GBM, instead it is consistent with power-law multiplicative noise with positive fractional powers. Therefore, we consider this general class of phenomenological models for stochastic exponential growth, provide analytical solutions, and identify the important dimensionless combination of model parameters, which determines the shape of the mean-rescaled distribution. We also provide a prescription for robustly inferring model parameters from experimentally observed stochastic growth trajectories.

Thermodynamics of a one-dimensional self-gravitating gas with periodic boundary conditions.

We study the thermodynamic properties of a one-dimensional gas with one-dimensional gravitational interactions. Periodic boundary conditions are implemented as a modification of the potential consisting of a sum over mirror images (Ewald sum), regularized with an exponential cutoff. As a consequence, each particle carries with it its own background density. Using mean-field theory, we show that the system has a phase transition at a critical temperature. Above the critical temperature the gas density is uniform, while below the critical point the system becomes inhomogeneous. Numerical simulations of the model, which include the caloric curve, the equation of state, the radial distribution function, and the largest Lyapunov exponent, confirm the existence of the phase transition, and they are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Equivalence of interest rate models and lattice gases.

We consider the class of short rate interest rate models for which the short rate is proportional to the exponential of a Gaussian Markov process x(t) in the terminal measure r(t)=a(t)exp[x(t)]. These models include the Black-Derman-Toy and Black-Karasinski models in the terminal measure. We show that such interest rate models are equivalent to lattice gases with attractive two-body interaction, V(t(1),t(2))=-Cov[x(t(1)),x(t(2))]. We consider in some detail the Black-Karasinski model with x(t) as an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, and show that it is similar to a lattice gas model considered by Kac and Helfand, with attractive long-range two-body interactions, V(x,y)=-α(e(-γ|x-y|)-e(-γ(x+y))). An explicit solution for the model is given as a sum over the states of the lattice gas, which is used to show that the model has a phase transition similar to that found previously in the Black-Derman-Toy model in the terminal measure.

Quark forces from hadronic spectroscopy.

We consider the implications of the most general two-body quark-quark interaction Hamiltonian for the spin-flavor structure of the negative parity L = 1 excited baryons. Assuming the most general two-body quark interaction Hamiltonian, we derive two correlations among the masses and mixing angles of these states, which constrain the mixing angles, and can be used to test for the presence of three-body quark interactions. We find that the pure gluon-exchange model is disfavored by data, independently of any assumptions about hadronic wave functions.

Parity doubling and SU(2)LxSU(2)R restoration in the hadron spectrum.

We construct the most general nonlinear representation of chiral SU(2)LxSU(2)R broken down spontaneously to the isospin SU(2), on a pair of hadrons of same spin and isospin and opposite parity. We show that any such representation is equivalent, through a hadron field transformation, to two irreducible representations on two hadrons of opposite parity with different masses and axial-vector couplings. This implies that chiral symmetry realized in the Nambu-Goldstone mode does not predict the existence of degenerate multiplets of hadrons of opposite parity nor any relations between their couplings or masses.

B0-->D(*-)a(+)(1): chirality tests and resolving an ambiguity in the CP violation parameter 2beta+gamma.

We point out that the decays of B mesons into a vector meson and an axial-vector meson can distinguish between left and right-handed polarized mesons, in contrast to decays into two vector mesons. Measurements in B0-->D(*-)a(+)(1) are proposed for testing factorization and the V-A structure of the b-->c current, and for resolving a discrete ambiguity in 2beta+gamma.

Measuring the photon polarization in B -->Kpipigamma.

We propose a way of measuring the photon polarization in radiative B decays into K resonance states decaying to Kpipi, which can test the standard model and probe new physics. The photon polarization is shown to be measured by the up-down asymmetry of the photon direction relative to the Kpipi decay plane in the K resonance rest frame. The integrated asymmetry in K1(1400)-->Kpipi, calculated to be 0.34 plus/minus 0.05 in the standard model, is measurable at currently operating B factories.