19,285 research outputs found
Directed flow in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
We study the generation of directed flow in the hydrodynamic expansion of the
hot matter formed in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at 200GeV. The
experimentally observed negative directed flow in a wide range of central
pseudorapidities isreproduced assuming that the fireball is tilted away from
the collision axis. The tilt of the source is consistent with a preferential
emission in the forward/backward hemisphere from forward/backward participating
nucleons. The model reproduces the experimentally observed scaling of the
directed flow when going from Au-Au to Cu-Cu systems.Comment: figure adde
Revisiting the statistical isotropy of GRB sky distribution
The assumption of homogeneity and isotropy on large scales is one of the main
hypotheses of the standard cosmology. In this paper, we test the hypothesis of
isotropy from the two-point angular correlation function of 2626 gamma-ray
bursts (GRB) of the FERMI GRB catalogue. We show that the uncertainties in the
GRB positions induce spurious anisotropic signals in their sky distribution.
However, when such uncertainties are taken into account no significant evidence
against the large-scale statistical isotropy is found. This result remains
valid even for the sky distribution of short-lived GRB, contrarily to previous
reports.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, match accepted versio
Torsion and Gravitation: A new view
According to the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity, curvature and
torsion are two equivalent ways of describing the same gravitational field.
Despite equivalent, however, they act differently: whereas curvature yields a
geometric description, in which the concept of gravitational force is absent,
torsion acts as a true gravitational force, quite similar to the Lorentz force
of electrodynamics. As a consequence, the right-hand side of a
spinless-particle equation of motion (which would represent a gravitational
force) is always zero in the geometric description, but not in the teleparallel
case. This means essentially that the gravitational coupling prescription can
be minimal only in the geometric case. Relying on this property, a new
gravitational coupling prescription in the presence of curvature and torsion is
proposed. It is constructed in such a way to preserve the equivalence between
curvature and torsion, and its basic property is to be equivalent with the
usual coupling prescription of general relativity. According to this view, no
new physics is connected with torsion, which appears as a mere alternative to
curvature in the description of gravitation. An application of this formulation
to the equations of motion of both a spinless and a spinning particle is madeComment: To appear on IJMP
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