On the initial conditions of scalar and tensor fluctuations in f(R,ϕ)f(R,\phi) gravity

We have considered the perturbation equations governing the growth of fluctuations in generalized scalar tensor theory during inflation. we have found that the scalar metric perturbations at very early times are negligible compared with the scalar field perturbation, just like general relativity. At sufficiently early times, when $q/a\gg H$, we have obtained the metric and scalar field perturbation in the form of WKB solutions up to an undetermined coefficient. Then we have quantized the scalar fluctuations and expanded the metric and the scalar field perturbations with the help of annihilation and creation operators of the scalar field perturbation. The standard commutation relations of annihilation and creation operators fix the unknown coefficient. Going over to the gauge invariant quantities which are conserved beyond the horizon, we have obtained the initial condition of the generalized Mukhanov-Sasaki equation. And a similar procedure is performed for the case of tensor metric perturbation.Comment: 11 page

Electric Circuit Simulation of Floquet Topological Insulators

We present a method for simulating any non-interacting and time-periodic tight-binding Hamiltonian in Fourier space using electric circuits made of inductors and capacitors. We first map the time-periodic Hamiltonian to a Floquet Hamiltonian, which converts the time dimension into a Floquet dimension. In electric circuits, this Floquet dimension is simulated as an extra spatial dimension without any time dependency in the electrical elements. The number of replicas needed in the Floquet Hamiltonian depends on the frequency and strength of the drive. We also demonstrate that we can detect the topological edge states (including the anomalous edge states in the dynamical gap) in an electric circuit by measuring the two-point impedance between the nodes. Our method paves a simple and promising way to explore and control Floquet topological phases in electric circuits.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Statistical properties of a localization-delocalization transition induced by correlated disorder

The exact probability distributions of the resistance, the conductance and the transmission are calculated for the one-dimensional Anderson model with long-range correlated off-diagonal disorder at E=0. It is proved that despite of the Anderson transition in 3D, the functional form of the resistance (and its related variables) distribution function does not change when there exists a Metal-Insulator transition induced by correlation between disorders. Furthermore, we derive analytically all statistical moments of the resistance, the transmission and the Lyapunov Exponent. The growth rate of the average and typical resistance decreases when the Hurst exponent $H$ tends to its critical value ($H_{cr}=1/2$) from the insulating regime. In the metallic regime $H\geq1/2$, the distributions become independent of size. Therefore, the resistance and the transmission fluctuations do not diverge with system size in the thermodynamic limit

Floquet states and optical conductivity of an irradiated two dimensional topological insulator

We study the topology of the Floquet states and time-averaged optical conductivity of the lattice model of a thin topological insulator subject to a circularly polarized light using the extended Kubo formalism. Two driving regimes, the off-resonant and on-resonant, and two models for the occupation of the Floquet states, the ideal and mean-energy occupation, are considered. In the ideal occupation, the real part of DC optical Hall conductivity is shown to be quantized while it is not quantized for the mean energy distribution. The optical transitions in the Floquet band structure depend strongly on the occupation and also the optical weight which consequently affect all components of optical conductivity. At high frequency regime, we present an analytical calculation of the effective Hamiltonian and also its phase diagram which depends on the tunneling energy between two surfaces. The topology of the system shows rich phases when it is irradiated by a weak on-resonant drive giving rise to emergence of anomalous edge states.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Trans-Planckian Effect in f(R)f(R) Cosmology

Apart from the assumption that the inflation started at an infinite time in the past, the more realistic initial state of the quantum fluctuations is described by a mixed quantum state imposed at a finite value of the initial time. One of the most important non-trivial vacua is the $\alpha$-vacuum, which is specified by a momentum cutoff $\Lambda$ \cite{Danielsson:2002kx}. As a consequence, the initial condition is imposed at different initial times for the different $k$-modes. This modifies the amplitude of the quantum fluctuations, and thus the corresponding power spectra. In this paper, we consider the imprint of the $\alpha$-vacuum state on the power spectrum of scalar perturbations in a generic $f(R)$ gravity by assuming an ultraviolet cutoff $\Lambda$. As a specific model, we consider the Starobinsky model and find the trans-Planckian power spectrum. We find that the leading order corrections to the scalar power spectra in $f(R)$ gravity have an oscillatory behavior as in general relativity \cite{Lim}, and furthermore, the results are in sufficient agreement with the $\Lambda$CDM model.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

Metallic phase of disordered graphene superlattices with long-range correlations

Using the transfer matrix method, we study the conductance of the chiral particles through a monolayer graphene superlattice with long-range correlated disorder distributed on the potential of the barriers. Even though the transmission of the particles through graphene superlattice with white noise potentials is suppressed, the transmission is revived in a wide range of angles when the potential heights are long-range correlated with a power spectrum $S(k)\sim1/k^{\beta}$. As a result, the conductance increases with increasing the correlation exponent values gives rise a metallic phase. We obtain a phase transition diagram in which a critical correlation exponent depends strongly on disorder strength and slightly on the energy of the incident particles. The phase transition, on the other hand, appears in all ranges of the energy from propagating to evanescent mode regimes.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

