Can black holes and naked singularities be detected in accelerators?

We study the conditions for the existence of black holes that can be produced in colliders at TeV-scale if the space-time is higher dimensional. On employing the microcanonical picture, we find that their life-times strongly depend on the details of the model. If the extra dimensions are compact (ADD model), microcanonical deviations from thermality are in general significant near the fundamental TeV mass and tiny black holes decay more slowly than predicted by the canonical expression, but still fast enough to disappear almost instantaneously. However, with one warped extra dimension (RS model), microcanonical corrections are much larger and tiny black holes appear to be (meta)stable. Further, if the total charge is not zero, we argue that naked singularities do not occur provided the electromagnetic field is strictly confined on an infinitely thin brane. However, they might be produced in colliders if the effective thickness of the brane is of the order of the fundamental length scale (~1/TeV).Comment: 6 pages, RevTeX 3, 1 figure and 1 table, important changes and addition

A general class of braneworld wormholes

The brane cosmology scenario is based on the idea that our Universe is a 3-brane embedded in a five-dimensional bulk. In this work, a general class of braneworld wormholes is explored with $R\neq 0$, where $R$ is the four dimensional Ricci scalar, and specific solutions are further analyzed. A fundamental ingredient of traversable wormholes is the violation of the null energy condition (NEC). However, it is the effective total stress energy tensor that violates the latter, and in this work, the stress energy tensor confined on the brane, threading the wormhole, is imposed to satisfy the NEC. It is also shown that in addition to the local high-energy bulk effects, nonlocal corrections from the Weyl curvature in the bulk may induce a NEC violating signature on the brane. Thus, braneworld gravity seems to provide a natural scenario for the existence of traversable wormholes.Comment: 6 pages, Revtex4. V2: comments and references added, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Quantum Harmonic Black Holes

Inspired by the recent conjecture that black holes are condensates of gravitons, we investigate a simple model for the black hole degrees of freedom that is consistent both from the point of view of Quantum mechanics and of General Relativity. Since the two perspectives should "converge" into a unified picture for small, Planck size, objects, we expect our construction is a useful step for understanding the physics of microscopic, quantum black holes. In particular, we show that a harmonically trapped condensate gives rise to two horizons, whereas the extremal case (corresponding to a remnant with vanishing Hawking temperature) naturally falls out of its spectrum.Comment: 7 pages, no figures. Clarifications and comments adde

Horizon Quantum Mechanics for spheroidal sources

We start investigating the extension of the Horizon Quantum Mechanics to the case of spheroidal sources. We first study the location of trapping surfaces in space-times resulting from an axial deformation of static isotropic systems, and show that the Misner-Sharp mass evaluated on the corresponding undeformed spherically symmetric space provides the correct gravitational radius to locate the horizon. We finally propose a way to determine the deformation parameter in the quantum theory.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, final version to appear in EP

The Minimal Geometric Deformation Approach: a brief introduction

We review the basic elements of the Minimal Geometric Deformation approach in details. This method has been successfully used to generate brane-world configurations from general relativistic perfect fluid solutions.Comment: Brief review; minor corrections; references adde

CMB acoustic scale in the entropic-like accelerating universe

We consider generalizations of the entropic accelerating universe recently proposed in Ref. [4,5] and show that their background equations can be made equivalent to a model with a dark energy component with constant parameter of state $w_{X} = -1 + 2\, \gamma /3$, where $\gamma$ is related to the coefficients of the new terms in the Friedman equations. After discussing all the Friedman equations for an arbitrary $\gamma$, we show how to recover the standard scalings for dust and radiation. The acoustic scale $\ell_A$, related to the peak positions in the pattern of the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, is also computed and yields the stringent bound $|\gamma|\ll 1$. We then argue that future data might be able to distinguish this model from pure $\Lambda$CDM (corresponding to $\gamma=0$).Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Hawking radiation and the Bloom-Gilman duality

The decay widths of the quantum black hole precursors, determined from the poles of the resummed graviton propagator, are matched to the expected lifetime given by the Hawking decay. In this way, we impose a sort of duality between a perturbative description and an essentially non-perturbative description, bearing some similarity with the Bloom-Gilman duality for the strong interactions. General relations are then obtained for the widths and masses of the poles in terms of the number of particle species and the renormalisation scale of gravity.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

On boundary terms and conformal transformations in curved space-times

We intend to clarify the interplay between boundary terms and conformal transformations in scalar-tensor theories of gravity. We first consider the action for pure gravity in five dimensions and show that, on compactifing a la Kaluza-Klein to four dimensions, one obtains the correct boundary terms in the Jordan (or String) Frame form of the Brans-Dicke action. Further, we analyze how the boundary terms change under the conformal transformations which lead to the Pauli (or Einstein) frame and to the non-minimally coupled massless scalar field. In particular, we study the behaviour of the total energy in asymptotically flat space-times as it results from surface terms in the Hamiltonian formalism.Comment: LaTeX 2e, 12 pages, no figure

Vibration Propagation on the Skin of the Arm

Vibrotactile interfaces are an inexpensive and non-invasive way to provide performance feedback to body-machine interface users. Interfaces for the upper extremity have utilized a multi-channel approach using an array of vibration motors placed on the upper extremity. However, for successful perception of multi-channel vibrotactile feedback on the arm, we need to account for vibration propagation across the skin. If two stimuli are delivered within a small distance, mechanical propagation of vibration can lead to inaccurate perception of the distinct vibrotactile stimuli. This study sought to characterize vibration propagation across the hairy skin of the forearm. We characterized vibration propagation by measuring accelerations at various distances from a source vibration of variable intensities (100–240 Hz). Our results showed that acceleration from the source vibration was present at a distance of 4 cm at intensities \u3e150 Hz. At distances greater than 8 cm from the source, accelerations were reduced to values substantially below vibrotactile discrimination thresholds for all vibration intensities. We conclude that in future applications of vibrotactile interfaces, stimulation sites should be separated by a distance of at least 8 cm to avoid potential interference in vibration perception caused by propagating vibrations