606 research outputs found
UREA/ammonium ion removal system for the orbiting frog otolith experiment
The feasibility of using free urease enzyme and ANGC-101 ion exchange resin to remove urea and ammonium ion for space system waste water applications was studied. Specifically examined is the prevention of urea and ammonia toxicity in a 30-day Orbiting Frog Otolith (OFO) flight experiment. It is shown that free urease enzyme used in conjunction with ANGC-101 ion-exchange resin and pH control can control urea and amonium ion concentration in unbuffered recirculating water. In addition, the resin does not adversely effect the bullfrogs by lowering the concentration of cations below critical minimum levels. Further investigations on bioburden control, frog waste excretion on an OFO diet, a trade-off analysis of methods of automating the urea/ammonium ion removal system and fabrication and test of a semiautomated breadboard were recommended as continuing efforts. Photographs of test equipment and test animals are shown
Lorentz violating kinematics: Threshold theorems
Recent tentative experimental indications, and the subsequent theoretical
speculations, regarding possible violations of Lorentz invariance have
attracted a vast amount of attention. An important technical issue that
considerably complicates detailed calculations in any such scenario, is that
once one violates Lorentz invariance the analysis of thresholds in both
scattering and decay processes becomes extremely subtle, with many new and
naively unexpected effects. In the current article we develop several extremely
general threshold theorems that depend only on the existence of some energy
momentum relation E(p), eschewing even assumptions of isotropy or monotonicity.
We shall argue that there are physically interesting situations where such a
level of generality is called for, and that existing (partial) results in the
literature make unnecessary technical assumptions. Even in this most general of
settings, we show that at threshold all final state particles move with the
same 3-velocity, while initial state particles must have 3-velocities
parallel/anti-parallel to the final state particles. In contrast the various
3-momenta can behave in a complicated and counter-intuitive manner.Comment: V1: 32 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables. V2: 5 references adde
On field theory quantization around instantons
With the perspective of looking for experimentally detectable physical
applications of the so-called topological embedding, a procedure recently
proposed by the author for quantizing a field theory around a non-discrete
space of classical minima (instantons, for example), the physical implications
are discussed in a ``theoretical'' framework, the ideas are collected in a
simple logical scheme and the topological version of the Ginzburg-Landau theory
of superconductivity is solved in the intermediate situation between type I and
type II superconductors.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, LaTe
Renormalizable acausal theories of classical gravity coupled with interacting quantum fields
We prove the renormalizability of various theories of classical gravity
coupled with interacting quantum fields. The models contain vertices with
dimensionality greater than four, a finite number of matter operators and a
finite or reduced number of independent couplings. An interesting class of
models is obtained from ordinary power-counting renormalizable theories,
letting the couplings depend on the scalar curvature R of spacetime. The
divergences are removed without introducing higher-derivative kinetic terms in
the gravitational sector. The metric tensor has a non-trivial running, even if
it is not quantized. The results are proved applying a certain map that
converts classical instabilities, due to higher derivatives, into classical
violations of causality, whose effects become observable at sufficiently high
energies. We study acausal Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with an R-dependent gauge
coupling in detail. We derive all-order formulas for the beta functions of the
dimensionality-six gravitational vertices induced by renormalization. Such beta
functions are related to the trace-anomaly coefficients of the matter
subsector.Comment: 36 pages; v2: CQG proof-corrected versio
Weighted power counting, neutrino masses and Lorentz violating extensions of the Standard Model
We study the Standard-Model extensions that have the following features: they
violate Lorentz invariance explicitly at high energies; they are unitary,
local, polynomial and renormalizable by weighted power counting; they contain
the vertex (LH)^2, which gives Majorana masses to the neutrinos after symmetry
breaking, and possibly four fermion interactions; they do not contain
right-handed neutrinos, nor other extra fields. We study the simplest CPT
invariant Standard-Model extension of this type in detail and prove the
cancellation of gauge anomalies. We investigate the low-energy recovery of
Lorentz invariance and comment on other types of extensions.Comment: 26 pages; v2: more references and comments, PR
A Note on Anomalies in the AdS/CFT Correspondence
We test the AdS/CFT correspondence in the case of a d=4 N=2 SCFT by comparing
chiral anomalies which are of order N in the 't Hooft large N limit. These
include corrections of order 1/N to the conformal anomaly, thus testing the
correspondence beyond the extreme large N limit. The field theory anomalies are
reproduced by terms in the 7-brane effective action in the bulk.Comment: 13 pages, harvma
On the AdS Higher Spin / O(N) Vector Model Correspondence: degeneracy of the holographic image
We explore the conjectured duality between the critical O(N) vector model and
minimal bosonic massless higher spin (HS) theory in AdS. In the boundary free
theory, the conformal partial wave expansion (CPWE) of the four-point function
of the scalar singlet bilinear is reorganized to make it explicitly
crossing-symmetric and closed in the singlet sector, dual to the bulk HS gauge
fields. We are able to analytically establish the factorized form of the fusion
coefficients as well as the two-point function coefficient of the HS currents.