Negative differential resistance in molecular junctions: application to graphene ribbon junctions

Using self-consistent calculations based on Non-Equilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) formalism, the origin of negative differential resistance (NDR) in molecular junctions and quantum wires is investigated. Coupling of the molecule to electrodes becomes asymmetric at high bias due to asymmetry between its highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) levels. This causes appearance of an asymmetric potential profile due to a depletion of charge and reduction of screening near the source electrode. With increasing bias, this sharp potential drop leads to an enhanced localization of the HOMO and LUMO states in different parts of the system. The reduction in overlap, caused by localization, results in a significant reduction in the transmission coefficient and current with increasing bias. An atomic chain connected to two Graphene ribbons was investigated to illustrate these effects. For a chain substituting a molecule, an even-odd effect is also observed in the NDR characteristics.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Non-malleable encryption: simpler, shorter, stronger

In a seminal paper, Dolev et al. [15] introduced the notion of non-malleable encryption (NM-CPA). This notion is very intriguing since it suffices for many applications of chosen-ciphertext secure encryption (IND-CCA), and, yet, can be generically built from semantically secure (IND-CPA) encryption, as was shown in the seminal works by Pass et al. [29] and by Choi et al. [9], the latter of which provided a black-box construction. In this paper we investigate three questions related to NM-CPA security: 1. Can the rate of the construction by Choi et al. of NM-CPA from IND-CPA be improved? 2. Is it possible to achieve multi-bit NM-CPA security more efficiently from a single-bit NM-CPA scheme than from IND-CPA? 3. Is there a notion stronger than NM-CPA that has natural applications and can be achieved from IND-CPA security? We answer all three questions in the positive. First, we improve the rate in the scheme of Choi et al. by a factor O(λ), where λ is the security parameter. Still, encrypting a message of size O(λ) would require ciphertext and keys of size O(λ2) times that of the IND-CPA scheme, even in our improved scheme. Therefore, we show a more efficient domain extension technique for building a λ-bit NM-CPA scheme from a single-bit NM-CPA scheme with keys and ciphertext of size O(λ) times that of the NM-CPA one-bit scheme. To achieve our goal, we define and construct a novel type of continuous non-malleable code (NMC), called secret-state NMC, as we show that standard continuous NMCs are not enough for the natural “encode-then-encrypt-bit-by-bit” approach to work. Finally, we introduce a new security notion for public-key encryption that we dub non-malleability under (chosen-ciphertext) self-destruct attacks (NM-SDA). After showing that NM-SDA is a strict strengthening of NM-CPA and allows for more applications, we nevertheless show that both of our results—(faster) construction from IND-CPA and domain extension from one-bit scheme—also hold for our stronger NM-SDA security. In particular, the notions of IND-CPA, NM-CPA, and NM-SDA security are all equivalent, lying (plausibly, strictly?) below IND-CCA securit

Nearly optimal solutions for the Chow Parameters Problem and low-weight approximation of halfspaces

The \emph{Chow parameters} of a Boolean function $f: \{-1,1\}^n \to \{-1,1\}$ are its $n+1$ degree-0 and degree-1 Fourier coefficients. It has been known since 1961 (Chow, Tannenbaum) that the (exact values of the) Chow parameters of any linear threshold function $f$ uniquely specify $f$ within the space of all Boolean functions, but until recently (O'Donnell and Servedio) nothing was known about efficient algorithms for \emph{reconstructing} $f$ (exactly or approximately) from exact or approximate values of its Chow parameters. We refer to this reconstruction problem as the \emph{Chow Parameters Problem.} Our main result is a new algorithm for the Chow Parameters Problem which, given (sufficiently accurate approximations to) the Chow parameters of any linear threshold function $f$, runs in time \tilde{O}(n^2)\cdot (1/\eps)^{O(\log^2(1/\eps))} and with high probability outputs a representation of an LTF $f'$ that is \eps-close to $f$. The only previous algorithm (O'Donnell and Servedio) had running time \poly(n) \cdot 2^{2^{\tilde{O}(1/\eps^2)}}. As a byproduct of our approach, we show that for any linear threshold function $f$ over $\{-1,1\}^n$, there is a linear threshold function $f'$ which is \eps-close to $f$ and has all weights that are integers at most \sqrt{n} \cdot (1/\eps)^{O(\log^2(1/\eps))}. This significantly improves the best previous result of Diakonikolas and Servedio which gave a \poly(n) \cdot 2^{\tilde{O}(1/\eps^{2/3})} weight bound, and is close to the known lower bound of $\max\{\sqrt{n},$ (1/\eps)^{\Omega(\log \log (1/\eps))}\} (Goldberg, Servedio). Our techniques also yield improved algorithms for related problems in learning theory