The 21st century propulsion

The prediction of future space travel in the next millennium starts by examining the past and extrapolating into the far future. Goals for the 21st century include expanded space travel and establishment of permanent manned outposts, and representation of Lunar and Mars outposts as the most immediate future in space. Nuclear stage design/program considerations; launch considerations for manned Mars missions; and far future propulsion schemes are outlined

Tricritical behavior of the massive chiral Gross-Neveu model

The phase diagram of the massive chiral Gross-Neveu model (the 1+1-dimensional Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at large N) is investigated in the vicinity of the tricritical point. Using the derivative expansion, the grand canonical potential is cast into the form of a Ginzburg-Landau effective action. Minimization of this action by variational and numerical methods reveals both 1st and 2nd order phase transitions to a chiral crystal phase, separated by a tricritical line. These findings are contrasted to the massive Gross-Neveu model with discrete chiral symmetry where only 2nd order transitions have been observed.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures; v2: More details about perturbation theory given, cf Eqs. (46-48

Dark spinor models in gravitation and cosmology

We introduce and carefully define an entire class of field theories based on non-standard spinors. Their dominant interaction is via the gravitational field which makes them naturally dark; we refer to them as Dark Spinors. We provide a critical analysis of previous proposals for dark spinors noting that they violate Lorentz invariance. As a working assumption we restrict our analysis to non-standard spinors which preserve Lorentz invariance, whilst being non-local and explicitly construct such a theory. We construct the complete energy-momentum tensor and derive its components explicitly by assuming a specific projection operator. It is natural to next consider dark spinors in a cosmological setting. We find various interesting solutions where the spinor field leads to slow roll and fast roll de Sitter solutions. We also analyse models where the spinor is coupled conformally to gravity, and consider the perturbations and stability of the spinor.Comment: 43 pages. Several new sections and details added. JHEP in prin

Statefinder diagnostic in a torsion cosmology

We apply the statefinder diagnostic to the torsion cosmology, in which an accounting for the accelerated universe is considered in term of a Riemann-Cartan geometry: dynamic scalar torsion. We find that there are some typical characteristic of the evolution of statefinder parameters for the torsion cosmology that can be distinguished from the other cosmological models. Furthermore, we also show that statefinder diagnostic has a direct bearing on the critical points. The statefinder diagnostic divides the torsion parameter $a_1$ into differential ranges, which is in keeping with the requirement of dynamical analysis. In addition, we fit the scalar torsion model to ESSENCE supernovae data and give the best fit values of the model parameters.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures, accepted paper in JCA

Phase structure of the massive chiral Gross-Neveu model from Hartree-Fock

The phase diagram of the massive chiral Gross-Neveu model (the massive Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in 1+1 dimensions) is constructed. In the large N limit, the Hartree-Fock approach can be used. We find numerically a chiral crystal phase separated from a massive Fermi gas phase by a 1st order transition. Using perturbation theory, we also construct the critical sheet where the homogeneous phase becomes unstable in a 2nd order transition. A tricritical curve is located. The phase diagram is mapped out as a function of fermion mass, chemical potential and temperature and compared with the one of the discrete chiral Gross-Neveu model. As a by-product, we illustrate the crystal structure of matter at zero temperature for various densities and fermion masses.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure

Conformal Invariance in Einstein-Cartan-Weyl space

We consider conformally invariant form of the actions in Einstein, Weyl, Einstein-Cartan and Einstein-Cartan-Weyl space in general dimensions($>2$) and investigate the relations among them. In Weyl space, the observational consistency condition for the vector field determining non-metricity of the connection can be obtained from the equation of motion. In Einstein-Cartan space a similar role is played by the vector part of the torsion tensor. We consider the case where the trace part of the torsion is the Kalb-Ramond type of field. In this case, we express conformally invariant action in terms of two scalar fields of conformal weight -1, which can be cast into some interesting form. We discuss some applications of the result.Comment: 10 pages, version to appear MPL

Upstream-binding factor is sequestered into herpes simplex virus type 1 replication compartments

Previous reports have shown that adenovirus recruits nucleolar protein upstream-binding factor (UBF) into adenovirus DNA replication centres. Here, we report that despite having a different mode of viral DNA replication, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) also recruits UBF into viral DNA replication centres. Moreover, as with adenovirus, enhanced green fluorescent protein-tagged fusion proteins of UBF inhibit viral DNA replication. We propose that UBF is recruited to the replication compartments to aid replication of HSV-1 DNA. In addition, this is a further example of the role of nucleolar components in viral life cycle

The Bogoliubov/de Gennes system, the AKNS hierarchy, and nonlinear quantum mechanical supersymmetry

We show that the Ginzburg-Landau expansion of the grand potential for the Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonian is determined by the integrable nonlinear equations of the AKNS hierarchy, and that this provides the natural mathematical framework for a hidden nonlinear quantum mechanical supersymmetry underlying the dynamics.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures; published versio