Determination of Cosmological Parameters

Rapid progress has been made recently toward the measurement of cosmological parameters. Still, there are areas remaining where future progress will be relatively slow and difficult, and where further attention is needed. In this review, the status of measurements of the matter density, the vacuum energy density or cosmological constant, the Hubble constant, and ages of the oldest measured objects are summarized. Many recent, independent dynamical measurements are yielding a low value for the matter density of about 1/3 the critical density. New evidence from type Ia supernovae suggests that the vacuum energy density may be non-zero. Many recent Hubble constant measurements appear to be converging in the range of 65-75 km/sec/Mpc. Eliminating systematic errors lies at the heart of accurate measurements for all of these parameters; as a result, a wide range of cosmological parameter space is currently still open. Fortunately, the prospects for accurately measuring cosmological parameters continue to increase

Measuring the Hubble Constant with the Hubble Space Telescope

Ten years ago our team completed the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the extragalactic distance scale. Cepheids were detected in some 25 galaxies and used to calibrate four secondary distance indicators that reach out into the expansion field beyond the noise of galaxy peculiar velocities. The result was H_0 = 72 +/- 8 km/sec/Mpc and put an end to galaxy distances uncertain by a factor of two. This work has been awarded the Gruber Prize in Cosmology for 2009.Comment: Gruber Prize Lecture to be published in Transactions of the IA

The Measure of Cosmological Parameters

New, large, ground and space telescopes are contributing to an exciting and rapid period of growth in observational cosmology. The subject is now far from its earlier days of being data-starved and unconstrained, and new data are fueling a healthy interplay between observations and experiment and theory. I briefly review here the status of measurements of a number of quantities of interest in cosmology: the Hubble constant, the total mass-energy density, the matter density, the cosmological constant or dark energy component, and the total optical background light.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, to be published in "2001: A Spacetime Odyssey: Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics", Michael J. Duff & James T. Liu, eds., (World Scientific, Singapore), in pres

Exact Topological Quantum Order in D=3 and Beyond: Branyons and Brane-Net Condensates

We construct an exactly solvable Hamiltonian acting on a 3-dimensional lattice of spin-$\frac 1 2$ systems that exhibits topological quantum order. The ground state is a string-net and a membrane-net condensate. Excitations appear in the form of quasiparticles and fluxes, as the boundaries of strings and membranes, respectively. The degeneracy of the ground state depends upon the homology of the 3-manifold. We generalize the system to $D\geq 4$, were different topological phases may occur. The whole construction is based on certain special complexes that we call colexes.Comment: Revtex4 file, color figures, minor correction

An extended Hubbard model with ring exchange: a route to a non-Abelian topological phase

We propose an extended Hubbard model on a 2D Kagome lattice with an additional ring-exchange term. The particles can be either bosons or spinless fermions . At a special filling fraction of 1/6 the model is analyzed in the lowest non-vanishing order of perturbation theory. Such ``undoped'' model is closely related to the Quantum Dimer Model. We show how to arrive at an exactly soluble point whose ground state manifold is the extensively degenerate ``d-isotopy space'', a necessary precondition for for a certain type of non-Abelian topological order. Near the ``special'' values, $d = 2 \cos \pi/(k+2)$, this space is expected to collapse to a stable topological phase with anyonic excitations closely related to SU(2) Chern-Simons theory at level k.Comment: 4 pages, 2 colour figures, submitted to PRL. For an extended treatment of a more general family of models see cond-mat/030912

Neutrino mass constraint from CMB and its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters

We show that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data of WMAP can give subelectronvolt limit on the neutrino mass: m_nu < 0.63 eV (95% CL). We also investigate its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters. In particular, we show the Hubble constant derived from the WMAP data decreases considerably when the neutrino mass is a few times 0.1 eV.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, prepared for the TAUP2007 Proceeding

Continuous star cluster formation in the spiral NGC 45

We determined ages for 52 star clusters with masses < 10^6 solar masses in the low surface brightness spiral galaxy NGC 45. Four of these candidates are old globular clusters located in the bulge. The remaining ones span a large age range. The cluster ages suggest a continuous star/cluster formation history without evidence for bursts, consistent with the galaxy being located in a relatively unperturbed environment in the outskirts of the Sculptor group.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. To appear in "Island Universes - Structure and Evolution of Disk Galaxies", Terschelling (Netherlands), July 200