6,719 research outputs found
Supergravity Inspired Warped Compactifications and Effective Cosmological Constants
We propose a supergravity inspired derivation of a Randall-Sundrum's type
action as an effective description of the dynamics of a brane coupled to the
bulk through gravity only. The cosmological constants in the bulk and on the
brane appear at the classical level when solving the equations of motion
describing the bosonic sector of supergravities in ten and eleven dimensions
coupled to the brane. They are related to physical quantities like the brane
electric charge and thus inherit some of their physical properties. The most
appealing property is their quantization: in d_\perp extra dimensions,
Lambda_brane goes like N and Lambda_bulk like N^{2/(2-d_perp)}. This dynamical
origin also explains the apparent fine-tuning required in the Randall-Sundrum
scenario. In our approach, the cosmological constants are derived parameters
and cannot be chosen arbitrarily; instead they are determined by the underlying
Lagrangian. Some of the branes we construct that support cosmological constant
in the bulk have supersymmetric properties: D3-branes of type IIB superstring
theory provide an explicit example.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure. v2: references added and a comment about
D-8 brane of massive IIA sugra included v3: improved argument on the
effective cosmological constants quantization and clarified discussion on the
supersymmetric issue of the solutions constructed. Final version to appear in
NP
Method and apparatus for optically monitoring the angular position of a rotating mirror
An optical system monitors the angular position of a rotating scanning mirror to indicate the effective start and end of each scan. At a certain angular position, a ray of energy transmitted to the mirror is reflected a plurality of times between the reflectors associated with the optical system and the line on the mirror parallel to the axis, and then to a detector to sense that angular position. A single optical system may be arranged to sense a plurality of different angular positions for each revolution of the mirror
Gravitational Field of Spherical Branes
The warped solution of Einstein's equations corresponding to the spherical
brane in five-dimensional AdS is considered. This metric represents interiors
of black holes on both sides of the brane and can provide gravitational
trapping of physical fields on the shell. It is found the analytic form of the
coordinate transformations from the Schwartschild to co-moving frame that
exists only in five dimensions. It is shown that in the static coordinates
active gravitational mass of the spherical brane, in agreement with Tolman's
formula, is negative, i.e. such objects are gravitationally repulsive.Comment: Minor corrections, 8 pages, the version accepted by Mod. Phys. Lett.
Inflating Intersecting Branes and Remarks on the Hierarchy Problem
We generalize solutions of Einstein's equations for intersecting branes in
higher dimensional spacetimes to the nonstatic case, modeling an expanding
universe. The relation between the Hubble rate, the brane tensions, and the
bulk cosmological constant is similar to the case of a single 3-brane in a
5-dimensional spacetime. However, because the bulk inflates as well as the
branes, this class of solutions suffers from Newton's constant tending toward
zero on the TeV brane, where the Randall-Sundrum mechanism should solve the
weak scale hierarchy problem. The strength of gravity remains constant on the
Planck brane, however.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX. v2:Misprint in eq. (23) corrected; citations fixed
and clarified relationship of our work to hep-th/9909053 and hep-th/9909076
v3: final version to appear in PLB. Corrected discussion of the time
dependance of the 4-D Planck mass on the TeV brane. Some references added to
earlier works on warped Kaluza-Klein compactification
Leptons from Dark Matter Annihilation in Milky Way Subhalos
Numerical simulations of dark matter collapse and structure formation show
that in addition to a large halo surrounding the baryonic component of our
galaxy, there also exists a significant number of subhalos that extend hundreds
of kiloparsecs beyond the edge of the observable Milky Way. We find that for
dark matter (DM) annihilation models, galactic subhalos can significantly
modify the spectrum of electrons and positrons as measured at our galactic
position. Using data from the recent Via Lactea II simulation we include the
subhalo contribution of electrons and positrons as boundary source terms for
simulations of high energy cosmic ray propagation with a modified version of
the publicly available GALPROP code. Focusing on the DM DM -> 4e annihilation
channel, we show that including subhalos leads to a better fit to both the
Fermi and PAMELA data. The best fit gives a dark matter particle mass of 1.2
TeV, for boost factors of 90 in the main halo and 1950-3800 in the subhalos
(depending on assumptions about the background), in contrast to the 0.85 TeV
mass that gives the best fit in the main halo-only scenario. These fits suggest
that at least a third of the observed electron cosmic rays from DM annihilation
could come from subhalos, opening up the possibility of a relaxation of recent
stringent constraints from inverse Compton gamma rays originating from the
high-energy leptons.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figures; added referenc
Depolarizing GABAergic conductances regulate the balance of excitation to inhibition in the developing retinotectal circuit in vivo
Neurotransmission during development regulates synaptic maturation in neural circuits, but the contribution of different neurotransmitter systems is unclear. We investigated the role of GABAA receptor-mediated Cl- conductances in the development of synaptic responses in the Xenopus visual system. Intracellular Cl- concentration ([Cl-]i) was found to be high in immature tectal neurons and then falls over a period of several weeks. GABAergic synapses are present at early stages of tectal development and, when activated by optic nerve stimulation or visual stimuli, induce sustained depolarizing Cl- conductances that facilitate retinotectal transmission by NMDA receptors. To test whether depolarizing GABAergic inputs cooperate with NMDA receptors during activity-dependent maturation of glutamatergic synapses, we prematurely reduced [Cl-]i in tectal neurons in vivo by expressing the Cl- transporter KCC2. This blocked the normal developmental increase in AMPA receptor-mediated retinotectal transmission and increased GABAergic synaptic input to tectal neurons. Therefore, depolarizing GABAergic transmission plays a pivotal role in the maturation of excitatory transmission and controls the balance of excitation and inhibition in the developing retinotectal circuit
Shock Deformation in Zircon, a Comparison of Results from Shock-Reverberation and Single-Shock Experiments
The utility of the mineral zircon, ZrSiO4, as a shock-metamorphic geobarometer and geochronometer, has been steadily growing within the planetary science community. Zircon is an accessory phase found in many terrestrial rock types, lunar samples, lunar meteorites, martian meteorites and various other achondrites. Because zircon is refractory and has a high closure temperature for Pb diffusion, it has been used to determine the ages of some of the oldest material on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System. Furthermore, major (O) and trace-element (REE, Ti, Hf) abundances and isotope compositions of zircon help characterize the petrogenetic environments and sources from which they crystallized. The response of zircon to impact-induced shock deformation is predominantly crystallographic, including dislocation creep and the formation of planar and sub-planar, low-angle grain boundaries; the formation of mechanical {112} twins; transformation to the high pressure polymorph reidite; the development of polycrystalline microtextures; and dissociation to the oxide constituents SiO2 and ZrO2. Shock microstructures can also variably affect the U- Pb isotope systematics of zircon and, in some instances, be used to constrain the impact age. While numerous studies have characterized shock deformation in zircon recovered from a variety of terrestrial impact craters and ejecta deposits and Apollo samples, experimental studies of shock deformation in zircon are limited to a handful of examples in the literature. In addition, the formation conditions (e.g., P, T) of various shock microstructures, such as planar-deformation bands, twins, and reidite lamellae, remain poorly con-strained. Furthermore, previous shocked-zircon experimental charges have not been analyzed using modern analytical equipment. This study will therefore under-take an new set of zircon shock experiments, which will then be microstructurally characterized using state-of-the-art instrumentation within the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES), NASA Johnson Space Center
- …