We insist in directly computing the free correlators from bulk graphs with the
unconventional branch. The three-point function of the scalar bilinear turns
out to be an "extremal" one at d=3. The four-leg bulk exchange graph can be
precisely related to the CPWs of the boundary dual scalar and its shadow. The
flow in the IR by Legendre transforming at leading 1/N, following the pattern
of double-trace deformations, and the assumption of degeneracy of the hologram
lead to the CPWE of the scalar four-point function at IR. Here we confirm some
previous results, obtained from more involved computations of skeleton graphs,
as well as extend some of them from d=3 to generic dimension 2<d<4.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure
The Trilinear Hamiltonian: A Zero Dimensional Model of Hawking Radiation from a Quantized Source
We investigate a quantum parametric amplifier with dynamical pump mode,
viewed as a zero-dimensional model of Hawking radiation from an evaporating
black hole. The conditions are derived under which the spectrum of particles
generated from vacuum fluctuations deviates from the thermal spectrum predicted
for the conventional parametric amplifier. We find that significant deviations
arise when the pump mode (black hole) has emitted nearly half of its initial
energy into the signal (Hawking radiation) and idler (in-falling particle)
modes. As a model of black hole dynamics, this finding lends support to the
view that late-time Hawking radiation contains information about the quantum
state of the black hole and is entangled with the black hole's quantum
gravitational degrees of freedom.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to New Journal of Physics focus issue:
"Classical and Quantum Analogues for Gravitational Phenomena and Related
Effects
Topological field theory and physics
Topological Yang-Mills theory with the Belavin-Polyakov-Schwarz-Tyupkin
instanton is solved completely, revealing an underlying multi-link
intersection theory. Link invariants are also shown to survive the coupling to
a certain kind of matter (hyperinstantons). The physical relevance of
topological field theory and its invariants is discovered. By embedding
topological Yang-Mills theory into pure Yang-Mills theory, it is shown that the
topological version TQFT of a quantum field theory QFT allows us to formulate
consistently the perturbative expansion of QFT in the topologically nontrivial
sectors. In particular, TQFT classifies the set of good measures over the
instanton moduli space and solves the inconsistency problems of the previous
approaches. The qualitatively new physical implications are pointed out. Link
numbers in QCD are related to a non abelian analogoue of the Aharonov-Bohm
effect.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure. Revision: additional explanation
On renormalization group flows and the a-theorem in 6d
We study the extension of the approach to the a-theorem of Komargodski and
Schwimmer to quantum field theories in d=6 spacetime dimensions. The dilaton
effective action is obtained up to 6th order in derivatives. The anomaly flow
a_UV - a_IR is the coefficient of the 6-derivative Euler anomaly term in this
action. It then appears at order p^6 in the low energy limit of n-point
scattering amplitudes of the dilaton for n > 3. The detailed structure with the
correct anomaly coefficient is confirmed by direct calculation in two examples:
(i) the case of explicitly broken conformal symmetry is illustrated by the free
massive scalar field, and (ii) the case of spontaneously broken conformal
symmetry is demonstrated by the (2,0) theory on the Coulomb branch. In the
latter example, the dilaton is a dynamical field so 4-derivative terms in the
action also affect n-point amplitudes at order p^6. The calculation in the
(2,0) theory is done by analyzing an M5-brane probe in AdS_7 x S^4.
Given the confirmation in two distinct models, we attempt to use dispersion
relations to prove that the anomaly flow is positive in general. Unfortunately
the 4-point matrix element of the Euler anomaly is proportional to stu and
vanishes for forward scattering. Thus the optical theorem cannot be applied to
show positivity. Instead the anomaly flow is given by a dispersion sum rule in
which the integrand does not have definite sign. It may be possible to base a
proof of the a-theorem on the analyticity and unitarity properties of the
6-point function, but our preliminary study reveals some difficulties.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figure
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