Curvature perturbations from dimensional decoupling

The scalar modes of the geometry induced by dimensional decoupling are investigated. In the context of the low energy string effective action, solutions can be found where the spatial part of the background geometry is the direct product of two maximally symmetric Euclidean manifolds whose related scale factors evolve at a dual rate so that the expanding dimensions first accelerate and then decelerate while the internal dimensions always contract. After introducing the perturbative treatment of the inhomogeneities, a class of five-dimensional geometries is discussed in detail. Quasi-normal modes of the system are derived and the numerical solution for the evolution of the metric inhomogeneities shows that the fluctuations of the internal dimensions provide a term that can be interpreted, in analogy with the well-known four-dimensional situation, as a non-adiabatic pressure density variation. Implications of this result are discussed with particular attention to string cosmological scenarios.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figure

Arch Cube

The volume collects the results of a course in “Assisted architectural design” which experimented with some innovative aspects in the teaching of Drawing. The new frontier is now represented by computer tools and very complex processing programs that incorporate all the previous techniques and propose new ones, becoming for the architect the main instrument of restorative and expressive potential. The experience involved the course students not only in learning the most up-to-date computer graphics programs, but above all in the development of this new expression technique in close relation to a design experience

Homogeneous magnetic fields in fully anisotropic string cosmological backgrounds

We present new solutions of the string cosmological effective action in the presence of a homogeneous Maxwell field with pure magnetic component. Exact solutions are derived in the case of space-independent dilaton and vanishing torsion background. In our examples the four dimensional metric is either of Bianchi-type III and VI$_{-1}$ or Kantowski-Sachs.Comment: 4 page

Fully Anisotropic String Cosmologies, Maxwell Fields and Primordial Shear

We present a class of exact cosmological solutions of the low energy string effective action in the presence of a homogeneous magnetic fields. We discuss the physical properties of the obtained (fully anisotropic) cosmologies paying particular attention to their vacuum limit and to the possible isotropization mechanisms. We argue that quadratic curvature corrections are able to isotropize fully anisotropic solutions whose scale factors describe accelerated expansion. Moreover, the degree of isotropization grows with the duration of the string phase. We follow the fate of the shear parameter in a decelerated phase where, dilaton, magnetic fields and radiation fluid are simultaneously present. In the absence of any magnetic field a long string phase immediately followed by radiation is able to erase large anisotropies. Conversely, if a short string phase is followed by a long dilaton dominated phase the anisotropies can be present, in principle, also at later times. The presence of magnetic seeds after the end of the string phase can induce further anisotropies which can be studied within the formalism reported in this paper.Comment: 19 pages in Revtex style, 14 Encapsulated figure

Backgrounds of squeezed relic photons and their spatial correlations

We discuss the production of multi-photons squeezed states induced by the time variation of the (Abelian) gauge coupling constant in a string cosmological context. Within a fully quantum mechanical approach we solve the time evolution of the mean number of produced photons in terms of the squeezing parameters and in terms of the gauge coupling. We compute the first (amplitude interference) and second order (intensity interference) correlation functions of the magnetic part of the photon background. The photons produced thanks to the variation of the dilaton coupling are strongly bunched for the realistic case where the growth of the dilaton coupling is required to explain the presence of large scale magnetic fields and, possibly of a Faraday rotation of the Cosmic Microwave Background.Comment: 9 pages in LaTex styl

Graviton Spectra in String Cosmology

We propose to uncover the signature of a stringy era in the primordial Universe by searching for a prominent peak in the relic graviton spectrum. This feature, which in our specific model terminates an $\omega^3$ increase and initiates an $\omega^{-7}$ decrease, is induced during the so far overlooked bounce of the scale factor between the collapsing deflationary era (or pre-Big Bang) and the expanding inflationary era (or post-Big Bang). We evaluate both analytically and numerically the frequency and the intensity of the peak and we show that they may likely fall in the realm of the new generation of interferometric detectors. The existence of a peak is at variance with ordinarily monotonic (either increasing or decreasing) graviton spectra of canonical cosmologies; its detection would therefore offer strong support to string cosmology.Comment: 14 pages, RevTex source and 6 figures.p

Singularity free dilaton-driven cosmologies and pre-little-bang

There are no reasons why the singularity in the growth of the dilaton coupling should not be regularised, in a string cosmological context, by the presence of classical inhomogeneities. We discuss a class of inhomogeneous dilaton-driven models whose curvature invariants are all bounded and regular in time and space. We prove that the non-space-like geodesics of these models are all complete in the sense that none of them reaches infinity for a finite value of the affine parameter. We conclude that our examples represent truly singularity-free solutions of the low energy beta functions. We discuss some symmetries of the obtained solutions and we clarify their physical interpretation. We also give examples of solutions with spherical symmetry. In our scenario each physical quantity is everywhere defined in time and space, the big-bang singularity is replaced by a maximal curvature phase where the dilaton kinetic energy reaches its maximum. The maximal curvature is always smaller than one (in string units) and the coupling constant is also smaller than one and it grows between two regimes of constant dilaton, implying, together with the symmetries of the solutions, that higher genus and higher curvature corrections are negligible. We argue that our examples describe, in a string cosmological context, the occurrence of ``little bangs''(i.e. high curvature phases which never develop physical singularities). They also suggest the possibility of an unexplored ``pre-little-bang'' phase.Comment: 25 pages in LaTex style, 3 encapsulated figure