12,234 research outputs found
Destroying black holes with test bodies
If a black hole can accrete a body whose spin or charge would send the black
hole parameters over the extremal limit, then a naked singularity would
presumably form, in violation of the cosmic censorship conjecture. We review
some previous results on testing cosmic censorship in this way using the test
body approximation, focusing mostly on the case of neutral black holes. Under
certain conditions a black hole can indeed be over-spun or over-charged in this
approximation, hence radiative and self-force effects must be taken into
account to further test cosmic censorship.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of the First Mediterranean Conference
on Classical and Quantum Gravity (talk given by T. P. S.). Summarizes the
results of Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 141101 (2009), arXiv:0907.4146 [gr-qc] and
considers further example
Bound on the Dark Matter Density in the Solar System from Planetary Motions
High precision planet orbital data extracted from direct observation,
spacecraft explorations and laser ranging techniques enable to put a strong
constraint on the maximal dark matter density of a spherical halo centered
around the Sun. The maximal density at Earth's location is of the order
and shows only a mild dependence on the slope of the halo
profile, taken between 0 and -2. This bound is somewhat better than that
obtained from the perihelion precession limits.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Exemplary Teaching and Exemplary Teachers: A Prologue
Suzanne F. Davis brings a wide background in both teaching and administration to her role as guest editor of the Reading Horizons themed issue on exemplary teaching and exemplary teachers
Minimal Off-Shell Version of N = 1 Chiral Supergravity
We construct the minimal off-shell formulation of N = 1 chiral supergravity
(SUGRA) introducing a complex antisymmetric tensor field and a
complex axial-vector field as auxiliary fields. The resulting algebra
of the right- and left-handed supersymmetry (SUSY) transformations closes off
shell and generates chiral gauge transforamtions and vector gauge
transformations in addition to the transformations which appear in the case
without auxiliary fields.Comment: 9 pages, late
Short-form Philadelphia Naming Test: Rationale and Empirical Evaluation
This project translates research findings from the Philadelphia (picture) Naming Test into a clinical tool for diagnosis and measurement of change. The tool is a pair of 5-minute naming tests, each involving a different, representative set of 30 PNT targets. In an evaluation carried out with a well-distributed sample of 25 individuals with chronic aphasia, accuracy scores on the short forms, PNT30-A and –B, were highly correlated with the full PNT and with each other. By utilizing the extensive research database from the PNT, score equivalents and norms are calculated that can be applied in the clinical setting
BF Actions for the Husain-Kuchar Model
We show that the Husain-Kuchar model can be described in the framework of BF
theories. This is a first step towards its quantization by standard
perturbative QFT techniques or the spin-foam formalism introduced in the
space-time description of General Relativity and other diff-invariant theories.
The actions that we will consider are similar to the ones describing the
BF-Yang-Mills model and some mass generating mechanisms for gauge fields. We
will also discuss the role of diffeomorphisms in the new formulations that we
propose.Comment: 21 pages (in DIN A4 format), minor typos corrected; to appear in
Phys. Rev.
Astrophysical Bounds on Planck Suppressed Lorentz Violation
This article reviews many of the observational constraints on Lorentz
symmetry violation (LV). We first describe the GZK cutoff and other phenomena
that are sensitive to LV. After a brief historical sketch of research on LV, we
discuss the effective field theory description of LV and related questions of
principle, technical results, and observational constraints. We focus on
constraints from high energy astrophysics on mass dimension five operators that
contribute to LV electron and photon dispersion relations at order E/M_Planck.
We also briefly discuss constraints on renormalizable operators, and review the
current and future contraints on LV at order (E/M_Planck)^2.Comment: 30 pages, submitted to Lecture Notes in Physics, Quantum Gravity
Phenomenology, eds. G.Amelino-Camelia, J. Kowalski-Glikman (Springer-Verlag
Preferred foliation effects in Quantum General Relativity
We investigate the infrared (IR) effects of Lorentz violating terms in the
gravitational sector using functional renormalization group methods similar to
Reuter and collaborators. The model we consider consists of pure quantum
gravity coupled to a preferred foliation, described effectively via a scalar
field with non-standard dynamics. We find that vanishing Lorentz violation is a
UV attractive fixed-point of this model in the local potential approximation.
Since larger truncations may lead to differing results, we study as a first
example effects of additional matter fields on the RG running of the Lorentz
violating term and provide a general argument why they are small.Comment: 12 pages, no figures, compatible with published versio
Self-Dual Action for Fermionic Fields and Gravitation
This paper studies the self-dual Einstein-Dirac theory. A generalization is
obtained of the Jacobson-Smolin proof of the equivalence between the self-dual
and Palatini purely gravitational actions. Hence one proves equivalence of
self-dual Einstein-Dirac theory to the Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble-Dirac
theory. The Bianchi symmetry of the curvature, core of the proof, now contains
a non-vanishing torsion. Thus, in the self-dual framework, the extra terms
entering the equations of motion with respect to the standard Einstein-Dirac
field equations, are neatly associated with torsion.Comment: 13 pages, plain-tex, recently appearing in Nuovo Cimento B, volume
109, pages 973-982, September 199
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