Structure formation by cosmic strings with a cosmological constant

Final published version.Comment: 4 Page

Thermo-mechanic-electrical coupling in phospholipid monolayers near the critical point

Lipid monolayers have been shown to represent a powerful tool in studying mechanical and thermodynamic properties of lipid membranes as well as their interaction with proteins. Using Einstein's theory of fluctuations we here demonstrate, that an experimentally derived linear relationship both between transition entropy S and area A as well as between transition entropy and charge q implies a linear relationships between compressibility \kappa_T, heat capacity c_\pi, thermal expansion coefficient \alpha_T and electric capacity CT. We demonstrate that these couplings have strong predictive power as they allow calculating electrical and thermal properties from mechanical measurements. The precision of the prediction increases as the critical point TC is approached

Varying c cosmology and Planck value constraints

It has been suggested that by increasing the speed of light during the early universe various cosmological problems of standard big bang cosmology can be overcome, without requiring an inflationary phase. However, we find that as the Planck length and Planck time are then made correspondingly smaller, and together with the need that the universe should not re-enter a Planck epoch, the higher $c$ models have very limited ability to resolve such problems. For a constantly decreasing $c$ the universe will quickly becomes quantum gravitationally dominated as time increases: the opposite to standard cosmology where quantum behaviour is only ascribed to early times.Comment: extended versio

QCD-based description of one-particle inclusive B decays

We discuss one-particle inclusive B decays in the limit of heavy b and c quarks. Using the large-N_C limit we factorize the non-leptonic matrix elements, and we employ a short distance expansion. Modeling the remaining nonperturbative matrix elements we obtain predictions for various decay channels and compare them with existing data.Comment: LaTeX, 22 pages, 6 figures (eps); analytical and numerical results unchanged, misrepresentation of experimental data in Fig. 5 corrected, final published versio

Ab initio Green's function formalism for band structures

Using the Green's function formalism, an ab initio theory for band structures of crystals is derived starting from the Hartree-Fock approximation. It is based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction scheme for the self-energy which is formulated for crystal orbitals (CO-ADC). In this approach, the poles of the Green's function are determined by solving a suitable Hermitian eigenvalue problem. The method is not only applicable to the outer valence and conduction bands, it is also stable for inner valence bands where strong electron correlations are effective. The key to the proposed scheme is to evaluate the self-energy in terms of Wannier orbitals before transforming it to a crystal momentum representation. Exploiting the fact that electron correlations are mainly local, one can truncate the lattice summations by an appropriate configuration selection scheme. This yields a flat configuration space; i.e., its size scales only linearly with the number of atoms per unit cell for large systems and, under certain conditions, the computational effort to determine band structures also scales linearly. As a first application of the new formalism, a lithium fluoride crystal has been chosen. A minimal basis set description is studied, and a satisfactory agreement with previous theoretical and experimental results for the fundamental band gap and the width of the F 2p valence band complex is obtained.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, RevTeX4, new section on lithium fluorid

EPIC 219217635: A Doubly Eclipsing Quadruple System Containing an Evolved Binary

We have discovered a doubly eclipsing, bound, quadruple star system in the field of K2 Campaign 7. EPIC 219217635 is a stellar image with $Kp = 12.7$ that contains an eclipsing binary (`EB') with $P_A = 3.59470$ d and a second EB with $P_B = 0.61825$ d. We have obtained followup radial-velocity (`RV') spectroscopy observations, adaptive optics imaging, as well as ground-based photometric observations. From our analysis of all the observations, we derive good estimates for a number of the system parameters. We conclude that (1) both binaries are bound in a quadruple star system; (2) a linear trend to the RV curve of binary A is found over a 2-year interval, corresponding to an acceleration, $\dot \gamma = 0.0024 \pm 0.0007$ cm s$^{-2}$; (3) small irregular variations are seen in the eclipse-timing variations (`ETVs') detected over the same interval; (4) the orbital separation of the quadruple system is probably in the range of 8-25 AU; and (5) the orbital planes of the two binaries must be inclined with respect to each other by at least 25$^\circ$. In addition, we find that binary B is evolved, and the cooler and currently less massive star has transferred much of its envelope to the currently more massive star. We have also demonstrated that the system is sufficiently bright that the eclipses can be followed using small ground-based telescopes, and that this system may be profitably studied over the next decade when the outer orbit of the quadruple is expected to manifest itself in the ETV and/or RV curves.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Doppler peaks from active perturbations

We examine how the qualitative structure of the Doppler peaks in the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave anisotropy depends on the fundamental nature of the perturbations which produced them. The formalism of Hu and Sugiyama is extended to treat models with cosmic defects. We discuss how perturbations can be ``active'' or ``passive'' and ``incoherent'' or ``coherent'', and show how causality and scale invariance play rather different roles in these various cases. We find that the existence of secondary Doppler peaks and the rough placing of the primary peak unambiguously reflect these basic properties.Comment: uufile, 8pages, 3 figures. Now available at http://euclid.tp.ph/Papers/index.html; Changes: URL added, Eqn. (8) expanded, grant numbers include

Opportunities for future supernova studies of cosmic acceleration

We investigate the potential of a future supernova dataset, as might be obtained by the proposed SNAP satellite, to discriminate among different ``dark energy'' theories that describe an accelerating Universe. We find that many such models can be distinguished with a fit to the effective pressure-to-density ratio, $w$, of this energy. More models can be distinguished when the effective slope, $dw/dz$, of a changing $w$ is also fit, but only if our knowledge of the current mass density, $\Omega_m$, is improved. We investigate the use of ``fitting functions'' to interpret luminosity distance data from supernova searches, and argue in favor of a particular preferred method, which we use in our analysis.Comment: Four pages including figures. Final published version. No significant changes from v