5,791 research outputs found
Looking at cosmic near-infrared background radiation anisotropies
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) contains emissions accumulated over the
entire history of the Universe, including from objects inaccessible to
individual telescopic studies. The near-IR (~1-10 mic) part of the CIB, and its
fluctuations, reflects emissions from nucleosynthetic sources and
gravitationally accreting black holes (BHs). If known galaxies are removed to
sufficient depths the source-subtracted CIB fluctuations at near-IR can reveal
sources present in the first-stars-era and possibly new stellar populations at
more recent times. This review discusses the recent progress in this newly
emerging field which identified, with new data and methodology, significant
source-subtracted CIB fluctuations substantially in excess of what can be
produced by remaining known galaxies. The CIB fluctuations further appear
coherent with unresolved cosmic X-ray background (CXB) indicating a very high
fraction of BHs among the new sources producing the CIB fluctuations. These
observations have led to intensive theoretical efforts to explain the
measurements and their properties. While current experimental configurations
have limitations in decisively probing these theories, their potentially
remarkable implications will be tested in the upcoming CIB measurements with
the ESA's Euclid dark energy mission. We describe the goals and methodologies
of LIBRAE (Looking at Infrared Background Radiation with Euclid), a
NASA-selected project for CIB science with Euclid, which has the potential for
transforming the field into a new area of precision cosmology.Comment: Reviews of Modern Physics, to appea
On Supergroups with Odd Clifford Parameters and Supersymmetry with Modified Leibniz Rule
We investigate supergroups with Grassmann parameters replaced by odd Clifford
parameters. The connection with non-anticommutative supersymmetry is discussed.
A Berezin-like calculus for odd Clifford variables is introduced. Fermionic
covariant derivatives for supergroups with odd Clifford variables are derived.
Applications to supersymmetric quantum mechanics are made. Deformations of the
original supersymmetric theories are encountered when the fermionic covariant
derivatives do not obey the graded Leibniz property. The simplest non-trivial
example is given by the N=2 SQM with a real multiplet and a cubic
potential. The action is real. Depending on the overall sign ("Euclidean" or
"Lorentzian") of the deformation, a Bender-Boettcher pseudo-hermitian
hamiltonian is encountered when solving the equation of motion of the auxiliary
field. A possible connection of our framework with the Drinfeld twist
deformation of supersymmetry is pointed out.Comment: Final version to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys. A; 20 page
Non-Perturbative Green's Functions in Theories with Extended Superconformal Symmetry
The multiplets that occur in four dimensional rigidly supersymmetric theories
can be described either by chiral superfields in Minkowski superspace or
analytic superfields in harmonic superspace. The superconformal Ward identities
for Green's functions of gauge invariant operators of these types are derived.
It is shown that there are no chiral superconformal invariants. It is further
shown that the Green's functions of analytic operators are severely restricted
by the superconformal Ward when analyticity is taken into account.Comment: 17 pages, plain tex. Some conjectures that were in the original paper
are clarifed in the light of more recent work to which we give references.
See Note added for detail
Duals of noncommutative supersymmetric U(1) gauge theory
Parent actions for component fields are utilized to derive the dual of
supersymmetric U(1) gauge theory in 4 dimensions. Generalization of the
Seiberg-Witten map to the component fields of noncommutative supersymmetric
U(1) gauge theory is analyzed. Through this transformation we proposed parent
actions for noncommutative supersymmetric U(1) gauge theory as generalization
of the ordinary case.Duals of noncommutative supersymmetric U(1) gauge theory
are obtained. Duality symmetry under the interchange of fields with duals
accompanied by the replacement of the noncommutativity parameter
\Theta_{\mu\nu} with \tilde{\Theta}_{\mu \nu} =
\epsilon_{\mu\nu\rho\sigma}\Theta^{\rho\sigma} of the non--supersymmetric case
is broken at the level of actions. We proposed a noncommutative parent action
for the component fields which generates actions possessing this duality
symmetry.Comment: Typos corrected. Version which will appear in JHE
Valorization of the inedible pistachio shells into nanoscale transition metal and nitrogen codoped carbon-based electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen reduction reaction
Making a consistency with the objectives of circular economy, herein, waste pistachios shells were utilized for the development of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts which are the key bottleneck in the technological evolution of electrolyzers and fuel cells, respectively. As an alternative to scarce and expensive platinum-group-metal (PGM) electrocatalysts, metal nitrogen carbons (MNCs) are emerging as a promising candidate for both aforementioned electrocatalysis where iron and nickel are the metal of choice for ORR and HER, respectively. Therefore, FeNCs and NiNCs were fabricated utilizing inedible pistachio shells as a low-cost biosource of carbon. The steps involved in the fabrication of electrocatalyst were correlated with electrochemical performance in alkaline media. Encouraging onset potential of similar to 0.88 V vs RHE with a possibility of a 2 +2 reaction pathway was observed in pyrolyzed and ball-milled FeNC. However, HF etching for template removal slightly affected the kinetics and eventually resulted in a relatively higher yield of peroxide. In parallel, the pyrolyzed NiNC demonstrated a lower HER overpotential of similar to 0.4 V vs RHE at -10 mA cm(-2). Nevertheless, acid washing adversely affected the HER performance and consequently, very high overpotential was witnessed
BPS dyons and Hesse flow
We revisit BPS solutions to classical N=2 low energy effective gauge
theories. It is shown that the BPS equations can be solved in full generality
by the introduction of a Hesse potential, a symplectic analog of the
holomorphic prepotential. We explain how for non-spherically symmetric,
non-mutually local solutions, the notion of attractor flow generalizes to
gradient flow with respect to the Hesse potential. Furthermore we show that in
general there is a non-trivial magnetic complement to this flow equation that
is sourced by the momentum current in the solution.Comment: 25 pages, references adde
Massive higher spins and holography
We review recent progress towards the understanding of higher spin gauge
symmetry breaking in AdS space from a holographic vantage point. According to
the AdS/CFT correspondence, N=4 SYM theory at vanishing coupling constant
should be dual to a theory in AdS which exhibits higher spin gauge symmetry
enhancement. When the SYM coupling is non-zero, all but a handful of HS
currents are violated by anomalies, and correspondingly local higher spin
symmetry in the bulk gets spontaneously broken. In agreement with previous
results and holographic expectations, we find that, barring one notable
exception (spin 1 eating spin 0), the Goldstone modes responsible for HS
symmetry breaking in AdS have non-vanishing mass even in the limit in which the
gauge symmetry is restored. We show that spontaneous breaking a' la
Stueckelberg implies that the mass of the relevant spin s'=s-1 Goldstone field
is exactly the one predicted by the correspondence.Comment: 8 pages, talk presented by M.B. at the "Fourth Meeting on Constrained
Dynamics and Quantum gravity" held in Cala Gonone (Sardinia, Italy),
September 12-16, 200
Supersymmetry in noncommutative superspaces
Non commutative superspaces can be introduced as the Moyal-Weyl quantization
of a Poisson bracket for classical superfields. Different deformations are
studied corresponding to constant background fields in string theory.
Supersymmetric and non supersymmetric deformations can be defined, depending on
the differential operators used to define the Poisson bracket. Some examples of
deformed, 4 dimensional lagrangians are given. For extended superspace (N>1),
some new deformations can be defined, with no analogue in the N=1 case.Comment: 23 pages, AMS-LaTeX. Misprints corrected, references adde
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