Decoherence in an accelerated universe

In this paper we study the decoherence processes of the semiclassical branches of an accelerated universe due to their interaction with a scalar field with given mass. We use a third quantization formalism to analyze the decoherence between two branches of a parent universe caused by their interaction with the vaccum fluctuations of the space-time, and with other parent unverses in a multiverse scenario.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Cosmological predictions from the Misner brane

Within the spirit of five-dimensional gravity in the Randall-Sundrum scenario, in this paper we consider cosmological and gravitational implications induced by forcing the spacetime metric to satisfy a Misner-like symmetry. We first show that in the resulting Misner-brane framework the Friedmann metric for a radiation dominated flat universe and the Schwarzschild or anti-de Sitter black holes metrics are exact solutions on the branes, but the model cannot accommodate any inflationary solution. The horizon and flatness problems can however be solved in Misner-brane cosmology by causal and noncausal communications through the extra dimension between distant regions which are outside the horizon. Based on a semiclassical approximation to the path-integral approach, we have calculated the quantum state of the Misner-brane universe and the quantum perturbations induced on its metric by brane propagation along the fifth direction. We have then considered testable predictions from our model. These include a scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations whose amplitude can be naturally accommodated to the required value 10$^{-5}-10^{-6}$, and a power spectrum of CMB anisotropies whose acoustic peaks are at the same sky angles as those predicted by inflationary models, but having much smaller secondary-peak intensities. These predictions seem to be compatible with COBE and recent Boomerang and Maxima measurementsComment: 16 pages, RevTe

Soil and water pollution in a banana production region in tropical Mexico

The effects of abundant Mancozeb (Mn, Zn— bisdithiocarbamate) applications (2.5 kg ha-1week-1 for 10 years) on soil and surface-, subsurface- and groundwater pollution were monitored in a banana production region of tropical Mexico. In soils, severe manganese accumulation was observed, wheras the main metabolite ethylenethiourea was near the detection limit. Surface and subsurface water was highly polluted with ethylenethiourea, the main metabolite of Mancozeb (22.5 and 4.3 lg L-1, respectively), but not with manganese. In deep ground water, no ethylenethiourea was detected. The level of pollution in the region presents a worrisome risk for aquatic life and for human health

Census of HII regions in NGC 6754 derived with MUSE: Constraints on the metal mixing scale

We present a study of the HII regions in the galaxy NGC 6754 from a two pointing mosaic comprising 197,637 individual spectra, using Integral Field Spectrocopy (IFS) recently acquired with the MUSE instrument during its Science Verification program. The data cover the entire galaxy out to ~2 effective radii (re ), sampling its morphological structures with unprecedented spatial resolution for a wide-field IFU. A complete census of the H ii regions limited by the atmospheric seeing conditions was derived, comprising 396 individual ionized sources. This is one of the largest and most complete catalogue of H ii regions with spectroscopic information in a single galaxy. We use this catalogue to derive the radial abundance gradient in this SBb galaxy, finding a negative gradient with a slope consistent with the characteristic value for disk galaxies recently reported. The large number of H ii regions allow us to estimate the typical mixing scale-length (rmix ~0.4 re ), which sets strong constraints on the proposed mechanisms for metal mixing in disk galaxies, like radial movements associated with bars and spiral arms, when comparing with simulations. We found evidence for an azimuthal variation of the oxygen abundance, that may be related with the radial migration. These results illustrate the unique capabilities of MUSE for the study of the enrichment mechanisms in Local Universe galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, 7 Figurs, accepted for publishing in A&

Quantum time machine

The continuation of Misner space into the Euclidean region is seen to imply the topological restriction that the period of the closed spatial direction becomes time-dependent. This restriction results in a modified Lorentzian Misner space in which the renormalized stress-energy tensor for quantized complex massless scalar fields becomes regular everywhere, even on the chronology horizon. A quantum-mechanically stable time machine with just the sub-microscopic size may then be constructed out of the modified Misner space, for which the semiclassical Hawking's chronology protection conjecture is no longer an obstruction.Comment: 6 pages, RevTe

Observation of strong wavelength-shifting in the argon-tetrafluoromethane system

We report the scintillation spectra of Ar-CF$_4$ mixtures in the range 210-800~nm, obtained under X-ray irradiation for various pressures (1-5~bar) and concentrations (0-100%). Special care was taken to eliminate effects related to space charge and recombination, so that results can be extrapolated following conventional wisdom to those expected for minimum ionizing particles under the typical electric fields employed in gaseous instrumentation. Our study sheds light into the microscopic pathways leading to scintillation in this family of mixtures.Comment: Updated to match current journal submissio