A Meandering Inflaton

If the cosmological inflationary scenario took place in the cosmic landscape in string theory, the inflaton, the scalar mode responsible for inflation, would have meandered in a complicated multi-dimensional potential. We show that this meandering property naturally leads to many e-folds of inflation, a necessary condition for a successful inflationary scenario. This behavior also leads to fluctuations in the primordial power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which may be detected in a near future cosmic variance limited experiment like PLANCK.Comment: minor additions, matched to published versio

Energy levels of a parabolically confined quantum dot in the presence of spin-orbit interaction

We present a theoretical study of the energy levels in a parabolically confined quantum dot in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI). The features of some low-lying states in various strengths of the SOI are examined at finite magnetic fields. The presence of a magnetic field enhances the possibility of the spin polarization and the SOI leads to different energy dependence on magnetic fields applied. Furthermore, in high magnetic fields, the spectra of low-lying states show basic features of Fock-Darwin levels as well as Landau levels.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted by J. Appl. Phy

Spectrum of low-lying s3QQˉs^{3}Q\bar{Q} configurations with negative parity

Spectrum of low-lying five-quark configurations with strangeness quantum number $S=-3$ and negative parity is studied in three kinds of constituent quark models, namely the one gluon exchange, Goldstone Boson exchange, and instanton-induced hyperfine interaction models, respectively. Our numerical results show that the lowest energy states in all the three employed models are lying at $\sim$1800 MeV, about 200 MeV lower than predictions of various quenched three-quark models. In addition, it is very interesting that the state with the lowest energy in one gluon exchange model is with spin 3/2, but 1/2 in the other two models.Comment: Version published in Phys. Rev.

Dynamic Topology Adaptation Based on Adaptive Link Selection Algorithms for Distributed Estimation

This paper presents adaptive link selection algorithms for distributed estimation and considers their application to wireless sensor networks and smart grids. In particular, exhaustive search--based least--mean--squares(LMS)/recursive least squares(RLS) link selection algorithms and sparsity--inspired LMS/RLS link selection algorithms that can exploit the topology of networks with poor--quality links are considered. The proposed link selection algorithms are then analyzed in terms of their stability, steady--state and tracking performance, and computational complexity. In comparison with existing centralized or distributed estimation strategies, key features of the proposed algorithms are: 1) more accurate estimates and faster convergence speed can be obtained; and 2) the network is equipped with the ability of link selection that can circumvent link failures and improve the estimation performance. The performance of the proposed algorithms for distributed estimation is illustrated via simulations in applications of wireless sensor networks and smart grids.Comment: 14 figure