Cosmology in a brane-universe

This contribution presents the cosmological models with extra dimensions that have been recently elaborated, which assume that ordinary matter is confined on a surface, called brane, embedded in a higher dimensional spacetime.Comment: 12 pages; Invited review talk at the JENAM 2002 workshop on "The cosmology of extra dimensions and varying fundamental constants", Porto, Portugal, September 200

New Experimental Limits on Macroscopic Forces Below 100 Microns

Results of an experimental search for new macroscopic forces with Yukawa range between 5 and 500 microns are presented. The experiment uses 1 kHz mechanical oscillators as test masses with a stiff conducting shield between them to suppress backgrounds. No signal is observed above the instrumental thermal noise after 22 hours of integration time. These results provide the strongest limits to date between 10 and 100 microns, improve on previous limits by as much as three orders of magnitude, and rule out half of the remaining parameter space for predictions of string-inspired models with low-energy supersymmetry breaking. New forces of four times gravitational strength or greater are excluded at the 95% confidence level for interaction ranges between 200 and 500 microns.Comment: 25 Pages, 7 Figures: Minor Correction

Higgs Starobinsky inflation

In this paper we point out that Starobinky inflation could be induced by quantum effects due to a large non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to the Ricci scalar. The Higgs Starobinsky mechanism provides a solution to issues attached to large Higgs field values in the early universe which in a metastable universe would not be a viable option. We verify explicitly that these large quantum corrections do not destabilize Starobinsky's potential

Constraints on Non-Newtonian Gravity from Recent Casimir Force Measurements

Corrections to Newton's gravitational law inspired by extra dimensional physics and by the exchange of light and massless elementary particles between the atoms of two macrobodies are considered. These corrections can be described by the potentials of Yukawa-type and by the power-type potentials with different powers. The strongest up to date constraints on the corrections to Newton's gravitational law are reviewed following from the E\"{o}tvos- and Cavendish-type experiments and from the measurements of the Casimir and van der Waals force. We show that the recent measurements of the Casimir force gave the possibility to strengthen the previously known constraints on the constants of hypothetical interactions up to several thousand times in a wide interaction range. Further strengthening is expected in near future that makes Casimir force measurements a prospective test for the predictions of fundamental physical theories.Comment: 20 pages, crckbked.cls is used, to be published in: Proceedings of the 18th Course of the School on Cosmology and Gravitation: The Gravitational Constant. Generalized Gravitational Theories and Experiments (30 April- 10 May 2003, Erice). Ed. by G. T. Gillies, V. N. Melnikov and V. de Sabbata, 20pp. (Kluwer, in print, 2003

Spectral quantification of nonlinear behaviour of the nearshore seabed and correlations with potential forcings at Duck, N.C., U.S.A

Local bathymetric quasi-periodic patterns of oscillation are identified from monthly profile surveys taken at two shore-perpendicular transects at the USACE field research facility in Duck, North Carolina, USA, spanning 24.5 years and covering the swash and surf zones. The chosen transects are the two furthest (north and south) from the pier located at the study site. Research at Duck has traditionally focused on one or more of these transects as the effects of the pier are least at these locations. The patterns are identified using singular spectrum analysis (SSA). Possible correlations with potential forcing mechanisms are discussed by 1) doing an SSA with same parameter settings to independently identify the quasi-periodic cycles embedded within three potentially linked sequences: monthly wave heights (MWH), monthly mean water levels (MWL) and the large scale atmospheric index known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and 2) comparing the patterns within MWH, MWL and NAO to the local bathymetric patterns. The results agree well with previous patterns identified using wavelets and confirm the highly nonstationary behaviour of beach levels at Duck; the discussion of potential correlations with hydrodynamic and atmospheric phenomena is a new contribution. The study is then extended to all measured bathymetric profiles, covering an area of 1100m (alongshore) by 440m (cross-shore), to 1) analyse linear correlations between the bathymetry and the potential forcings using multivariate empirical orthogonal functions (MEOF) and linear correlation analysis and 2) identify which collective quasi-periodic bathymetric patterns are correlated with those within MWH, MWL or NAO, based on a (nonlinear) multichannel singular spectrum analysis (MSSA). (...continued in submitted paper)Comment: 50 pages, 3 tables, 8 figure

Meaning in Life as a Mediator of Ethnic Identity and Adjustment Among Adolescents from Latin, Asian, and European American Backgrounds

Establishing a sense of life meaning is a primary facet of well-being, yet is understudied in adolescent development. Using data from 579 adolescents (53% female) from Latin American, Asian, and European backgrounds, demographic differences in meaning in life, links with psychological and academic adjustment, and the role of meaning in explaining associations between ethnic identity and adjustment were examined. Although no generational or gender differences were found, Asian Americans reported higher search for meaning than Latin and European Americans. Presence of meaning was positively associated with self-esteem, academic adjustment, daily well-being, and ethnic belonging and exploration, whereas search for meaning was related to lower self-esteem and less stability in daily well-being. Presence of meaning mediated associations between ethnic identity and adjustment, explaining 28–52% of ethnic identity’s protective effect on development. Ethnic identity thus appears to affect adjustment, in part, through its role in fostering a positive sense of meaning in adolescents’ lives

Spin-2 spectrum of defect theories

We study spin-2 excitations in the background of the recently-discovered type-IIB solutions of D'Hoker et al. These are holographically-dual to defect conformal field theories, and they are also of interest in the context of the Karch-Randall proposal for a string-theory embedding of localized gravity. We first generalize an argument by Csaki et al to show that for any solution with four-dimensional anti-de Sitter, Poincare or de Sitter invariance the spin-2 excitations obey the massless scalar wave equation in ten dimensions. For the interface solutions at hand this reduces to a Laplace-Beltrami equation on a Riemann surface with disk topology, and in the simplest case of the supersymmetric Janus solution it further reduces to an ordinary differential equation known as Heun's equation. We solve this equation numerically, and exhibit the spectrum as a function of the dilaton-jump parameter $\Delta\phi$. In the limit of large $\Delta\phi$ a nearly-flat linear-dilaton dimension grows large, and the Janus geometry becomes effectively five-dimensional. We also discuss the difficulties of localizing four-dimensional gravity in the more general backgrounds with NS5-brane or D5-brane charge, which will be analyzed in detail in a companion paper.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figure

Three waves for quantum gravity

Using effective field theoretical methods, we show that besides the already observed gravitational waves, quantum gravity predicts two further massive classical fields leading to two new massive waves. We set a limit on the masses of these new modes using data from the E¨ot-Wash experiment. We point out that the existence of these new states is a model independent prediction of quantum gravity. We then explain how these new classical fields could impact astrophysical processes and in particular the binary inspirals of neutron stars or black holes. We calculate the emission rate of these new states in binary inspirals astrophysical processes

Gravitational effective action at second order in curvature and gravitational waves

We consider the full effective theory for quantum gravity at second order in curvature including non-local terms. We show that the theory contains two new degrees of freedom beyond the massless graviton: namely a massive spin-2 ghost and a massive scalar field. Furthermore, we show that it is impossible to fine-tune the parameters of the effective action to eliminate completely the classical spin-2 ghost because of the non-local terms in the effective action. Being a classical field, it is not clear anyway that this ghost is problematic. It simply implies a repulsive contribution to Newton’s potential. We then consider how to extract the parameters of the effective action and show that it is possible to measure, at least in principle, the parameters of the local terms independently of each other using a combination of observations of gravitational waves and measurements performed by pendulum type experiments searching for deviations of Newton’s potential