The Case for an Accelerating Universe from Supernovae

The unexpected faintness of high-redshift Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), as measured by two teams, has been interpreted as evidence that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. We review the current challenges to this interpretation and seek to answer whether the cosmological implications are compelling. We discuss future observations of SNe Ia which could offer extraordinary evidence to test acceleration.Comment: To appear as an Invited Review for PASP 20 pages, 13 figure

Anisotropic Dark Energy and the Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics

We consider a Bianchi type $I$ model in which anisotropic dark energy is interacting with dark matter and anisotropic radiation. With this scenario, we investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics. It is concluded that the validity of this law depends on different parameters like shear, skewness and equation of state.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Scr. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1008.0692 and arXiv:1106.241

The Dual Formulation of Cosmic Strings and Vortices

We study four dimensional systems of global, axionic and local strings. By using the path integral formalism, we derive the dual formulation of these systems, where Goldstone bosons, axions and missive vector bosons are described by antisymmetric tensor fields, and strings appear as a source for these tensor fields. We show also how magnetic monopoles attached to local strings are described in the dual formulation. We conclude with some remarks.Comment: 18 pages, CU-TP-588 and CERN-TH.6780/9

Measuring the Small-Scale Power Spectrum of Cosmic Density Fluctuations Through 21 cm Tomography Prior to the Epoch of Structure Formation

The thermal evolution of the cosmic gas decoupled from that of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at a redshift z~200. Afterwards and before the first stars had formed, the cosmic neutral hydrogen absorbed the CMB flux at its resonant 21cm spin-flip transition. We calculate the evolution of the spin temperature for this transition and the resulting anisotropies that are imprinted on the CMB sky due to linear density fluctuations during this epoch. These anisotropies at an observed wavelength of 10.56[(1+z)/50] meters, contain an amount of information that is orders of magnitude larger than any other cosmological probe. Their detection, although challenging, could tightly constrain any possible running of the spectral index from inflation (as suggested by WMAP), small deviations from Gaussianity, or any significant contribution from neutrinos or warm dark matter to the cosmic mass budget.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Isomorphs in model molecular liquids

Isomorphs are curves in the phase diagram along which a number of static and dynamic quantities are invariant in reduced units. A liquid has good isomorphs if and only if it is strongly correlating, i.e., the equilibrium virial/potential energy fluctuations are more than 90% correlated in the NVT ensemble. This paper generalizes isomorphs to liquids composed of rigid molecules and study the isomorphs of two systems of small rigid molecules, the asymmetric dumbbell model and the Lewis-Wahnstrom OTP model. In particular, for both systems we find that the isochoric heat capacity, the excess entropy, the reduced molecular center-of-mass self part of the intermediate scattering function, the reduced molecular center-of-mass radial distribution function to a good approximation are invariant along an isomorph. In agreement with theory, we also find that an instantaneous change of temperature and density from an equilibrated state point to another isomorphic state point leads to no relaxation. The isomorphs of the Lewis-Wahnstrom OTP model were found to be more approximative than those of the asymmetric dumbbell model, which is consistent with the OTP model being less strongly correlating. For both models we find "master isomorphs", i.e., isomorphs have identical shape in the virial/potential energy phase diagram.Comment: 20 page

The Fermi surface of CeCoIn5: dHvA

Measurements of the de Haas - van Alphen effect in the normal state of the heavy Fermion superconductor CeCoIn5 have been carried out using a torque cantilever at temperatures ranging from 20 to 500 mK and in fields up to 18 tesla. Angular dependent measurements of the extremal Fermi surface areas reveal a more extreme two dimensional sheet than is found in either CeRhIn5 or CeIrIn5. The effective masses of the measured frequencies range from 9 to 20 m*/m0.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PRB Rapid

Conditions for one-dimensional supersonic flow of quantum gases

One can use transsonic Bose-Einstein condensates of alkali atoms to establish the laboratory analog of the event horizon and to measure the acoustic version of Hawking radiation. We determine the conditions for supersonic flow and the Hawking temperature for realistic condensates on waveguides where an external potential plays the role of a supersonic nozzle. The transition to supersonic speed occurs at the potential maximum and the Hawking temperature is entirely determined by the curvature of the potential

Kinematics of Multigrid Monte Carlo

We study the kinematics of multigrid Monte Carlo algorithms by means of acceptance rates for nonlocal Metropolis update proposals. An approximation formula for acceptance rates is derived. We present a comparison of different coarse-to-fine interpolation schemes in free field theory, where the formula is exact. The predictions of the approximation formula for several interacting models are well confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations. The following rule is found: For a critical model with fundamental Hamiltonian H(phi), absence of critical slowing down can only be expected if the expansion of in terms of the shift psi contains no relevant (mass) term. We also introduce a multigrid update procedure for nonabelian lattice gauge theory and study the acceptance rates for gauge group SU(2) in four dimensions.Comment: 28 pages, 8 ps-figures, DESY 92-09

Nuclear shadowing at low photon energies

We calculate the shadowing effect in nuclear photoabsorption at low photon energies (1-3 GeV) within a multiple scattering approach. We avoid some of the high energy approximations that are usually made in simple Glauber theory like the narrow width and the eikonal approximation. We find that the main contribution to nuclear shadowing at low energies stems from $\rho^0$ mesons with masses well below their pole mass. We also show that the possibility of scattering in non forward directions allows for a new contribution to shadowing at low energies: the production of neutral pions as intermediate hadronic states enhances the shadowing effect in the onset region. For light nuclei and small photon energies they give rise to about 30% of the total shadowing effect.Comment: RevTeX, 16 pages including 6 eps figures; new calculation of effective pion propagator, negligible effect on results; version to be published in Phys. Rev.