Peak and end point of the relic graviton background in string cosmology

Using general arguments we determine the allowed region for the end point frequency and the peak energy density of the stochastic background of gravity waves expected in string cosmology. We provide an accurate estimate of the minimal experimental sensitivity required to detect a signal in the Hz to GHz range.Comment: 11 pages, LATEX, one figure included using eps. A complete collection of papers and references on the pre-big-bang scenario in string cosmology is available at http://www.to.infn.it/teorici/gasperini

A Causal Entropy Bound

The identification of a causal-connection scale motivates us to propose a new covariant bound on entropy within a generic space-like region. This "causal entropy bound", scaling as the square root of EV, and thus lying around the geometric mean of Bekenstein's S/ER and holographic S/A bounds, is checked in various "critical" situations. In the case of limited gravity, Bekenstein's bound is the strongest while naive holography is the weakest. In the case of strong gravity, our bound and Bousso's holographic bound are stronger than Bekenstein's, while naive holography is too tight, and hence typically wrong.Comment: 12 pages, no figures, a reference added and minor typos correcte

Planck Fluctuations, Measurement Uncertainties and the Holographic Principle

Starting from a critical analysis of recently reported surprisingly large uncertainties in length and position measurements deduced within the framework of quantum gravity, we embark on an investigation both of the correlation structure of Planck scale fluctuations and the role the holographic hypothesis is possibly playing in this context. While we prove the logical independence of the fluctuation results and the holographic hypothesis (in contrast to some recent statements in that direction) we show that by combining these two topics one can draw quite strong and interesting conclusions about the fluctuation structure and the microscopic dynamics on the Planck scale. We further argue that these findings point to a possibly new and generalized form of quantum statistical mechanics of strongly (anti)correlated systems of degrees of freedom in this fundamental regime.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, no figures, some new references, to appear ModPhysLett

On certain cosmological relics of the early string dynamics

The tracing of cosmological relics from the early string dynamics may enhance the theory and provide new perspectives on the major cosmological problems. This point is illustrated in a leading-order Bianchi-type $VII_0$ string background, wherein spatial isotropy can be claimed as such a relic. A much finer one, descending from a premordial gravitational wave, could be retrieved from its imprint on the small-scale structure of the cosmic microwave background. In spite of the absence of conventional inflation, there is no horizon problem thanks to the presence of an equally fundamental mixmaster dynamics. Implications and certain new perspectives which thus arise for the more general problem of cosmological mixing are briefly discussed.Comment: Latex file, 11 pages, 0 figures. Re-titled revision of "Mixing towards isotropization..." to appear in Class. Quantum Gravit

Cold and Hot Dark Matter from a Single Nonthermal Relic

The origin of dark matter in the universe may be scalar particles produced by amplification of quantum fluctuations during a period of dilaton-driven inflation. We show, for the first time, that a single species of particles, depending on its mass and interactions, can be a source of both cold and hot dark matter simultaneously. Detection of such weakly interacting particles with masses below a fraction of an eV presents a new challenge for dark matter searches.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Black hole as an Information Eraser

We discuss the identity of black hole entropy and show that the first law of black hole thermodynamics, in the case of a Schwarzschild black hole, can be derived from Landauer's principle by assuming that the black hole is one of the most efficient information erasers in systems of a given temperature. The term "most efficient" implies that minimal energy is required to erase a given amount of information. We calculate the discrete mass spectra and the entropy of a Schwarzschild black hole assuming that the black hole processes information in unit of bits. The black hole entropy acquires a sub-leading contribution proportional to the logarithm of its mass-squared in addition to the usual mass-squared term without an artificial cutoff. We also argue that the minimum of the black hole mass is $\sqrt{\log 2/(8\pi)}M_P$.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, minor change

Geometric entropy, area, and strong subadditivity

The trace over the degrees of freedom located in a subset of the space transforms the vacuum state into a density matrix with non zero entropy. This geometric entropy is believed to be deeply related to the entropy of black holes. Indeed, previous calculations in the context of quantum field theory, where the result is actually ultraviolet divergent, have shown that the geometric entropy is proportional to the area for a very special type of subsets. In this work we show that the area law follows in general from simple considerations based on quantum mechanics and relativity. An essential ingredient of our approach is the strong subadditive property of the quantum mechanical entropy.Comment: Published versio

Entanglement Interpretation of Black Hole Entropy in String Theory

We show that the entropy resulting from the counting of microstates of non extremal black holes using field theory duals of string theories can be interpreted as arising from entanglement. The conditions for making such an interpretation consistent are discussed. First, we interpret the entropy (and thermodynamics) of spacetimes with non degenerate, bifurcating Killing horizons as arising from entanglement. We use a path integral method to define the Hartle-Hawking vacuum state in such spacetimes and discuss explicitly its entangled nature and its relation to the geometry. If string theory on such spacetimes has a field theory dual, then, in the low-energy, weak coupling limit, the field theory state that is dual to the Hartle-Hawking state is a thermofield double state. This allows the comparison of the entanglement entropy with the entropy of the field theory dual, and thus, with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the black hole. As an example, we discuss in detail the case of the five dimensional anti-de Sitter, black hole spacetime

Tensor perturbations in high-curvature string backgrounds

We derive a generalized equation for the evolution of tensor perturbations in a cosmological background, taking into account higher-curvature contributions and a tree-level coupling to the dilaton in the string frame. The equation is obtained by perturbing the gravi-dilaton string effective action, expanded up to first order in $\alpha'$. The $\alpha'$ corrections can modify the low-energy perturbation spectrum, but the modifications are shown to be small when the background curvature keeps constant in the string frame.Comment: 9 pages, REVTEX, three figures included using EPSFIG. An updated collection of papers on the pre-big bang scenario in string cosmology is a available at http://www.to.infn.it/teorici/gasperin

Constraints on pre-big bang models for seeding large-scale anisotropy by massive Kalb-Ramond axions

We discuss the conditions under which pre-big bang models can fit the observed large-scale anisotropy with a primordial spectrum of massive (Kalb--Ramond) axion fluctuations. The primordial spectrum must be sufficiently flat at low frequency and sufficiently steeper at high frequency. For a steep and/or long enough high-frequency branch of the spectrum the bounds imposed by COBE's normalization allow axion masses of the typical order for a Peccei--Quinn--Weinberg--Wilczek axion. We provide a particular example in which an appropriate axion spectrum is obtained from a class of backgrounds satisfying the low-energy string cosmology equations.Comment: 11 pages, revtex, two figures included using epsfig. An updated collection of papers on the pre-big bang scenario is available at http://www.to.infn.it/~gasperi