18 research outputs found
Modified Gravity: living without Birkhoff I. DGP
We consider the consequences of the absence of Birkhoff's theorem in theories
of modified gravity. As an example, we calculate the gravitational force on a
test particle due to a spherical mass shell in the Dvali-Gabadaze-Porrati model
(DGP). We show that unlike in General Relativity, the force depends on the mass
distribution. In particular, the gravitational force within a spherical mass
shell depends on the geometric structure of the bulk, and is likely non-zero.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Gravitational wave bursts from cosmic (super)strings: Quantitative analysis and constraints
We discuss data analysis techniques that can be used in the search for
gravitational wave bursts from cosmic strings. When data from multiple
interferometers are available, we describe consistency checks that can be used
to greatly reduce the false alarm rates. We construct an expression for the
rate of bursts for arbitrary cosmic string loop distributions and apply it to
simple known solutions. The cosmology is solved exactly and includes the
effects of a late-time acceleration. We find substantially lower burst rates
than previous estimates suggest and explain the disagreement. Initial LIGO is
unlikely to detect field theoretic cosmic strings with the usual loop sizes,
though it may detect cosmic superstrings as well as cosmic strings and
superstrings with non-standard loop sizes (which may be more realistic). In the
absence of a detection, we show how to set upper limits based on the loudest
event. Using Initial LIGO sensitivity curves, we show that these upper limits
may result in interesting constraints on the parameter space of theories that
lead to the production of cosmic strings.Comment: Replaced with version accepted for publication in PR
Spherical collapse with dark energy
I discuss the work of Maor and Lahav [1], in which the inclusion of dark
energy into the spherical collapse formalism is reviewed. Adopting a
phenomenological approach, I consider the consequences of - a) allowing the
dark energy to cluster, and, b) including the dark energy in the virialization
process. Both of these issues affect the final state of the system in a
fundamental way. The results suggest a potentially differentiating signature
between a true cosmological constant and a dynamic form of dark energy. This
signature is unique in the sense that it does not depend on a measurement of
the value of the equation of state of dark energy.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the ``Peyresq Physics 10" Workshop,
19 - 24 June 2005, Peyresq, Franc
Distinguishing among Scalar Field Models of Dark Energy
We show that various scalar field models of dark energy predict degenerate
luminosity distance history of the Universe and thus cannot be distinguished by
supernovae measurements alone. In particular, models with a vanishing
cosmological constant (the value of the potential at its minimum) are
degenerate with models with a positive or negative cosmological constant whose
magnitude can be as large as the critical density. Adding information from CMB
anisotropy measurements does reduce the degeneracy somewhat but not
significantly. Our results indicate that a theoretical prior on the preferred
form of the potential and the field's initial conditions may allow to
quantitatively estimate model parameters from data. Without such a theoretical
prior only limited qualitative information on the form and parameters of the
potential can be extracted even from very accurate data.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
Quantized Non-Abelian Monopoles on S^3
A possible electric-magnetic duality suggests that the confinement of
non-Abelian electric charges manifests itself as a perturbative quantum effect
for the dual magnetic charges. Motivated by this possibility, we study vacuum
fluctuations around a non-Abelian monopole-antimonopole pair treated as point
objects with charges g=\pm n/2 (n=1,2,...), and placed on the antipodes of a
three sphere of radius R. We explicitly find all the fluctuation modes by
linearizing and solving the Yang-Mills equations about this background field on
a three sphere. We recover, generalize and extend earlier results, including
those on the stability analysis of non-Abelian magnetic monopoles. We find that
for g \ge 1 monopoles there is an unstable mode that tends to squeeze magnetic
flux in the angular directions. We sum the vacuum energy contributions of the
fluctuation modes for the g=1/2 case and find oscillatory dependence on the
cutoff scale. Subject to certain assumptions, we find that the contribution of
the fluctuation modes to the quantum zero point energy behaves as -R^{-2/3} and
hence decays more slowly than the classical -R^{-1} Coulomb potential for large
R. However, this correction to the zero point energy does not agree with the
linear growth expected if the monopoles are confined.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures. Minor changes, reference list update
On virialization with dark energy
We review the inclusion of dark energy into the formalism of spherical
collapse, and the virialization of a two-component system, made of matter and
dark energy. We compare two approaches in previous studies. The first assumes
that only the matter component virializes, e.g. as in the case of a classic
cosmological constant. The second approach allows the full system to virialize
as a whole. We show that the two approaches give fundamentally different
results for the final state of the system. This might be a signature
discriminating between the classic cosmological constant which cannot virialize
and a dynamical dark energy mimicking a cosmological constant. This signature
is independent of the measured value of the equation of state. An additional
issue which we address is energy non-conservation of the system, which
originates from the homogeneity assumption for the dark energy. We propose a
way to take this energy loss into account.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in JCA