Early Dark Energy Cosmologies

We propose a novel parameterization of the dark energy density. It is particularly well suited to describe a non-negligible contribution of dark energy at early times and contains only three parameters, which are all physically meaningful: the fractional dark energy density today, the equation of state today and the fractional dark energy density at early times. As we parameterize Omega_d(a) directly instead of the equation of state, we can give analytic expressions for the Hubble parameter, the conformal horizon today and at last scattering, the sound horizon at last scattering, the acoustic scale as well as the luminosity distance. For an equation of state today w_0 < -1, our model crosses the cosmological constant boundary. We perform numerical studies to constrain the parameters of our model by using Cosmic Microwave Background, Large Scale Structure and Supernovae Ia data. At 95% confidence, we find that the fractional dark energy density at early times Omega_early < 0.06. This bound tightens considerably to Omega_early < 0.04 when the latest Boomerang data is included. We find that both the gold sample of Riess et. al. and the SNLS data by Astier et. al. when combined with CMB and LSS data mildly prefer w_0 < -1, but are well compatible with a cosmological constant.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; references added, matches published versio

Analyze This! A Cosmological Constraint Package for CMBEASY

We introduce a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation and data analysis package that extends the CMBEASY software. We have taken special care in implementing an adaptive step algorithm for the Markov Chain Monte Carlo in order to improve convergence. Data analysis routines are provided which allow to test models of the Universe against measurements of the cosmic microwave background, supernovae Ia and large scale structure. We present constraints on cosmological parameters derived from these measurements for a $\Lambda$CDM cosmology and discuss the impact of the different observational data sets on the parameters. The package is publicly available as part of the CMBEASY software at www.cmbeasy.org.Comment: Published version, JCAP style, 16 pages, 7 figures. The software is available at http://www.cmbeasy.or

Vortex Solutions in a Binary Immiscible Bose-Einstein Condensate

We consider the mean-field vortex solutions and their stability within a two-component Bose Einstein condensate in the immiscible limit. A variational approach is employed to study a system consisting of a majority component which contains a single quantised vortex and a minority component which fills the vortex core. We show that a super-Gaussian function is a good approximation to the two-component vortex solution for a range of atom numbers of the in-filling component, by comparing the variational solutions to the full numerical solutions of the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations. We subsequently examine the stability of the vortex solutions by perturbing the in-filling component away from the centre of the vortex core, thereby demonstrating their stability to small perturbations.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Solving the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen puzzle: the origin of non-locality in Aspect-type experiments

So far no mechanism is known, which could connect the two measurements in an Aspect-type experiment. Here, we suggest such a mechanism, based on the phase of a photon's field during propagation. We show that two polarization measurements are correlated, even if no signal passes from one point of measurement to the other. The non-local connection of a photon pair is the result of its origin at a common source, where the two fields acquire a well defined phase difference. Therefore, it is not actually a non-local effect in any conventional sense. We expect that the model and the detailed analysis it allows will have a major impact on quantum cryptography and quantum computation.Comment: 5 pages 1 figure. Added an analysis of quantum steering. The result is that under certain conditions the experimental result at B can be predicted if the polarization angle and the result at A are known. The paper has been accepted for publication in Frontiers of Physics. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1108.435

On the Construction and the Structure of Off-Shell Supermultiplet Quotients

Recent efforts to classify representations of supersymmetry with no central charge have focused on supermultiplets that are aptly depicted by Adinkras, wherein every supersymmetry generator transforms each component field into precisely one other component field or its derivative. Herein, we study gauge-quotients of direct sums of Adinkras by a supersymmetric image of another Adinkra and thus solve a puzzle from Ref.[2]: The so-defined supermultiplets do not produce Adinkras but more general types of supermultiplets, each depicted as a connected network of Adinkras. Iterating this gauge-quotient construction then yields an indefinite sequence of ever larger supermultiplets, reminiscent of Weyl's construction that is known to produce all finite-dimensional unitary representations in Lie algebras.Comment: 20 pages, revised to clarify the problem addressed and solve

What measurable zero point fluctuations can(not) tell us about dark energy

We show that laboratory experiments cannot measure the absolute value of dark energy. All known experiments rely on electromagnetic interactions. They are thus insensitive to particles and fields that interact only weakly with ordinary matter. In addition, Josephson junction experiments only measure differences in vacuum energy similar to Casimir force measurements. Gravity, however, couples to the absolute value. Finally we note that Casimir force measurements have tested zero point fluctuations up to energies of ~10 eV, well above the dark energy scale of ~0.01 eV. Hence, the proposed cut-off in the fluctuation spectrum is ruled out experimentally.Comment: 4 page

Lightlike infinity in GCA models of Spacetime

This paper discusses a 7 dimensional conformal geometric algebra model for spacetime based on the notion that spacelike and timelike infinities are distinct. I show how naturally of the dimensions represents the lightlike infinity and appears redundant in computations, yet usefull in interpretationComment: 12 page

Arithmetic Spacetime Geometry from String Theory

An arithmetic framework to string compactification is described. The approach is exemplified by formulating a strategy that allows to construct geometric compactifications from exactly solvable theories at $c=3$. It is shown that the conformal field theoretic characters can be derived from the geometry of spacetime, and that the geometry is uniquely determined by the two-dimensional field theory on the world sheet. The modular forms that appear in these constructions admit complex multiplication, and allow an interpretation as generalized McKay-Thompson series associated to the Mathieu and Conway groups. This leads to a string motivated notion of arithmetic moonshine.Comment: 36 page

CMBfit: Rapid WMAP likelihood calculations with normal parameters

We present a method for ultra-fast confrontation of the WMAP cosmic microwave background observations with theoretical models, implemented as a publicly available software package called CMBfit, useful for anyone wishing to measure cosmological parameters by combining WMAP with other observations. The method takes advantage of the underlying physics by transforming into a set of parameters where the WMAP likelihood surface is accurately fit by the exponential of a quartic or sextic polynomial. Building on previous physics based approximations by Hu et.al., Kosowsky et.al. and Chu et.al., it combines their speed with precision cosmology grade accuracy. A Fortran code for computing the WMAP likelihood for a given set of parameters is provided, pre-calibrated against CMBfast, accurate to Delta lnL ~ 0.05 over the entire 2sigma region of the parameter space for 6 parameter ``vanilla'' Lambda CDM models. We also provide 7-parameter fits including spatial curvature, gravitational waves and a running spectral index.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, References added, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.D., a Fortran code can be downloaded from http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/cmbfit