We study the deformation of a long cosmic string by a nearby rotating black hole. We examine whether the deformation of a cosmic string, induced by the gravitational field of a Kerr black hole, may lead to the formation of a loop of cosmic string. The segment of the string which enters the ergosphere of a rotating black hole gets deformed and, if it is sufficiently twisted, it can self-intersect chopping off a loop of cosmic string. We find that the formation of a loop, via this mechanism, is a rare event. It will only arise in a small region of the collision phase space, which depends on the string velocity, the impact parameter and the black hole angular momentum. We conclude that generically, the cosmic string is simply scattered or captured by the rotating black hole.
We derive the effective cosmological equations for a non-$\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetric codimension one brane embedded in an arbitrary D-dimensional bulk spacetime, generalizing the $D=5,6$ cases much studied previously. As a particular case, this may be considered as a regularized codimension (D-4) brane avoiding the problem of curvature divergence on the brane. We apply our results to the case of spherical symmetry around the brane and to partly compactified AdS-Schwarzschild bulks.
We study the effect of a uniform magnetic field on the dynamics of axions. In particular, we show that the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is explicitly broken by the presence of an external magnetic field. This breaking is induced by the non-conservation of the magnetic helicity and generates an electromagnetic contribution to the axion mass. We compute the magnetic axion mass in one loop approximation, with no restriction on the intensity of the magnetic field, and including thermal effects.
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The pathway model of Mathai (2005) mainly deals with the rectangular matrix-variate case. In this paper the scalar version is shown to be associated with a large number of probability models used in physics. Different families of densities are listed here, which are all connected through the pathway parameter 'alpha', generating a distributional pathway. The idea is to switch from one functional form to another through this parameter and it is shown that basically one can proceed from the generalized type-1 beta family to generalized type-2 beta family to generalized gamma family when the real variable is positive and a wider set of families when the variable can take negative values also. For simplicity, only the real scalar case is discussed here but corresponding families are available when the variable is in the complex domain. A large number of densities used in physics are shown to be special cases of or associated with the pathway model. It is also shown that the pathway model is available by maximizing a generalized measure of entropy, leading to an entropic pathway. Particular cases of the pathway model are shown to cover Tsallis statistics (Tsallis, 1988) and the superstatistics introduced by Beck and Cohen (2003).
In this paper we study the effects of $f(R)$ Theories of Gravity on Solar System gravitational tests. In particular, starting from an exact solution of the field equation in vacuum, in the Palatini formalism, we work out the effects that the modifications to the Newtonian potential would induce on the Keplerian orbital elements of the Solar System planets, and compare them with the latest results in planetary orbit determination from the EPM2004 ephemerides. It turns out that the longitudes of perihelia and the mean longitudes are affected by secular precessions. We obtain the resulting best estimate of the parameter $k$ which, being simply related to the scalar curvature, measures the non linearity of the gravitational theory. We use our results to constrain the cosmological constant and show how $f(R)$ functions can be constrained, in principle. What we obtain suggests that, in agreement with other recent papers, the Solar System experiments are not effective to set such constraints, if compared to the cosmologically relevant values.
In this note we comment on a recent paper by I.Ciufolini about the possibility of placing the proposed LARES satellite in a low-altitude, nearly polar orbit in order to measure the Lense-Thirring effect with its node. While Ciufolini claims that for a departure of 4 deg from the ideal polar configuration the impact of the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential, modelled with EIGEN-GRACE02S, would be nearly zero allowing for a few-percent measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect, we find that, with the same Earth gravity model and for the same values of the inclination, the systematic error due to the even zonals amounts to 64% of the investigated relativistic effect.
The explicit violation of the general covariance on the whole and its minimal violation to the unimodular covariance specifically is considered. The proper extension of General Relativity is shown to describe consistently the massive scalar graviton together with the massless tensor one, as the parts of the metric. The bearing of the scalar graviton to the dark matter and dark energy is indicated.
