Cosmological Evolution of Global Monopoles

We investigate the cosmological evolution of global monopoles in the radiation dominated (RD) and matter dominated (MD) universes by numerically solving field equations of scalar fields. It is shown that the global monopole network relaxes into the scaling regime, unlike the gauge monopole network. The number density of global monopoles is given by $n(t) \simeq (0.43\pm0.07) / t^{3}$ during the RD era and $n(t) \simeq (0.25\pm0.05) / t^{3}$ during the MD era. Thus, we have confirmed that density fluctuations produced by global monopoles become scale invariant and are given by $\delta \rho \sim 7.2(5.0) \sigma^{2} / t^{2}$ during the RD (MD) era, where $\sigma$ is the breaking scale of the symmetry.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. D (R

Brane Universes with Gauss-Bonnet-Induced-Gravity

The DGP brane world model allows us to get the observed late time acceleration via modified gravity, without the need for a ``dark energy'' field. This can then be generalised by the inclusion of high energy terms, in the form of a Gauss-Bonnet bulk. This is the basis of the Gauss-Bonnet-Induced-Gravity (GBIG) model explored here with both early and late time modifications to the cosmological evolution. Recently the simplest GBIG models (Minkowski bulk and no brane tension) have been analysed. Two of the three possible branches in these models start with a finite density ``Big-Bang'' and with late time acceleration. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of more general models where we include a bulk cosmological constant and brane tension. We show that by including these factors it is possible to have late time phantom behaviour.Comment: 12 pages, 19 figures. Minor modifications to text, comments on phantom behaviour added. References added. As submitted to JCA

Considerations for a dual accelerometer/gyroscope using continuous opposing atomic beams

48th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics, Snowbird, Utah, January 7-12, 2018We report on studies completed in the design of a dual atom beam accelerometer/ gyroscope. As demonstrated in [1,2], two opposing beam atom interferometers can distinguish between linear and rotational motion. Our design uses the transit time of slow moving atoms that originate from a 2D MOT through continuous Raman laser fields as the ‘pulse’ of light’ for light pulse interferometry. Using both Monte Carlo methods as well as analytic expressions, we explore the effects of longitudinal and transverse velocity spread, laser beam profile and scattered light on the contrast of the interference fringe. We present the status of the construction of our prototype (Fig. 1). We present measurements of narrow velocity profiles from our source and demonstrate Raman spectroscopy using a cold continuous source.This work was funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defens

Lagrangian evolution of global strings

We establish a method to trace the Lagrangian evolution of extended objects consisting of a multicomponent scalar field in terms of a numerical calculation of field equations in three dimensional Eulerian meshes. We apply our method to the cosmological evolution of global strings and evaluate the energy density, peculiar velocity, Lorentz factor, formation rate of loops, and emission rate of Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons. We confirm the scaling behavior with a number of long strings per horizon volume smaller than the case of local strings by a factor of $\sim$ 10. The strategy and the method established here are applicable to a variety of fields in physics.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

The Shapes of Dirichlet Defects

If the vacuum manifold of a field theory has the appropriate topological structure, the theory admits topological structures analogous to the D-branes of string theory, in which defects of one dimension terminate on other defects of higher dimension. The shapes of such defects are analyzed numerically, with special attention paid to the intersection regions. Walls (co-dimension 1 branes) terminating on other walls, global strings (co-dimension 2 branes) and local strings (including gauge fields) terminating on walls are all considered. Connections to supersymmetric field theories, string theory and condensed matter systems are pointed out.Comment: 24 pages, RevTeX, 21 eps figure

The UNC-Wisconsin rhesus macaque neurodevelopment database: A structural MRI and DTI database of early postnatal development

Rhesus macaques are commonly used as a translational animal model in neuroimaging and neurodevelopmental research. In this report, we present longitudinal data from both structural and diffusion MRI images generated on a cohort of 34 typically developing monkeys from 2 weeks to 36 months of age. All images have been manually skull stripped and are being made freely available via an online repository for use by the research community

Brane Bremsstrahlung in DBI Inflation

We consider the effect of trapped branes on the evolution of a test brane whose motion generates DBI inflation along a warped throat. The coupling between the inflationary brane and a trapped brane leads to the radiation of non-thermal particles on the trapped brane. We calculate the Gaussian spectrum of the radiated particles and their backreaction on the DBI motion of the inflationary brane. Radiation occurs for momenta lower than the speed of the test brane when crossing the trapped brane. The slowing down effect is either due to a parametric resonance when the interaction time is small compared to the Hubble time or a tachyonic resonance when the interaction time is large. In both cases the motion of the inflationary brane after the interaction is governed by a chameleonic potential,which tends to slow it down. We find that a single trapped brane can hardly slow down a DBI inflaton whose fluctuations lead to the Cosmic Microwave Background spectrum. A more drastic effect is obtained when the DBI brane encounters a tightly spaced stack of trapped branes.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur

Decoupling Dark Energy from Matter

We examine the embedding of dark energy in high energy models based upon supergravity and extend the usual phenomenological setting comprising an observable sector and a hidden supersymmetry breaking sector by including a third sector leading to the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. We find that gravitational constraints on the non-existence of a fifth force naturally imply that the dark energy sector must possess an approximate shift symmetry. When exact, the shift symmetry provides an example of a dark energy sector with a runaway potential and a nearly massless dark energy field whose coupling to matter is very weak, contrary to the usual lore that dark energy fields must couple strongly to matter and lead to gravitational inconsistencies. Moreover, the shape of the potential is stable under one-loop radiative corrections. When the shift symmetry is slightly broken by higher order terms in the Kähler potential, the coupling to matter remains small. However, the cosmological dynamics are largely affected by the shift symmetry breaking operators leading to the appearance of a minimum of the scalar potential such that dark energy behaves like an effective cosmological constant from very early on in the history of the universe

The phase-space structure of a dark-matter halo: Implications for dark-matter direct detection experiments

We study the phase-space structure of a dark-matter halo formed in a high resolution simulation of a Lambda CDM cosmology. Our goal is to quantify how much substructure is left over from the inhomogeneous growth of the halo, and how it may affect the signal in experiments aimed at detecting the dark matter particles directly. If we focus on the equivalent of ``Solar vicinity'', we find that the dark-matter is smoothly distributed in space. The probability of detecting particles bound within dense lumps of individual mass less than 10^7 M_\sun h^{-1} is small, less than 10^{-2}. The velocity ellipsoid in the Solar neighbourhood deviates only slightly from a multivariate Gaussian, and can be thought of as a superposition of thousands of kinematically cold streams. The motions of the most energetic particles are, however, strongly clumped and highly anisotropic. We conclude that experiments may safely assume a smooth multivariate Gaussian distribution to represent the kinematics of dark-matter particles in the Solar neighbourhood. Experiments sensitive to the direction of motion of the incident particles could exploit the expected anisotropy to learn about the recent merging history of our Galaxy.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, Phys. Rev. D in press. Postscript version with high resolution figures available from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~ahelmi/research/lcdm_dm.html; some changes in the text; constraints on the effect of bound dark-matter lumps revised; remaining conclusions unchange

High Order Multistep Methods with Improved Phase-Lag Characteristics for the Integration of the Schr\"odinger Equation

In this work we introduce a new family of twelve-step linear multistep methods for the integration of the Schr\"odinger equation. The new methods are constructed by adopting a new methodology which improves the phase lag characteristics by vanishing both the phase lag function and its first derivatives at a specific frequency. This results in decreasing the sensitivity of the integration method on the estimated frequency of the problem. The efficiency of the new family of methods is proved via error analysis and numerical applications.Comment: 36 pages, 6 figure