A stereographic representation of Knoop hardness anisotropy

Indentation direction parameter for hardness anisotropy representation of single crystal on stereographic triangl

The Parallelometer: a mechanical device to study curvature

A simple mechanical device is introduced, the parallelometer, that can be used to measure curvatures of surfaces. The device can be used as a practical illustration of parallel transport of a vector and to study Berry phase shift when it is carried along a loop on the surface. Its connection to the Foucault pendulum is discussed. The experimental results can be successfully compared with the theoretical expectations. The experiment is inexpensive and conceptually easy to perform and understand for a beginner

Choptuik scaling in six dimensions

We perform numerical simulations of the critical gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric scalar field in 6 dimensions. The critical solution has discrete self-similarity. We find the critical exponent \gamma and the self-similarity period \Delta.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures RevTe

Collapse of a Circular Loop of Cosmic String

We study the collapse of a circular loop of cosmic string. The gravitational field of the string is treated using the weak field approximation. The gravitational radiation from the loop is evaluated numerically. The memtric of the loop near the point of collapse is found analytically.Comment: 15 page

Homothetic Self-Similar Solutions of the Three-Dimensional Brans-Dicke Gravity

All homothetic self-similar solutions of the Brans-Dicke scalar field in three-dimensional spacetime with circular symmetry are found in closed form.Comment: latex, five pages, without figur

Gravitating Fluxbranes

We consider the effect that gravity has when one tries to set up a constant background form field. We find that in analogy with the Melvin solution, where magnetic field lines self-gravitate to form a flux-tube, the self-gravity of the form field creates fluxbranes. Several exact solutions are found corresponding to different transverse spaces and world-volumes, a dilaton coupling is also considered.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Spherically symmetric scalar field collapse in any dimension

We describe a formalism and numerical approach for studying spherically symmetric scalar field collapse for arbitrary spacetime dimension d and cosmological constant Lambda. The presciption uses a double null formalism, and is based on field redefinitions first used to simplify the field equations in generic two-dimensional dilaton gravity. The formalism is used to construct code in which d and Lambda are input parameters. The code reproduces known results in d = 4 and d = 6 with Lambda = 0. We present new results for d = 5 with zero and negative Lambda.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, typos corrected, presentational changes, PRD in pres

Extremal dyonic black holes in D=4 Gauss-Bonnet gravity

We investigate extremal dyon black holes in the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) theory with higher curvature corrections in the form of the Gauss-Bonnet density coupled to the dilaton. In the same theory without the Gauss-Bonnet term the extremal dyon solutions exist only for discrete values of the dilaton coupling constant $a$. We show that the Gauss-Bonnet term acts as a dyon hair tonic enlarging the allowed values of $a$ to continuous domains in the plane $(a, q_m)$ the second parameter being the magnetic charge. In the limit of the vanishing curvature coupling (a large magnetic charge) the dyon solutions obtained tend to the Reissner-Nordstr\"om solution but not to the extremal dyons of the EMD theory. Both solutions have the same values of the horizon radius as a function of charges. The entropy of new dyonic black holes interpolates between the Bekenstein-Hawking value in the limit of the large magnetic charge (equivalent to the vanishing Gauss-Bonnet coupling) and twice this value for the vanishing magnetic charge. Although an expression for the entropy can be obtained analytically using purely local near-horizon solutions, its interpretation as the black hole entropy is legitimate only once the global black hole solution is known to exist, and we obtain numerically the corresponding conditions on the parameters. Thus, a purely local analysis is insufficient to fully understand the entropy of the curvature corrected black holes. We also find dyon solutions which are not asymptotically flat, but approach the linear dilaton background at infinity. They describe magnetic black holes on the electric linear dilaton background.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, revtex

Janis-Newman-Winicour and Wyman solutions are the same

We show that the well-known most general static and spherically symmetric exact solution to the Einstein-massless scalar equations given by Wyman is the same as one found by Janis, Newman and Winicour several years ago. We obtain the energy associated with this spacetime and find that the total energy for the case of the purely scalar field is zero.Comment: 9 pages, LaTex, no figures, misprints corrected, to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Ricci flows, wormholes and critical phenomena

We study the evolution of wormhole geometries under Ricci flow using numerical methods. Depending on values of initial data parameters, wormhole throats either pinch off or evolve to a monotonically growing state. The transition between these two behaviors exhibits a from of critical phenomena reminiscent of that observed in gravitational collapse. Similar results are obtained for initial data that describe space bubbles attached to asymptotically flat regions. Our numerical methods are applicable to "matter-coupled" Ricci flows derived from conformal invariance in string theory.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. References added and minor changes to match version accepted by CQG as a fast track communicatio