Quantization leading to a natural flattening of the axion potential

Starting from the general cosine form for the axion effective potential, we quantize the axion and show that the result is described by a naturally flat potential, if interactions with other particles are not considered. This feature therefore restores the would-be Goldstone-boson nature of the axion, and we calculate the corresponding vacuum energy density, which does not need to be too large by orders of magnitude compared to Dark Energy

Comments on branon dressing and the Standard Model

This technical note shows how Electrodynamics and a Yukawa model are dressed after integrating out perturbative brane fluctuations, and it is found that first order corrections in the inverse of the brane tension occur for the fermion and scalar wave functions, the couplings and the masses. Nevertheless, field redefinitions actually lead to effective actions where only masses are dressed to this first order. We compare our results with the literature and find discrepancies at the next order, which, however, might not be measurable in the valid regime of low-energy brane fluctuations.Comment: 12 page

Emergent relativistic-like Kinematics and Dynamical Mass Generation for a Lifshitz-type Yukawa model

We study the Infra Red (IR) limit of dispersion relations for scalar and fermion fields in a Lifshitz-type Yukawa model, after dressing by quantum fluctuations. Relativistic-like dispersion relations emerge dynamically in the IR regime of the model, after quantum corrections are taken into account. In this regime, dynamical mass generation also takes place, but in such a way that the particle excitations remain massive, even if the bare masses vanish. The group velocities of the corresponding massive particles of course are smaller than the speed of light, in a way consistent with the IR regime where the analysis is performed. We also comment on possible extensions of the model where the fermions are coupled to an Abelian gauge field

Capillarity-Driven Flows at the Continuum Limit

We experimentally investigate the dynamics of capillary-driven flows at the nanoscale, using an original platform that combines nanoscale pores and microfluidic features. Our results show a coherent picture across multiple experiments including imbibition, poroelastic transient flows, and a drying-based method that we introduce. In particular, we exploit extreme drying stresses - up to 100 MPa of tension - to drive nanoflows and provide quantitative tests of continuum theories of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics (e.g. Kelvin-Laplace equation) across an unprecedented range. We isolate the breakdown of continuum as a negative slip length of molecular dimension.Comment: 5 pages; 4 figure