18,715 research outputs found
Does the BICEP2 Observation of Cosmological Tensor Modes Imply an Era of Nearly Planckian Energy Densities?
BICEP2 observations, interpreted most simply, suggest an era of inflation
with energy densities of order (, not far below the
Planck density. However, models of TeV gravity with large extra dimensions
might allow a very different interpretation involving much more modest energy
scales. We discuss the viability of inflation in such models, and conclude that
existing scenarios do not provide attractive alternatives to single field
inflation in four dimensions. Because the detection of tensor modes strengthens
our confidence that inflation occurred, it disfavors models of large extra
dimensions, at least for the moment.Comment: 4 pages, v3: version to appear in JHE
Determination of Nonlinear Genetic Architecture using Compressed Sensing
We introduce a statistical method that can reconstruct nonlinear genetic
models (i.e., including epistasis, or gene-gene interactions) from
phenotype-genotype (GWAS) data. The computational and data resource
requirements are similar to those necessary for reconstruction of linear
genetic models (or identification of gene-trait associations), assuming a
condition of generalized sparsity, which limits the total number of gene-gene
interactions. An example of a sparse nonlinear model is one in which a typical
locus interacts with several or even many others, but only a small subset of
all possible interactions exist. It seems plausible that most genetic
architectures fall in this category. Our method uses a generalization of
compressed sensing (L1-penalized regression) applied to nonlinear functions of
the sensing matrix. We give theoretical arguments suggesting that the method is
nearly optimal in performance, and demonstrate its effectiveness on broad
classes of nonlinear genetic models using both real and simulated human
genomes.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1408.342
Instability of Quantum de Sitter Spacetime
Quantized fields (e.g., the graviton itself) in de Sitter (dS) spacetime lead
to particle production: specifically, we consider a thermal spectrum resulting
from the dS (horizon) temperature. The energy required to excite these
particles reduces slightly the rate of expansion and eventually modifies the
semiclassical spacetime geometry. The resulting manifold no longer has constant
curvature nor time reversal invariance, and back-reaction renders the classical
dS background unstable to perturbations. In the case of AdS, there exists a
global static vacuum state; in this state there is no particle production and
the analogous instability does not arise.Comment: 3 pages, v2: version to appear in JHE
Eddy intrustion of hot plasma into the polar cap and formation of polar-cap arcs
Under the simple postulate that multiple large scale detachable magnetospheric convection eddies can exist in the vicinity of the convection reversal boundary and in the polar cap, by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability or otherwise, it is shown that a number of seemingly disconnected plasma and electric field observations in the polar cap can be organized into a theory of magnetosheath and plasmasheet plasma intrusion into the polar cap. Current theory of inverted V structures then predicts existence of similar, but weaker, structures at the eddy convection reversal boundaries in the polar cap. A possible consequence is that the polar cap auroras are natural offshoots from discrete oval arcs and evidently are formed by similar processes. The two arc systems can occassionally produce an optical image in the form of the theta aurora
Radiative Corrections to Longitudinal and Transverse Gauge Boson and Higgs Production
Radiative corrections to gauge boson and Higgs production computed recently
using soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) require the one-loop high-scale
matching coefficients in the standard model. We give explicit expressions for
the matching coefficients for the effective field theory (EFT) operators for q
qbar -> VV and q qbar -> phi^+ phi for a general gauge theory with an arbitrary
number of gauge groups. The group theory factors are given explicitly for the
standard model, including both QCD and electroweak corrections.Comment: 16 pages, 49 figure
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