875 research outputs found
Improved modelling of Siberian river flow through the use of an alternative frozen soil hydrology scheme in a land surface model
A parameterisation to incorporate the effects of frozen soil on modelled hydrology is described and implemented within a land surface model, the Joint UK Land Surface Environment Simulator. It is shown to generally improve the modelled flow of Siberian rivers compared to observations, specifically in seasons of freezing or thawing soil. Most noticeably, the revised model increases the snowmelt flow peak by 26â100% compared to the control model thereby better matching observed flows. The model physics resulting in the changes to river flow are discussed and attention is given to the effect of inaccuracies in snowfall driving data which can hinder the comparison of new model processes
Observational Cosmology in Macroscopic Gravity
We discuss the construction of cosmological models within the framework of
Macroscopic Gravity (MG), which is a theory that models the effects of
averaging the geometry of space-time on large scales. We find new exact
spatially homogeneous and isotropic FLRW solutions to the MG field equations,
and investigate large-scale perturbations around them. We find that any
inhomogeneous perturbations to the averaged geometry are severely restricted,
but that possible anisotropies in the correlation tensor can have dramatic
consequences for the measurement of distances. These calculations are a first
step within the MG approach toward developing averaged cosmological models to a
point where they can be used to interpret real cosmological data, and hence to
provide a working alternative to the "concordance" LCDM model.Comment: 22 page
Today's View on Strangeness
There are several different experimental indications, such as the
pion-nucleon sigma term and polarized deep-inelastic scattering, which suggest
that the nucleon wave function contains a hidden s bar s component. This is
expected in chiral soliton models, which also predicted the existence of new
exotic baryons that may recently have been observed. Another hint of hidden
strangeness in the nucleon is provided by copious phi production in various N
bar N annihilation channels, which may be due to evasions of the
Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule. One way to probe the possible polarization of hidden s
bar s pairs in the nucleon may be via Lambda polarization in deep-inelastic
scattering.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX, 10 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the
International Conference on Parity Violation and Hadronic Structure,
Grenoble, June 200
Dark energy as a mirage
Motivated by the observed cosmic matter distribution, we present the
following conjecture: due to the formation of voids and opaque structures, the
average matter density on the path of the light from the well-observed objects
changes from Omega_M ~ 1 in the homogeneous early universe to Omega_M ~ 0 in
the clumpy late universe, so that the average expansion rate increases along
our line of sight from EdS expansion Ht ~ 2/3 at high redshifts to free
expansion Ht ~ 1 at low redshifts. To calculate the modified observable
distance-redshift relations, we introduce a generalized Dyer-Roeder method that
allows for two crucial physical properties of the universe: inhomogeneities in
the expansion rate and the growth of the nonlinear structures. By treating the
transition redshift to the void-dominated era as a free parameter, we find a
phenomenological fit to the observations from the CMB anisotropy, the position
of the baryon oscillation peak, the magnitude-redshift relations of type Ia
supernovae, the local Hubble flow and the nucleosynthesis, resulting in a
concordant model of the universe with 90% dark matter, 10% baryons, no dark
energy, 15 Gyr as the age of the universe and a natural value for the
transition redshift z_0=0.35. Unlike a large local void, the model respects the
cosmological principle, further offering an explanation for the late onset of
the perceived acceleration as a consequence of the forming nonlinear
structures. Additional tests, such as quantitative predictions for angular
deviations due to an anisotropic void distribution and a theoretical derivation
of the model, can vindicate or falsify the interpretation that light
propagation in voids is responsible for the perceived acceleration.Comment: 33 pages, 2 figs; v2: minor clarifications, results unchanged; v3:
matches the version published in General Relativity and Gravitatio
Spin-dependent Parton Distributions from Polarized Structure Function Data
In the past year, polarized deep inelastic scattering experiments at CERN and
SLAC have obtained structure function measurements off proton, neutron and
deuteron targets at a level of precision never before achieved. The
measurements can be used to test the Bjorken and Ellis-Jaffe sum rules, and
also to obtain information on the parton distributions in polarized nucleons.
