Peakompactons: Peaked compact nonlinear waves

This paper is meant as an accessible introduction to/tutorial on the analytical construction and numerical simulation of a class of nonstandard solitary waves termed peakompactons. These peaked compactly supported waves arise as solutions to nonlinear evolution equations from a hierarchy of nonlinearly dispersive Korteweg–de Vries-type models. Peakompactons, like the now-well-known compactons and unlike the soliton solutions of the Korteweg–de Vries equation, have finite support, i.e., they are of finite wavelength. However, unlike compactons, peakompactons are also peaked, i.e., a higher spatial derivative suffers a jump discontinuity at the wave’s crest. Here, we construct such solutions exactly by reducing the governing partial differential equation to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation and employing a phase-plane analysis. A simple, but reliable, finite-difference scheme is also designed and tested for the simulation of collisions of peakompactons. In addition to the peakompacton class of solu..

Chiral Asymmetry from a 5D Higgs Mechanism

An intriguing feature of the Standard Model is that the representations of the unbroken gauge symmetries are vector-like whereas those of the spontaneously broken gauge symmetries are chiral. Here we provide a toy model which shows that a natural explanation of this property could emerge in higher dimensional field theories and discuss the difficulties that arise in the attempt to construct a realistic theory. An interesting aspect of this type of models is that the 4D low energy effective theory is not generically gauge invariant. However, the non-invariant contributions to the observable quantities are very small, of the order of the square of the ratio between the light particle mass scale and the Kaluza-Klein mass scale. Remarkably, when we take the unbroken limit both the chiral asymmetry and the non-invariant terms disappear.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, uses axodraw.sty. Extended version, matches the article published on JHE

Nonequilibrium Quantum Dynamics of Second Order Phase Transitions

We use the so-called Liouville-von Neumann (LvN) approach to study the nonequilibrium quantum dynamics of time-dependent second order phase transitions. The LvN approach is a canonical method that unifies the functional Schr\"{o}dinger equation for the quantum evolution of pure states and the LvN equation for the quantum description of mixed states of either equilibrium or nonequilibrium. As nonequilibrium quantum mechanical systems we study a time-dependent harmonic and an anharmonic oscillator and find the exact Fock space and density operator for the harmonic oscillator and the nonperturbative Gaussian Fock space and density operator for the anharmonic oscillator. The density matrix and the coherent, thermal and coherent-thermal states are found in terms of their classical solutions, for which the effective Hamiltonians and equations of motion are derived. The LvN approach is further extended to quantum fields undergoing time-dependent second order phase transitions. We study an exactly solvable model with a finite smooth quench and find the two-point correlation functions. Due to the spinodal instability of long wavelength modes the two-point correlation functions lead to the $t^{1/4}$-scaling relation during the quench and the Cahn-Allen scaling relation $t^{1/2}$ after the completion of quench. Further, after the finite quench the domain formation shows a time-lag behavior at the cubic power of quench period. Finally we study the time-dependent phase transition of a self-interacting scalar field.Comment: discussion on back-reaction added, typos corrected, references added, final version for PR

CMB Anisotropy in Compact Hyperbolic Universes I: Computing Correlation Functions

CMB anisotropy measurements have brought the issue of global topology of the universe from the realm of theoretical possibility to within the grasp of observations. The global topology of the universe modifies the correlation properties of cosmic fields. In particular, strong correlations are predicted in CMB anisotropy patterns on the largest observable scales if the size of the Universe is comparable to the distance to the CMB last scattering surface. We describe in detail our completely general scheme using a regularized method of images for calculating such correlation functions in models with nontrivial topology, and apply it to the computationally challenging compact hyperbolic spaces. Our procedure directly sums over images within a specified radius, ideally many times the diameter of the space, effectively treats more distant images in a continuous approximation, and uses Cesaro resummation to further sharpen the results. At all levels of approximation the symmetries of the space are preserved in the correlation function. This new technique eliminates the need for the difficult task of spatial eigenmode decomposition on these spaces. Although the eigenspectrum can be obtained by this method if desired, at a given level of approximation the correlation functions are more accurately determined. We use the 3-torus example to demonstrate that the method works very well. We apply it to power spectrum as well as correlation function evaluations in a number of compact hyperbolic (CH) spaces. Application to the computation of CMB anisotropy correlations on CH spaces, and the observational constraints following from them, are given in a companion paper.Comment: 27 pages, Latex, 11 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D, March 11, 199

Electron-Positron Pair Production in Space- or Time-Dependent Electric Fields

Treating the production of electron and positron pairs by a strong electric field from the vacuum as a quantum tunneling process we derive, in semiclassical approximation, a general expression for the pair production rate in a $z$-dependent electric field $E(z)$ pointing in the $z$-direction. We also allow for a smoothly varying magnetic field parallel to $E(z)$. The result is applied to a confined field $E(z)\not=0$ for $|z|\lesssim \ell$, a semi-confined field $E(z)\not=0$ for $z\gtrsim 0$, and a linearly increasing field $E(z)\sim z$. The boundary effects of the confined fields on pair-production rates are exhibited. A simple variable change in all formulas leads to results for electric fields depending on time rather than space. In addition, we discuss tunneling processes in which empty atomic bound states are spontaneously filled by negative-energy electrons from the vacuum under positron emission. In particular, we calculate the rate at which the atomic levels of a bare nucleus of finite size $r_{\rm n}$ and large $Z\gg 1$ are filled by spontaneous pair creation.Comment: 33 pages and 9 figures. to appear in Phys. Rev.