Galilean currents and charges

We derive the Noether currents and charges associated with an internal galilean invariance---a symmetry recently postulated in the context of so-called galileon theories. Along the way we clarify the physical interpretation of the Noether charges associated with ordinary Galileo- and Lorentz-boosts.Comment: 5 page

Galilean Genesis: an alternative to inflation

We propose a novel cosmological scenario, in which standard inflation is replaced by an expanding phase with a drastic violation of the Null Energy Condition (NEC): \dot H >> H^2. The model is based on the recently introduced Galileon theories, that allow NEC violating solutions without instabilities. The unperturbed solution describes a Universe that is asymptotically Minkowski in the past, expands with increasing energy density until it exits the regime of validity of the effective field theory and reheats. This solution is a dynamical attractor and the Universe is driven to it, even if it is initially contracting. The study of perturbations of the Galileon field reveals some subtleties, related to the gross violation of the NEC and it shows that adiabatic perturbations are cosmologically irrelevant. The model, however, suggests a new way to produce a scale invariant spectrum of isocurvature perturbations, which can later be converted to adiabatic: the Galileon is forced by symmetry to couple to the other fields as a dilaton; the effective metric it yields on the NEC violating solution is that of de Sitter space, so that all light scalars will automatically acquire a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of perturbations.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure. v2: minor changes, JCAP published versio

UV completion without symmetry restoration

We show that it is not possible to UV-complete certain low-energy effective theories with spontaneously broken space-time symmetries by embedding them into linear sigma models, that is, by adding "radial" modes and restoring the broken symmetries. When such a UV completion is not possible, one can still raise the cutoff up to arbitrarily higher energies by adding fields that transform non-linearly under the broken symmetries, that is, new Goldstone bosons. However, this (partial) UV completion does not necessarily restore any of the broken symmetries. We illustrate this point by considering a concrete example in which a combination of space-time and internal symmetries is broken down to a diagonal subgroup. Along the way, we clarify a recently proposed interpretation of inverse Higgs constraints as gauge-fixing conditions.Comment: 6 page

Effective string theory for vortex lines in fluids and superfluids

We discuss the effective string theory of vortex lines in ordinary fluids and low-temperature superfluids, by describing the bulk fluid flow in terms of a two-form field to which vortex lines can couple. We derive the most general low-energy effective Lagrangian that is compatible with (spontaneously broken) Poincare invariance and worldsheet reparameterization invariance. This generalizes the effective action developed by Lund and Regge and by Endlich and Nicolis. By applying standard field-theoretical techniques, we show that certain low-energy coupling constants -- most notably the string tension -- exhibit RG running already at the classical level. We discuss applications of our techniques to the study of Kelvin waves, vortex rings, and the coupling to bulk sound modes.Comment: 62 pages, 6 figure