Gravitational instabilities and faster evolving density perturbations

The evolution of inhomogeneities in a spherical collapse model is studied by expanding the Einstein equation in powers of inverse radial parameter. In the linear regime, the density contrast is obtained for flat, closed and open universes. In addition to the usual modes, an infinite number of new growing modes are contained in the solutions for pressureless open and closed universes. In the nonlinear regime, we obtain the leading growing modes in closed forms for a flat universe and also, in the limits of small and large times, for an open universe.Comment: latex, 17 pages; electronic address for programs correcte

Holographic Superconductors in a Rotating Spacetime

We consider holographic superconductors in a rotating black string spacetime. In view of the mandatory introduction of the $A_\varphi$ component of the vector potential we are left with three equations to be solved. Their solutions show that the effect of the rotating parameter $a$ influences the critical temperature $T_c$ and the conductivity $\sigma$ in a simple but not trivial way.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, paper completely rewritten and improved. Version to appear in EPJ

Decay amplitudes in two-dimensional QCD

Decay amplitudes for mesons in two-dimensional QCD are discussed. We show that in spite of an infinite number of conserved charges, particle production is not entirely suppressed. This phenomenon is explained in terms of quantum corrections to the combined algebra of higher-conserved and spectrum-generating currents. We predict the qualitative form of particle production probabilities and verify that they are in agreement with numerical data. We also discuss four-dimensional self-dual Yang-Mills theory in the light of our results.Comment: We discuss in more detail the background material and elaborate on the consequences of the new results. New equations and text are added and the figures are efficiently regenerated by a fortran program, latex file, 13 pages, 4 figures in encapsulated postscript files, uses epsf. minor changes, version to appear in Physical Review

A precise formulation of the third law of thermodynamics

The third law of thermodynamics is formulated precisely: all points of the state space of zero temperature $\Gamma_0$ are physically adiabatically inaccessible from the state space of a simple system. In addition to implying the unattainability of absolute zero in finite time (or "by a finite number of operations"), it admits as corollary, under a continuity assumption, that all points of $\Gamma_0$ are adiabatically equivalent. We argue that the third law is universally valid for all macroscopic systems which obey the laws of quantum mechanics and/or quantum field theory. We also briefly discuss why a precise formulation of the third law for black holes remains an open problem.Comment: 24 pages, no figure