White holes and eternal black holes

We investigate isolated white holes surrounded by vacuum, which correspond to the time reversal of eternal black holes that do not evaporate. We show that isolated white holes produce quasi- thermal Hawking radiation. The time reversal of this radiation, incident on a black hole precursor, constitutes a special preparation that will cause the black hole to become eternal.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, revtex; revised version to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Anomaly induced QCD potential and Quark Decoupling

We explore the anomaly induced effective QCD meson potential in the framework of the effective Lagrangian approach. We suggest a decoupling procedure, when a flavored quark becomes massive, which mimics the one employed by Seiberg for supersymmetric gauge theories. It is seen that, after decoupling, the QCD potential naturally converts to the one with one less flavor. We study the $N_c$ and $N_f$ dependence of the $\eta^{\prime}$ mass.Comment: 11 pages, RevTe

Light weight fire resistant graphite composites

Composite structures with a honeycomb core and characterized by lightweight and excellent fire resistance are provided. These sandwich structures employ facesheets made up of bismaleimide-vinyl styrylpyridine copolymers with fiber reinforcement such as carbon fiber reinforcement. In preferred embodiments the facesheets are over layered with a decorative film. The properties of these composites make them attractive materials of construction aircraft and spacecraft

Metastable Cosmic Strings in Realistic Models

We investigate the stability of the electroweak Z-string at high temperatures. Our results show that while finite temperature corrections can improve the stability of the Z-string, their effect is not strong enough to stabilize the Z-string in the standard electroweak model. Consequently, the Z-string will be unstable even under the conditions present during the electroweak phase transition. We then consider phenomenologically viable models based on the gauge group $SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \times U(1)_{B-L}$ and show that metastable strings exist and are stable to small perturbations for a large region of the parameter space for these models. We also show that these strings are superconducting with bosonic charge carriers. The string superconductivity may be able to stabilize segments and loops against dynamical contraction. Possible implications of these strings for cosmology are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures (available on request); HUTP-92/A032, Fermilab-Pub-92/228-

Information, information processing and gravity

I discuss fundamental limits placed on information and information processing by gravity. Such limits arise because both information and its processing require energy, while gravitational collapse (formation of a horizon or black hole) restricts the amount of energy allowed in a finite region. Specifically, I use a criterion for gravitational collapse called the hoop conjecture. Once the hoop conjecture is assumed a number of results can be obtained directly: the existence of a fundamental uncertainty in spatial distance of order the Planck length, bounds on information (entropy) in a finite region, and a bound on the rate of information processing in a finite region. In the final section I discuss some cosmological issues related to the total amount of information in the universe, and note that almost all detailed aspects of the late universe are determined by the randomness of quantum outcomes. This paper is based on a talk presented at a 2007 Bellairs Research Institute (McGill University) workshop on black holes and quantum information.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, revte

Tendency of spherically imploding plasma liners formed by merging plasma jets to evolve toward spherical symmetry

Three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations have been performed using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) in order to study the effects of discrete jets on the processes of plasma liner formation, implosion on vacuum, and expansion. The pressure history of the inner portion of the liner was qualitatively and quantitatively similar from peak compression through the complete stagnation of the liner among simulation results from two one dimensional radiationhydrodynamic codes, 3D SPH with a uniform liner, and 3D SPH with 30 discrete plasma jets. Two dimensional slices of the pressure show that the discrete jet SPH case evolves towards a profile that is almost indistinguishable from the SPH case with a uniform liner, showing that non-uniformities due to discrete jets are smeared out by late stages of the implosion. Liner formation and implosion on vacuum was also shown to be robust to Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth. Interparticle mixing for a liner imploding on vacuum was investigated. The mixing rate was very small until after peak compression for the 30 jet simulation.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasmas (2012

Multi-chord fiber-coupled interferometer with a long coherence length laser

This paper describes a 561 nm laser heterodyne interferometer that provides time-resolved measurements of line-integrated plasma electron density within the range of 10^15-10^18 cm^(-2). Such plasmas are produced by railguns on the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX), which aims to produce \mu s-, cm-, and Mbar-scale plasmas through the merging of thirty plasma jets in a spherically convergent geometry. A long coherence length, 320 mW laser allows for a strong, sub-fringe phase-shift signal without the need for closely-matched probe and reference path lengths. Thus only one reference path is required for all eight probe paths, and an individual probe chord can be altered without altering the reference or other probe path lengths. Fiber-optic decoupling of the probe chord optics on the vacuum chamber from the rest of the system allows the probe paths to be easily altered to focus on different spatial regions of the plasma. We demonstrate that sub-fringe resolution capability allows the interferometer to operate down to line-integrated densities of order 10^15 cm^(-2).Comment: submitted to Rev. Sci. Instrum. (2011