Vacuum energy sequestering and graviton loops

We recently formulated a local mechanism of vacuum energy sequester. This mechanism automatically removes all matter loop contributions to vacuum energy from the stress energy tensor which sources the curvature. Here we adapt the local vacuum energy sequestering mechanism to also cancel all the vacuum energy loops involving virtual gravitons, in addition to the vacuum energy generated by matter fields alone

Towards Atomic Level Simulation of Electron Devices Including the Semiconductor-Oxide Interface

We report a milestone in device modeling whereby a planar MOSFET with extremely thin silicon on insulator channel is simulated at the atomic level, including significant parts of the gate and buried oxides explicitly in the simulation domain, in ab initio fashion, i.e without material or geometrical parameters. We use the density-functional-based tight-binding formalism for constructing the device Hamiltonian, and non-equilibrium Green's functions formalism for calculating electron current. Simulations of Si/SiO2 super-cells agree very well with experimentally observed band-structure phenomena in SiO2-confined sub-6 nm thick Si films. Device simulations of ETSOI MOSFET with 3 nm channel length and sub-nm channel thickness also agree well with reported measurements of the transfer characteristics of a similar transistor.published_or_final_versio

Permittivity of oxidized ultra-thin silicon films from atomistic simulations

We establish the dependence of the permittivity of oxidized ultra-thin silicon films on the film thickness by means of atomistic simulations within the density-functional-based tight-binding theory (DFTB). This is of utmost importance for modeling ultra- and extremely-thin silicon-on-insulator MOSFETs, and for evaluating their scaling potential. We demonstrate that electronic contribution to the dielectric response naturally emerges from the DFTB Hamiltonian when coupled to Poisson equation solved in vacuum, without phenomenological parameters, and obtain good agreement with available experimental data. Comparison to calculations of H-passivated Si films reveals much weaker dependence of permittivity on film thickness for the SiO2-passivated Si, with less than 18% reduction in the case of 0.9 nm silicon-on-insulator.published_or_final_versio

Hawking radiation of nonsingular black holes in two dimensions

In this letter we study the process of Hawking radiation of a black hole assuming the existence of a limiting physical curvature scale. The particular model is constructed using the Limiting Curvature Hypothesis (LCH) and in the context of two-dimensional dilaton gravity. The black hole solution exhibits properties of the standard Schwarzschild solution at large values of the radial coordinate. However, near the center, the black hole is nonsingular and the metric becomes that of de Sitter spacetime. The Hawking temperature is calculated using the method of complex paths. We find that such black holes radiate eternally and never completely evaporate. The final state is an eternally radiating relic, near the fundamental scale, which should make a viable dark matter candidate. We briefly comment on the black hole information loss problem and the production of such black holes in collider experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; minor revisions; references added; version to appear in JHE

A Cosmological Theory without Singularities

A theory of gravitation is constructed in which all homogeneous and isotropic solutions are nonsingular, and in which all curvature invariants are bounded. All solutions for which curvature invariants approach their limiting values approach de Sitter space. The action for this theory is obtained by a higher derivative modification of Einstein's theory. We expect that our model can easily be generalized to solve the singularity problem also for anisotropic cosmologies.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures (available as hard copies from the authors), uses phyzzx, BROWN-HET-89

Parity violating cylindrical shell in the framework of QED

We present calculations of Casimir energy (CE) in a system of quantized electromagnetic (EM) field interacting with an infinite circular cylindrical shell (which we call `the defect'). Interaction is described in the only QFT-consistent way by Chern-Simon action concentrated on the defect, with a single coupling constant $a$. For regularization of UV divergencies of the theory we use % physically motivated Pauli-Villars regularization of the free EM action. The divergencies are extracted as a polynomial in regularization mass $M$, and they renormalize classical part of the surface action. We reveal the dependence of CE on the coupling constant $a$. Corresponding Casimir force is attractive for all values of $a$. For $a\to\infty$ we reproduce the known results for CE for perfectly conducting cylindrical shell first obtained by DeRaad and Milton.Comment: Typos corrected. Some references adde

