400 research outputs found
Chronology protection in stationary three-dimensional spacetimes
We study chronology protection in stationary, rotationally symmetric
spacetimes in 2+1 dimensional gravity, focusing especially on the case of
negative cosmological constant. We show that in such spacetimes closed timelike
curves must either exist all the way to the boundary or, alternatively, the
matter stress tensor must violate the null energy condition in the bulk. We
also show that the matter in the closed timelike curve region gives a negative
contribution to the conformal weight from the point of view of the dual
conformal field theory. We illustrate these properties in a class of examples
involving rotating dust in anti-de Sitter space, and comment on the use of the
AdS/CFT correspondence to study chronology protection.Comment: 20 pages. V2: minor corrections, Outlook expanded, references added,
published versio
Warm tachyonic inflation in warped background
We analyze warm tachyonic inflation, proposed in the literature, but from the
viewpoint of four dimensional effective action for tachyon field on a non-BPS
D3-brane. We find that consistency with observational data on density
perturbation and validity of effective action requires warped compactification.
The number of background branes which source the flux is found to be of the
order of 10 in contrast to the order of in the standard cold
inflationary scenario.Comment: 9 pages, RevTe
Do genetic differences in growth thermal reaction norms maintain genetic variation in timing of diapause induction?
publishedVersio
Low Genetic and Morphometric Intraspecific Divergence in Peripheral Copadichromis Populations (Perciformes: Cichlidae) in the Lake Malawi Basin
Peripheral isolated populations may undergo rapid divergence from the main population due to various factors such as a bottleneck or a founder effect followed by genetic drift or local selection pressures. Recent populations of two economically important Copadichromis species in Lake Malombe, a satellite lake of Lake Malawi, were neither genetically nor morphometrically distinct from their source populations in the main lake. Evidence was found for a founder effect which had a different impact on the genetic composition of the two species. In addition, the increased fishing pressure in Lake Malombe may have led to a reduction of the body sizes of both species
What is needed of a tachyon if it is to be the dark energy?
We study a dark energy scenario in the presence of a tachyon field
with potential and a barotropic perfect fluid. The cosmological
dynamics crucially depends on the asymptotic behavior of the quantity
. If is a constant, which corresponds to
an inverse square potential , there exists one
stable critical point that gives an acceleration of the universe at late times.
When asymptotically, we can have a viable dark energy scenario
in which the system approaches an ``instantaneous'' critical point that
dynamically changes with . If approaches infinity
asymptotically, the universe does not exhibit an acceleration at late times. In
this case, however, we find an interesting possibility that a transient
acceleration occurs in a regime where is smaller than of order
unity.Comment: 11 pages and 3 figures, minor clarifications added; final version to
appear in PR
Simple holographic duals to boundary CFTs
By relaxing the regularity conditions imposed in arXiv:1107.1722 on half-BPS
solutions to six-dimensional Type~4b supergravity, we enlarge the space of
solutions to include two new half-BPS configurations, which we refer to as the
\kap\ and the \funnel. We give evidence that the \kap\ and \funnel\ can be
interpreted as fully back-reacted brane solutions with respectively and
world volumes. \kap\ and \funnel\ solutions with a single
asymptotic region are constructed analytically. We argue
that \kap\ solutions provide simple examples of holographic duals to boundary
CFTs in two dimensions and present calculations of their holographic boundary
entropy to support the BCFT dual picture.Comment: 37 pages, pdflatex, 5 figure
Quantizing higher-spin gravity in free-field variables
We study the formulation of massless higher-spin gravity on AdS in a
gauge in which the fundamental variables satisfy free field Poisson brackets.
This gauge choice leaves a small portion of the gauge freedom unfixed, which
should be further quotiented out. We show that doing so leads to a bulk version
of the Coulomb gas formalism for CFT's: the generators of the residual
gauge symmetries are the classical limits of screening charges, while the
gauge-invariant observables are classical charges. Quantization in these
variables can be carried out using standard techniques and makes manifest a
remnant of the triality symmetry of . This symmetry can be
used to argue that the theory should be supplemented with additional matter
content which is precisely that of the Prokushkin-Vasiliev theory. As a further
application, we use our formulation to quantize a class of conical surplus
solutions and confirm the conjecture that these are dual to specific degenerate
primaries, to all orders in the large central charge expansion.Comment: 31 pages + appendices. V2: typos corrected, reference adde
Vanishing Cosmological Constant in Modified Gauss-Bonnet Gravity with Conformal Anomaly
We consider dark energy cosmology in a de Sitter universe filled with quantum
conformal matter. Our model represents a Gauss-Bonnet model of gravity with
contributions from quantum effects. To the General Relativity action an
arbitrary function of the GB invariant, f(G), is added, and taking into account
quantum effects from matter the cosmological constant is studied. For the
considered model the conditions for a vanishing cosmological constant are
considered. Creation of a de Sitter universe by quantum effects in a GB
modified gravity is discussed.Comment: 8 pages latex, 1 figure. To appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.
Dilaton transformation under abelian and non-abelian T-duality in the path integral approach
We present a convenient method for deriving the transformation of the dilaton
under T-duality in the path-integral approach. Subtleties arising in performing
the integral over the gauge fields are carefully analysed using Pauli-Villars
regularization, thereby clarifying existing ambiguities in the literature. The
formalism can not only be applied to the abelian case, but, and this for the
first time, to the non-abelian case as well. Furthermore, by choosing a
particular gauge, we directly obtain the target-space covariant expression for
the dual geometry in the abelian case. Finally it is shown that the conditions
for gauging non-abelian isometries are weaker than those generally found in the
literature.Comment: latex, 20 pages, no figure
Superconformal Quantum Mechanics of Small Black Holes
Recently, Gaiotto, Strominger and Yin have proposed a holographic dual
description for the near-horizon physics of certain N=2 black holes in terms of
the superconformal quantum mechanics on D0-branes in the attractor geometry. We
provide further evidence for their proposal by applying it to the case of
`small' black holes which have vanishing horizon area in the leading
supergravity approximation. We consider 2-charge black holes in type IIA on
, where can be either or , made up out of
D0-branes and D4-branes wrapping . We construct the corresponding
superconformal quantum mechanics and show that the asymptotic growth of chiral
primaries exactly matches with the known entropy of these black holes. The
state-counting problem reduces to counting lowest Landau levels on and
Dolbeault cohomology classes on .Comment: Latex, 16 pages; v2: minor corrections, references added, published
versio
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