Abstract: Purpose: In the present work, the authors compare geometrical and Monte Carlo projectors in detail. The geometrical projectors considered were the conventional geometrical Siddon ray-tracer (S-RT) and the orthogonal distance-based ray-tracer (OD-RT), based on computing the orthogonal distance from the center of image voxel to the line-of-response. A comparison of these geometrical projectors was performed using different point spread function (PSF) models. The Monte Carlo-based method under consideration involves an extensive model of the system response matrix based on Monte Carlo simulations and is computed off-line and stored on disk. Methods: Comparisons were performed using simulated and experimental data of the commercial small animal PET scanner rPET. Results: The results demonstrate that the orthogonal distance-based ray-tracer and Siddon ray-tracer using PSF image-space convolutions yield better images in terms of contrast and spatial resolution than those obtained after using the conventional method and the multiray-based S-RT. Furthermore, the Monte Carlo-based method yields slight improvements in terms of contrast and spatial resolution with respect to these geometrical projectors. Conclusions: The orthogonal distance-based ray-tracer and Siddon ray-tracer using PSF image-space convolutions represent satisfactory alternatives to factorizing the system matrix or to the conventional on-the-fly ray-tracing methods for list-mode reconstruction, where an extensive modeling based on Monte Carlo simulations is unfeasible.

Abstract: We perform an analytical study of the scattering matrix and bound states in problems with many physical coupled channels. We establish the relationship of the couplings of the states to the different channels, obtained from the residues of the scattering matrix at the poles, with the wave functions for the different channels. The couplings basically reflect the value of the wave functions around the origin in coordinate space. In the concrete case of the X(3872) resonance, understood as a bound state of D-0(D) over bar*(0) and D+D*(-) (and c.c. From now on, when we refer to D-0(D) over bar*(0), D+D*(-), or D (D) over bar* we are actually referring to the combination of these states with their complex conjugate in order to form a state with positive C-parity), with the D-0(D) over bar*(0) loosely bound, we find that the couplings to the two channels are essentially equal leading to a state of good isospin I = 0 character. This is in spite of having a probability for finding the D-0(D) over bar*(0) state much larger than for D+D*(-) since the loosely bound channel extends further in space. The analytical results, obtained with exact solutions of the Schrodinger equation for the wave functions, can be useful in general to interpret results found numerically in the study of problems with unitary coupled channels methods.

Abstract: We analyze the so-called pinched weights, that are generally thought to reduce the violation of quarkhadron duality in finite-energy sum rules. After showing how this is not true in general, we explain how to address this question for the left-right correlator and any particular pinched weight, taking advantage of our previous work [1], where the possible high-energy behavior of the left-right spectral function was studied. In particular, we show that the use of pinched weights allows to determine with high accuracy the dimension six and eight contributions in the operator-product expansion, O-6 = (-4.3(-0.7)(+0.9)) x 10(-3) GeV6 and O-8 = (-7.2(-5.3)(+4.2)) x 10(-3) GeV8.