Classical model of elementary particle with Bertotti-Robinson core and extremal black holes

We discuss the question, whether the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m RN) metric can be glued to another solutions of Einstein-Maxwell equations in such a way that (i) the singularity at r=0 typical of the RN metric is removed (ii), matching is smooth. Such a construction could be viewed as a classical model of an elementary particle balanced by its own forces without support by an external agent. One choice is the Minkowski interior that goes back to the old Vilenkin and Fomin's idea who claimed that in this case the bare delta-like stresses at the horizon vanish if the RN metric is extremal. However, the relevant entity here is the integral of these stresses over the proper distance which is infinite in the extremal case. As a result of the competition of these two factors, the Lanczos tensor does not vanish and the extremal RN cannot be glued to the Minkowski metric smoothly, so the elementary-particle model as a ball empty inside fails. We examine the alternative possibility for the extremal RN metric - gluing to the Bertotti-Robinson (BR) metric. For a surface placed outside the horizon there always exist bare stresses but their amplitude goes to zero as the radius of the shell approaches that of the horizon. This limit realizes the Wheeler idea of "mass without mass" and "charge without charge". We generalize the model to the extremal Kerr-Newman metric glued to the rotating analog of the BR metric.Comment: 23 pages. Misprints correcte

3D-4D Interlinkage Of qqq Wave Functions Under 3D Support For Pairwise Bethe-Salpeter Kernels

Using the method of Green's functions within a Bethe-Salpeter framework characterized by a pairwise qq interaction with a Lorentz-covariant 3D support to its kernel, the 4D BS wave function for a system of 3 identical relativistic spinless quarks is reconstructed from the corresponding 3D form which satisfies a fully connected 3D BSE. This result is a 3-body generalization of a similar 2-body result found earlier under identical conditions of a 3D support to the corresponding qq-bar BS kernel under Covariant Instaneity (CIA for short). (The generalization from spinless to fermion quarks is straightforward). To set the CIA with 3D BS kernel support ansatz in the context of contemporary approaches to the qqq baryon problem, a model scalar 4D qqq BSE with pairwise contact interactions to simulate the NJL-Faddeev equations is worked out fully, and a comparison of both vertex functions shows that the CIA vertex reduces exactly to the NJL form in the limit of zero spatial range. This consistency check on the CIA vertex function is part of a fuller accounting for its mathematical structure whose physical motivation is traceable to the role of `spectroscopy' as an integral part of the dynamics.Comment: 20 pages, Latex, submitted via the account of K.-C. Yan

Radiation of Charged Particles by Charged Black Hole

The probability of a charged particle production by the electric field of a charged black hole depends essentially on the particle energy. This probability is found in the nonrelativistic and ultrarelativistic limits. The range of values for the mass and charge of a black hole is indicated where the discussed mechanism of radiation is dominating over the Hawking one.Comment: 10 pages, latex, 4 ps-figure

Radio-Frequency Measurements of Coherent Transition and Cherenkov Radiation: Implications for High-Energy Neutrino Detection

We report on measurements of 11-18 cm wavelength radio emission from interactions of 15.2 MeV pulsed electron bunches at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator. The electrons were observed both in a configuration where they produced primarily transition radiation from an aluminum foil, and in a configuration designed for the electrons to produce Cherenkov radiation in a silica sand target. Our aim was to emulate the large electron excess expected to develop during an electromagnetic cascade initiated by an ultra high-energy particle. Such charge asymmetries are predicted to produce strong coherent radio pulses, which are the basis for several experiments to detect high-energy neutrinos from the showers they induce in Antarctic ice and in the lunar regolith. We detected coherent emission which we attribute both to transition and possibly Cherenkov radiation at different levels depending on the experimental conditions. We discuss implications for experiments relying on radio emission for detection of electromagnetic cascades produced by ultra high-energy neutrinos.Comment: updated figure 10; fixed typo in equation 2.2; accepted by PR