7,088 research outputs found
Implications of a Quantum Mechanical Treatment of the Universe
We attempt to treat the very early Universe according to quantum mechanics.
Identifying the scale factor of the Universe with the width of the wave packet
associated with it, we show that there cannot be an initial singularity and
that the Universe expands. Invoking the correspondence principle, we obtain the
scale factor of the Universe and demonstrate that the causality problem of the
standard model is solved.Comment: LaTex, 5 pages, 1 figure, to be published in Mod. Phys. Lett.
Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete
Many inflating spacetimes are likely to violate the weak energy condition, a
key assumption of singularity theorems. Here we offer a simple kinematical
argument, requiring no energy condition, that a cosmological model which is
inflating -- or just expanding sufficiently fast -- must be incomplete in null
and timelike past directions. Specifically, we obtain a bound on the integral
of the Hubble parameter over a past-directed timelike or null geodesic. Thus
inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past
boundary of the inflating region of spacetime.Comment: We improve the basic argument to apply to a wider class of
spacetimes, use a better title and add a discussion of cyclic models. 4
pages, 1 figure, RevTe
Anatomical variation of the extracranial course of the optic nerve in the floor of the sphenoid sinus: first reported case
Abstract Objective: We report a unique case of anatomical variation of the extracranial course of the optic nerve running in the floor of the sphenoid sinus. Method: Clinical and radiological findings are presented. Results: A 39-year-old woman with Turner syndrome presented with severe headache associated with visual disturbances. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a mass presumed to be a sella meningioma. Computed tomography of the paranasal sinuses was undertaken to help plan surgical removal via an endoscopic trans-sphenoidal approach; this scan revealed an atypical extracranial course of the optic nerve, running in the floor of the sphenoid sinu
CMB Lensing Reconstruction in Real Space
We explore the reconstruction of the gravitational lensing field of the
cosmic microwave background in real space showing that very little statistical
information is lost when estimators of short range on the celestial sphere are
used in place of the customary estimators in harmonic space, which are nonlocal
and in principle require a simultaneous analysis of the entire sky without any
cuts or excisions. Because virtually all the information relevant to lensing
reconstruction lies on angular scales close to the resolution scale of the sky
map, the gravitational lensing dilatation and shear fields (which unlike the
deflection field or lensing potential are directly related to the observations
in a local manner) may be reconstructed by means of quadratic combinations
involving only very closely separated pixels. Even though harmonic space
provides a more natural context for understanding lensing reconstruction
theoretically, the real space methods developed here have the virtue of being
faster to implement and are likely to prove useful for analyzing realistic maps
containing a galactic cut and possibly numerous small excisions to exclude
point sources that cannot be reliably subtracted.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure
SO(10) Cosmic Strings and SU(3) Color Cheshire Charge
Certain cosmic strings that occur in GUT models such as can carry a
magnetic flux which acts nontrivially on objects carrying
quantum numbers. We show that such strings are non-Abelian Alice strings
carrying nonlocalizable colored ``Cheshire" charge. We examine claims made in
the literature that strings can have a long-range, topological
Aharonov-Bohm interaction that turns quarks into leptons, and observe that such
a process is impossible. We also discuss flux-flux scattering using a
multi-sheeted formalism.Comment: 37 Pages, 8 Figures (available upon request) phyzzx, iassns-hep-93-6,
itp-sb-93-6
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