596 research outputs found
Melvin universe as a limit of the C-metric
It is demonstrated that the Melvin universe representing the spacetime with a
strong 'homogeneous' electric field can by obtained from the spacetime of two
accelerated charged black holes by a suitable limiting procedure. The behavior
of various invariantly defined geometrical quantities in this limit is also
studied.Comment: 5 pages, no figures [v2: two references added
Black hole formation from colliding bubbles
Some indication of conditions that are necessary for the formation of black
holes from the collision of bubbles during a supercooled phase transition in
the the early universe are explored. Two colliding bubbles can never form a
black hole. Three colliding bubbles can refocus the energy in their walls to
the extent that it becomes infinite.Comment: 12 pages, NCL93-TP13 (RevTeX
The Rotating Quantum Vacuum
We derive conditions for rotating particle detectors to respond in a variety
of bounded spacetimes and compare the results with the folklore that particle
detectors do not respond in the vacuum state appropriate to their motion.
Applications involving possible violations of the second law of thermodynamics
are briefly addressed.Comment: Plain TeX, 10 pages (to appear in PRD
Stochastic Tachyon Fluctuations, Marginal Deformations and Shock Waves in String Theory
Starting with exact solutions to string theory on curved spacetimes we obtain
deformations that represent gravitational shock waves. These may exist in the
presence or absence of sources. Sources are effectively induced by a tachyon
field that randomly fluctuates around a zero condensate value. It is shown that
at the level of the underlying conformal field theory (CFT) these deformations
are marginal and moreover all \a'-corrections are taken into account. Explicit
results are given when the original undeformed 4-dimensional backgrounds
correspond to tensor products of combinations of 2-dimensional CFT's, for
instance SL(2,R)/R \times SU(2)/U(1).Comment: 26 pages, harvmac, no figures. Very minor modifications, and in
addition conditions (B.3) and (B.4) were also obtained using beta-function
equations. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Non-reductivism and the Metaphilosophy of Mind
This paper discusses the metaphilosophical assumptions that have dominated analytic philosophy of mind, and how they gave rise to the central question that the best-known forms of non-reductivism available have sought to answer, namely: how can mind fit within nature? Its goal is to make room for forms of non-reductivism that have challenged the fruitfulness of this question, and which have taken a different approach to the so-called “placement” problem. Rather than trying to solve the placement problem, the forms of non-reductivism discussed in this paper have put pressure on the metaphilosophical assumptions that have given rise to the question of the place of mind in nature in the first instance
Twin paradox and space topology
If space is compact, then a traveller twin can leave Earth, travel back home
without changing direction and find her sedentary twin older than herself. We
show that the asymmetry between their spacetime trajectories lies in a
topological invariant of their spatial geodesics, namely the homotopy class.
This illustrates how the spacetime symmetry invariance group, although valid
{\it locally}, is broken down {\it globally} as soon as some points of space
are identified. As a consequence, any non--trivial space topology defines
preferred inertial frames along which the proper time is longer than along any
other one.Comment: 6 pages, latex, 3 figure
The twin paradox and Mach's principle
The problem of absolute motion in the context of the twin paradox is
discussed. It is shown that the various versions of the clock paradox feature
some aspects which Mach might have been appreciated. However, the ultimate
cause of the behavior of the clocks must be attributed to the autonomous status
of spacetime, thereby proving the relational program advocated by Mach as
impracticable.Comment: Latex2e, 11 pages, 6 figures, 33 references, no tables. Accepted for
publication in The European Physical Journal PLUS (EPJ PLUS
Cosmological perturbations and classical change of signature
Cosmological perturbations on a manifold admitting signature change are
studied. The background solution consists in a Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-
Walker (FLRW) Universe filled by a constant scalar field playing the role of a
cosmological constant. It is shown that no regular solution exist satisfying
the junction conditions at the surface of change. The comparison with similar
studies in quantum cosmology is made.Comment: 35 pages, latex, 2 figures available at [email protected], to
appear in Physical Review
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