Emergent Universe in the Braneworld Scenario

According to Padmanabhan's proposal, the difference between the surface degrees of freedom and the bulk degrees of freedom in a region of space may result in the acceleration of Universe expansion through the relation $\Delta V/\Delta t = N_{\rm sur}-N_{\rm bulk}$ where $N_{\rm bulk}$ and $N_{\rm sur}$ are referred to the degrees of freedom related to the matter and energy content inside the bulk and surface area, respectively \cite{Pad1}. In this paper, we study the dynamical effect of the extrinsic geometrical embedding of an arbitrary four dimensional brane in a higher dimensional bulk space and investigate the corresponding degrees of freedom. Considering the modification of Friedmann equations arising from a general braneworld scenario, we obtain a correction term in Padmanabhan's relation, denoting the number of degrees of freedom related to the extrinsic geometry of the brane embedded in higher dimensional spacetime as $\Delta V /\Delta t=N_{\rm sur}-N_{\rm bulk}-N_{\rm extr}$ where $N_{\rm extr}$ is referred to the degree of freedom related to the extrinsic geometry of the brane while $N_{\rm sur}$ and $N_{\rm bulk}$ are as well as before. Finally, we study the validity of the first and second laws of thermodynamics for this general braneworld scenario in the state of thermal equilibrium and in the presence of confined matter fields to the brane with the induced geometric matter fields.Comment: 16 pages, Major revisio

Janus: An Uncertain Cache Architecture to Cope with Side Channel Attacks

Side channel attacks are a major class of attacks to crypto-systems. Attackers collect and analyze timing behavior, I/O data, or power consumption in these systems to undermine their effectiveness in protecting sensitive information. In this work, we propose a new cache architecture, called Janus, to enable crypto-systems to introduce randomization and uncertainty in their runtime timing behavior and power utilization profile. In the proposed cache architecture, each data block is equipped with an on-off flag to enable/disable the data block. The Janus architecture has two special instructions in its instruction set to support the on-off flag. Beside the analytical evaluation of the proposed cache architecture, we deploy it in an ARM-7 processor core to study its feasibility and practicality. Results show a significant variation in the timing behavior across all the benchmarks. The new secure processor architecture has minimal hardware overhead and significant improvement in protecting against power analysis and timing behavior attacks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Identification of Decoherence-Free Subspaces Without Quantum Process Tomography

Characterizing a quantum process is the critical first step towards applying such a process in a quantum information protocol. Full process characterization is known to be extremely resource-intensive, motivating the search for more efficient ways to extract salient information about the process. An example is the identification of "decoherence-free subspaces", in which computation or communications may be carried out, immune to the principal sources of decoherence in the system. Here we propose and demonstrate a protocol which enables one to directly identify a DFS without carrying out a full reconstruction. Our protocol offers an up-to-quadratic speedup over standard process tomography. In this paper, we experimentally identify the DFS of a two-qubit process with 32 measurements rather than the usual 256, characterize the robustness and efficiency of the protocol, and discuss its extension to higher-dimensional systems.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Dilaton Cosmology, Noncommutativity and Generalized Uncertainty Principle

The effects of noncommutativity and of the existence of a minimal length on the phase space of a dilatonic cosmological model are investigated. The existence of a minimum length, results in the Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP), which is a deformed Heisenberg algebra between the minisuperspace variables and their momenta operators. We extend these deformed commutating relations to the corresponding deformed Poisson algebra. For an exponential dilaton potential, the exact classical and quantum solutions in the commutative and noncommutative cases, and some approximate analytical solutions in the case of GUP, are presented and compared.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, typos correcte

Chromium-based polypyrrole/MIL-101 nanocomposite as an effective sorbent for headspace microextraction of methyl tert-butyl ether in soil samples

The performance of headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) was upgraded by easy and low-cost preparation of a new nanocomposite fiber. A polypyrrole/chromium-based metal–organic framework, PPy@MIL-101(Cr), nanocomposite was electrochemically synthesized and simultaneously coated on a steel wire as a microextraction sorbent. The morphology and chemical structure of the prepared nanocomposite was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) techniques. The microsorbent was used for sampling of methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in solid samples, through an HS-SPME sampling strategy, followed by GC-FID measurement. The optimal experimental conditions, including extraction temperature, extraction time, and GC desorption conditions, were evaluated and optimized. The proposed procedure showed good sensitivity (limit of detection was 0.01 ng·g−1) and precision (relative standard deviation was 8.4% for six replicated analyses). The calibration curve was linear over the range of 5–40,000 ng·g−1, with a correlation coefficient of 0.994. The limit of quantification was 0.4 ng·g−1. The fabricated fiber exhibited good repeatability and reproducibility for the sampling of MTBE, with average recovery values of 88–114%. The intra-fiber and inter-fiber precisions were found to be 8.4% and 19%, respectively. The results demonstrated the superiority of the PPy@MIL-101(Cr)-coated fiber in comparison with handmade (polypyrrole, PPY) and commercial fibers (polyacrylate, PA; polydimethylsiloxane, PDMS; and divinylbenzene/carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane, DVB/CAR/PDMS) for the analysis of solid samples. The developed method was successfully employed for the analysis of MTBE in different soil samples contaminated by oil products

Tunneling in a Cosmological Model with Violation of Strong Energy Condition

The tunneling rate, with exact prefactor, is calculated to first order in \hbar for a closed FRW universe filled with perfect fluid violating the strong energy condition. The calculations are performed by applying the dilute-instanton approximation on the corresponding Duru-Kleinert path integral. It is shown that a closed FRW universe filled with a perfect fluid with small violation of strong energy condition is more probable to tunnel than the same universe with large violation of strong energy condition.Comment: 11 pages, LaTe