Pedagogical lectures on baryogenesis, with emphasis on the electroweak phase transition and electroweak baryogenesis. Contents: (1) Observational evidence for the BAU; (2) Sakharov's conditions for baryogenesis; (3) Example: GUT baryogenesis; (4) B and CP violation in the standard model; (5) Electroweak phase transition and electroweak baryogenesis; (6) A model of electroweak baryogenesis: the two Higgs doublet model; (7) EWBG in the MSSM; (8) Leptogenesis
We emphasize the inelasticity distribution of events detected at the IceCube neutrino telescope as an important tool for revealing new physics. This is possible because the unique energy resolution at this facility allows to separately assign the energy fractions for emergent muons and taus in neutrino interactions. As a particular example, we explore the possibility of probing second and third generation leptoquark parameter space (coupling and mass). We show that production of leptoquarks with masses \agt 250 GeV and diagonal generation couplings of O(1) can be directly tested if the cosmic neutrino flux is at the Waxman-Bahcall level.
We introduce a model of scalar field dark energy, Cuscuton, which can be realized as the incompressible (or infinite speed of sound) limit of a scalar field theory with a non-canonical kinetic term (or k-essence). Even though perturbations of Cuscuton propagate superluminally, we show that they have a locally degenerate phase space volume (or zero entropy), implying that they cannot carry any microscopic information, and thus the theory is causal. Furthermore, we show that the family of constant field hypersurfaces are the family of Constant Mean Curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces, which are the analogs of soap films (or soap bubbles) in a Euclidian space. This enables us to find the most general solution in 1+1 dimensions, whose properties motivate conjectures for global degeneracy of the phase space in higher dimensions. Finally, we show that the Cuscuton action can model the continuum limit of the evolution of a field with discrete degrees of freedom and argue why it is protected against quantum corrections at low energies. While this paper mainly focuses on interesting features of Cuscuton in a Minkowski spacetime, a forthcoming paper examines cosmology with Cuscuton dark energy.
We investigate a class of dark energy models in which a scalar field is coupled to the quadratic curvature invariants. Such couplings are present in the one-loop corrected string effective actions and appear generically in theories with extra dimensions. Hence, from the high energy theoretical point of view, these models are much better motivated than perhaps most of the modified gravity or usual (minimally coupled) quintessence models in the literature. We show that from the cosmological and observational perspective, the Gauss-Bonnet quintessence might also be an interesting model of dark energy, because it can 1) Be derived from an action principle, so one can make definite predictions, and it is simple enough to calculate these in practice; 2) Provide a mechanism to viably onset the late time acceleration after a scaling matter era; 3) Alleviate the coincidence problem; 4) Cross the phantom divide at the present and avoid Big Rip; 5) Be compatible with the CMB and LSS power spectra; 6) Present specific features which can be tightly constrained by both local and astrophysical experiments, such as Solar system, supernovae Ia, cosmic microwave background radiation, large scale structure and Big Bang nucleosynthesis; 7) Possibly provide an exit from the acceleration in the future; and 8) Do all this with just two extra parameters (compared to the concordance model) and without introducing unnatural scales into the Lagrangian.
We built and characterized an optical system that emulates the optical characteristics of an 8m-class telescope like the Very Large Telescope. The system contains rotating glass phase-screens to generate realistic atmosphere-like optical turbulence, as needed for testing multi-conjugate adaptive optics systems. In this paper we present an investigation of the statistical properties of two phase-screens etched on glass-plate surfaces, obtained from Silios Technologies. Those etched screens are highly transmissive (above 85%) from 0.45 to 2.5 microns. From direct imaging, their Fried parameter r0 values (0.43+-0.04 mm and 0.81+-0.03 mm, respectively, at 0.633 microns) agree with the expectation to within 10%. This is also confirmed by a comparison of measured and expected Zernike coefficient variances. Overall, we find that those screens are quite reproducible, allowing sub-millimetre r0 values, which were difficult to achieve in the past. We conclude that the telescope emulator and phase-screens form a powerful atmospheric turbulence generator allowing systematic testing of different kinds of AO instrumentation.
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Binding of few-electron systems in two-dimensional potential cavities in the presence of an external magnetic field is studied with the exact diagonalization approach. We demonstrate that for shallow cavities the few-electron system becomes bound only under the application of a strong magnetic field. The critical value of the depth of the cavity allowing the formation of a bound state decreases with magnetic field in a non-smooth fashion, due to the increasing angular momentum of the first bound state. In the high magnetic field limit the binding energies and the critical values for the depth of the potential cavity allowing the formation of a bound system tend to the classical values.
