Constraints On Dark Energy Models From Galaxy Clusters and Gravitational Lensing Data

The Sunyaev--Zel'dovich (SZ) effect is a global distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum as a result of its interaction with a hot electron plasma in the intracluster medium of large structures gravitationally viralized such as galaxy clusters (GC). Furthermore, this~hot gas of electrons emits X-rays due to its fall in the gravitational potential well of the GC. The~analysis of SZ and X-ray data provides a method for calculating distances to GC at high redshifts. On the other hand, many galaxies and GC produce a Strong Gravitational Lens (SGL) effect, which has become a useful astrophysical tool for cosmology. We use these cosmological tests in addition to more traditional ones to constrain some alternative dark energy (DE) models, including the study of the history of cosmological expansion through the cosmographic parameters. Using Akaike and Bayesian Information Criterion, we find that the $wCDM$ and $\Lambda CDM$ models are the most favoured by the observational data. In addition, we found at low redshift a peculiar behavior of slowdown of the universe, which occurs in dynamical DE models when we use data from GC.Comment: 21 page, 5 figures, 8 tables. Published: 22 January 2018, Universe, MDPI, Special Issue "Progress in Cosmology in the Centenary of the 1917 Einstein Paper

On the exact continuous mapping of fermions

We derive a rigorous, quantum mechanical map of fermionic creation and annihilation operators to continuous Cartesian variables that exactly reproduces the matrix structure of the many-fermion problem. We show how our scheme can be used to map a general many-fermion Hamiltonian and then consider two specific models that encode the fundamental physics of many fermionic systems, the Anderson impurity and Hubbard models. We use these models to demonstrate how efficient mappings of these Hamiltonians can be constructed using a judicious choice of index ordering of the fermions. This development provides an alternative exact route to calculate the static and dynamical properties of fermionic systems and sets the stage to exploit the quantum-classical and semiclassical hierarchies to systematically derive methods offering a range of accuracies, thus enabling the study of problems where the fermionic degrees of freedom are coupled to complex anharmonic nuclear motion and spins which lie beyond the reach of most currently available methods.Comment: 7-page manuscript (2 figures) with 11-page supplemental materia

The cosmological constant as an eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian constraint in Horava-Lifshits theory

In the framework of Horava-Lifshitz theory, we study the eigenvalues associated with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation representing the vacuum expectation values associated with the cosmological constant. The explicit calculation is performed with the help of a variational procedure with trial wave functionals of the Gaussian type. We analyze both the case with the detailed balanced condition and the case without it. In the case without the detailed balance, we find the existence of an eigenvalue depending on the set of coupling constants (g2,g3) and (g4,g5,g6), respectively, and on the physical scale.Comment: RevTeX,11 Pages, Substantial Improvements. References added. To appear in Phys.Rev.

Equilibrium and non-equilibrium fluctuations in a glass-forming liquid

Glass-forming liquids display strong fluctuations -- dynamical heterogeneities -- near their glass transition. By numerically simulating a binary Weeks-Chandler-Andersen liquid and varying both temperature and timescale, we investigate the probability distributions of two kinds of local fluctuations in the non-equilibrium (aging) regime and in the equilibrium regime; and find them to be very similar in the two regimes and across temperatures. We also observe that, when appropriately rescaled, the integrated dynamic susceptibility is very weakly dependent on temperature and very similar in both regimes.Comment: v1: 5 pages, 4 figures v2: 5 pages, 4 figures. Now includes results at three temperatures, two of them above T_{MCT} and one below T_{MCT}; and more extensive discussion of connections to experiment

Mapping dynamical heterogeneity in structural glasses to correlated fluctuations of the time variables

Dynamical heterogeneities -- strong fluctuations near the glass transition -- are believed to be crucial to explain much of the glass transition phenomenology. One possible hypothesis for their origin is that they emerge from soft (Goldstone) modes associated with a broken continuous symmetry under time reparametrizations. To test this hypothesis, we use numerical simulation data from four glass-forming models to construct coarse grained observables that probe the dynamical heterogeneity, and decompose the fluctuations of these observables into two transverse components associated with the postulated time-fluctuation soft modes and a longitudinal component unrelated to them. We find that as temperature is lowered and timescales are increased, the time reparametrization fluctuations become increasingly dominant, and that their correlation volumes grow together with the correlation volumes of the dynamical heterogeneities, while the correlation volumes for longitudinal fluctuations remain small.Comment: v4: Detailed analysis of transverse and longitudinal parts. One figure removed, two added. v3: Explicit decomposition into transverse and longitudinal parts, discussion of correlation volumes. One more figure v2: Modified introduction and forma

Time reparametrization invariance in arbitrary range p-spin models: symmetric versus non-symmetric dynamics

We explore the existence of time reparametrization symmetry in p-spin models. Using the Martin-Siggia-Rose generating functional, we analytically probe the long-time dynamics. We perform a renormalization group analysis where we systematically integrate over short timescale fluctuations. We find three families of stable fixed points and study the symmetry of those fixed points with respect to time reparametrizations. One of those families is composed entirely of symmetric fixed points, which are associated with the low temperature dynamics. The other two families are composed entirely of non-symmetric fixed points. One of these two non-symmetric families corresponds to the high temperature dynamics. Time reparametrization symmetry is a continuous symmetry that is spontaneously broken in the glass state and we argue that this gives rise to the presence of Goldstone modes. We expect the Goldstone modes to determine the properties of fluctuations in the glass state, in particular predicting the presence of dynamical heterogeneity.Comment: v2: Extensively modified to discuss both high temperature (non-symmetric) and low temperature (symmetric) renormalization group fixed points. Now 16 pages with 1 figure. v1: 13 page