We perform a global leading-order QCD fit to the proton deep inelastic data in
order to extract the spin-dependent parton distributions. By using parametric
forms which are consistent with theoretical expectations at large and small
, we find that the quark distributions are now rather well constrained. We
assume that there is no significant intrinsic polarization of the strange quark
sea. The data are then consistent with a modest amount of the proton's spin
carried by the gluon, although the shape of the gluon distribution is not well
constrained, and several qualitatively different shapes are suggested. The
spin-dependent distributions we obtain can be used as input to phenomenological
studies for future polarized hadron-hadron and lepton-hadron colliders.Comment: 23 pages, DTP/94/3
A note on second-order perturbations of non-canonical scalar fields
We study second-order perturbations for a general non-canonical scalar field,
minimally coupled to gravity, on the unperturbed FRW background, where metric
fluctuations are neglected a priori. By employing different approaches to
cosmological perturbation theory, we show that, even in this simplified set-up,
the second-order perturbations to the stress tensor, the energy density and the
pressure display potential instabilities, which are not present at linear
order. The conditions on the Lagrangian under which these instabilities take
place are provided. We also discuss briefly the significance of our analysis in
light of the possible linearization instability of these fields about the FRW
background.Comment: 8 page, Revtex 4. Clarifications added, results unchanged; [v3] 10
pages, matches with the published version, Discussion for specific cases
expanded and preliminary results including the metric perturbations discusse
The Higgs - photon - Z boson coupling revisited
We analyze the coupling of CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons to a photon and a
Z boson in extensions of the Standard Model. In particular, we study in detail
the effect of charged Higgs bosons in two-Higgs doublet models, and the
contribution of SUSY particle loops in the minimal supersymmetric extension of
the Standard Model. The Higgs- coupling can be measured in the decay
+Higgs at colliders running on the Z resonance, or in
the reverse process Higgs with the Higgs boson produced at LHC.
We show that a measurement of this coupling with a precision at the percent
level, which could be the case at future colliders, would allow to
distinguish between the lightest SUSY and standard Higgs bosons in large areas
of the parameter space.Comment: 18 pages LaTex + 7 figures (ps). Typo corrected in eq.(5
MHV Rules for Higgs Plus Multi-Gluon Amplitudes
We use tree-level perturbation theory to show how non-supersymmetric one-loop
scattering amplitudes for a Higgs boson plus an arbitrary number of partons can
be constructed, in the limit of a heavy top quark, from a generalization of the
scalar graph approach of Cachazo, Svrcek and Witten. The Higgs boson couples to
gluons through a top quark loop which generates, for large top mass, a
dimension-5 operator H tr G^2. This effective interaction leads to amplitudes
which cannot be described by the standard MHV rules; for example, amplitudes
where all of the gluons have positive helicity. We split the effective
interaction into the sum of two terms, one holomorphic (selfdual) and one
anti-holomorphic (anti-selfdual). The holomorphic interactions give a new set
of MHV vertices -- identical in form to those of pure gauge theory, except for
momentum conservation -- that can be combined with pure gauge theory MHV
vertices to produce a tower of amplitudes with more than two negative
helicities. Similarly, the anti-holomorphic interactions give anti-MHV vertices
that can be combined with pure gauge theory anti-MHV vertices to produce a
tower of amplitudes with more than two positive helicities. A Higgs boson
amplitude is the sum of one MHV-tower amplitude and one anti-MHV-tower
amplitude. We present all MHV-tower amplitudes with up to four
negative-helicity gluons and any number of positive-helicity gluons (NNMHV).
These rules reproduce all of the available analytic formulae for Higgs +
n-gluon scattering (n<=5) at tree level, in some cases yielding considerably
shorter expressions.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures; v2, references correcte
Cosmological background solutions and cosmological backreactions
The cosmological backreaction proposal, which attempts to account for
observations without a primary dark energy source in the stress-energy tensor,
has been developed and discussed by means of different approaches. Here, we
focus on the concept of cosmological background solutions in order to develop a
framework to study different backreaction proposals.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures; major changes, replaced to match the version
published in General Relativity and Gravitatio
A two-mass expanding exact space-time solution
In order to understand how locally static configurations around
gravitationally bound bodies can be embedded in an expanding universe, we
investigate the solutions of general relativity describing a space-time whose
spatial sections have the topology of a 3-sphere with two identical masses at
the poles. We show that Israel junction conditions imply that two spherically
symmetric static regions around the masses cannot be glued together. If one is
interested in an exterior solution, this prevents the geometry around the
masses to be of the Schwarzschild type and leads to the introduction of a
cosmological constant. The study of the extension of the Kottler space-time
shows that there exists a non-static solution consisting of two static regions
surrounding the masses that match a Kantowski-Sachs expanding region on the
cosmological horizon. The comparison with a Swiss-Cheese construction is also
discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Replaced to match the published versio
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