The new mathematical framework based on the free energy of pure classical fluids presented in [R. D. Rohrmann, Physica A 347, 221 (2005)] is extended to multi-component systems to determine thermodynamic and structural properties of chemically complex fluids. Presently, the theory focuses on $D$-dimensional mixtures in the low-density limit (packing factor $\eta < 0.01$). The formalism combines the free-energy minimization technique with space partitions that assign an available volume $v$ to each particle. $v$ is related to the closeness of the nearest neighbor and provides an useful tool to evaluate the perturbations experimented by particles in a fluid. The theory shows a close relationship between statistical geometry and statistical mechanics. New, unconventional thermodynamic variables and mathematical identities are derived as a result of the space division. Thermodynamic potentials $\mu_{il}$, conjugate variable of the populations $N_{il}$ of particles class $i$ with the nearest neighbors of class $l$ are defined and their relationships with the usual chemical potentials $\mu_i$ are established. Systems of hard spheres are treated as illustrative examples and their thermodynamics functions are derived analytically. The low-density expressions obtained agree nicely with those of scaled-particle theory and Percus-Yevick approximation. Several pair distribution functions are introduced and evaluated. Analytical expressions are also presented for hard spheres with attractive forces due to K\^ac-tails and square-well potentials. Finally, we derive general chemical equilibrium conditions.
The aim of this paper is the dynamical determination of the quadrupole mass moment J_2 of the main-sequence HD 209458 star. The adopted method is the confrontation between the measured orbital period of its transiting planet Osiris and a model of it. Osiris is assumed to move along an equatorial and circular orbit. Our determination, for given values of the stellar mass M and radius R and by assuming the validity of general relativity, is J_2=(3.5 +/- 0.5) X 10^-5. Previous fiducial evaluations based on indirect, spectroscopic measurements yielded, instead, J_2\sim 10^-6: such a value is incompatible with general relativity, given the present-day level of accuracy in measuring the Osiris' orbital period.
Using kinetic equation in the relaxation approximation (RTA), we investigate a flow generated by an infinite plate oscillating with frequency $\omega$. Geometrical simplicity of a problem allows a solution in the entire range of dimensionless frequency variation $0\leq \omega \tau\leq \infty$, where $\tau$ is a properly defined relaxation time. It is shown that in the limit $\omega\tau \to \infty$, the penetration depth of the surface-generated waves tends to infinity and kinetic energy dissipation rate tends to a constant, frequency -independent, value. The relation of the derived solutions to microfluidics (high-frequency micro-resonators) is demonstrated on an example of a "plane oscillator" for which an exact solution has been found. The expression describing experimentally observed transition of the $\omega$-dependent quality factor from $Q\propto \sqrt{\omega}$ in hydrodynamic regime ($\omega\tau\ll1$) to $Q\propto \omega$ in the limit $\omega\tau\to\infty$ (kinetic regime) is derived.
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A duality transformation that interrelates expanding and contracting cosmological models is shown to single out a duality invariant, interacting two-component description of any irrotational, geodesic and shearfree cosmic medium with vanishing three curvature scalar. We illustrate this feature for a barotropic equation of state, for minimal and conformal scalar fields, and for an enlarged Chaplygin gas model of the cosmic substratum. We extend the concept of duality transformations to cosmological perturbations and demonstrate the invariance of adiabatic pressure perturbations under these transformations.
The PVLAS collaboration has results that may be interpreted in terms of a light axion-like particle, while the CAST collaboration has not found any signal of such particles. We propose a particle physics model with paraphotons and with a low energy scale in which this apparent inconsistency is circumvented.
We explore the prospects for indirect detection of neutralino dark matter in supersymmetric models with an extended Higgs sector (NMSSM). We compute, for the first time, one-loop amplitudes for NMSSM neutralino pair annihilation into two photons and two gluons, and point out that extra diagrams (with respect to the MSSM), featuring a potentially light CP-odd Higgs boson exchange, can strongly enhance these radiative modes. Expected signals in neutrino telescopes due to the annihilation of relic neutralinos in the Sun and in the Earth are evaluated, as well as the prospects of detection of a neutralino annihilation signal in space-based gamma-ray, antiproton and positron search experiments, and at low-energy antideuteron searches. We find that in the low mass regime the signals from capture in the Earth are enhanced compared to the MSSM, and that NMSSM neutralinos have a remote possibility of affecting solar dynamics. Also, antimatter experiments are an excellent probe of galactic NMSSM dark matter. We also find enhanced two photon decay modes that make the possibility of the detection of a monochromatic gamma-ray line within the NMSSM more promising than in the MSSM.
We analyze leptogenesis in a supersymmetric triplet seesaw scenario that explains the observed neutrino masses, adopting a phenomenological approach where the decay branching ratios of the triplets and the amount of CP--violation in its different decay channels are assumed as free parameters. We find that the solutions of the relevant Boltzmann equations lead to a rich phenomenology, in particular much more complex compared to the non--supersymmetric case, mainly due to the presence of an additional Higgs doublet. Several unexpected and counter--intuitive behaviors emerge from our analysis: the amount of CP violation in one of the decay channels can prove to be be irrelevant to the final lepton asymmetry, leading to successful leptogenesis even in scenarios with a vanishing CP violation in the leptonic sector; gauge annihilations can be the dominant effect in the determination of the evolution of the triplet density up to very high values of its mass, leading anyway to a sizeable final lepton asymmetry, which is also a growing function of the wash--out parameter K=Gamma_d/H, defined as usual as the ratio between the triplet decay amplitude Gamma_d and the Hubble constant H; on the other hand, cancellations in the Boltzmann equations may lead to a vanishing lepton asymmetry if in one of the decay channels both the branching ratio and the amount of CP violation are suppressed, but not vanishing. The present analysis suggests that in the supersymmetric triplet see-saw model successful leptogenesis can be attained in a wide range of scenarios, provided that an asymmetry in the decaying triplets can act as a lepton--number reservoir.
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We study gravitationally collapsing models of pressureless dust, fluids with pressure, and the generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) shell in (2+1)-dimensional spacetimes. Various collapse scenarios are investigated under a variety of the background configurations such as anti-de Sitter(AdS) black hole, de Sitter (dS) space, flat and AdS space with a conical deficit. As with the case of a disk of dust, we find that the collapse of a dust shell coincides with the Oppenheimer-Snyder type collapse to a black hole provided the initial density is sufficiently large. We also find -- for all types of shell -- that collapse to a naked singularity is possible under a broad variety of initial conditions. For shells with pressure this singularity can occur for a finite radius of the shell. We also find that GCG shells exhibit diverse collapse scenarios, which can be easily demonstrated by an effective potential analysis.
We use Hamiltonian methods to study curved domain walls and cosmologies. This leads naturally to first order equations for all domain walls and cosmologies foliated by slices of maximal symmetry. For Minkowski and AdS-sliced domain walls (flat and closed FLRW cosmologies) we recover a recent result concerning their (pseudo)supersymmetry. We show how domain-wall stability is consistent with the instability of adS vacua that violate the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. We also explore the relationship to Hamilton-Jacobi theory and compute the wave-function of a 3-dimensional closed universe evolving towards de Sitter spacetime.
We investigate the evolution of scalar metric perturbations across a sudden cosmological transition, allowing for an inhomogeneous surface stress at the transition leading to a discontinuity in the local expansion rate, such as might be expected in a big crunch/big bang event. We assume that the transition occurs when some function of local matter variables reaches a critical value, and that the surface stress is also a function of local matter variables. In particular we consider the case of a single scalar field and show that a necessary condition for the surface stress tensor to be perturbed at the transition is the presence of a non-zero intrinsic entropy perturbation of the scalar field. We present the matching conditions in terms of gauge-invariant variables assuming a sudden transition to a fluid-dominated universe with barotropic equation of state. For adiabatic perturbations the comoving curvature perturbation is continuous at the transition, while the Newtonian potential may be discontinuous if there is a discontinuity in the background Hubble expansion.
A method for calculation of Gamow-Teller transition rates is developed by using the concept of the Projected Shell Model (PSM). The shell model basis is constructed by superimposing angular-momentum-projected multi-quasiparticle configurations, and nuclear wave functions are obtained by digonalizing the two-body interactions in these projected states. Calculation of transition matrix elements in the PSM framework is discussed in detail, and the effects caused by the Gamow-Teller residual forces and by configuration-mixing are studied. With this method, it may become possible to perform a state-by-state calculation for beta-decay and electron-capture rates in heavy, deformed nuclei at finite temperatures. Our first example indicates that, while experimentally known Gamow-Teller transition rates from the ground state of the parent nucleus are reproduced, stronger transitions from some low-lying excited states are predicted to occur, which may considerably enhance the total decay rates once these nuclei are exposed to hot stellar environments.
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