Self-Tuning Dark Energy in Brane World Cosmology

Recently, the self-tuning mechanism of cancellation of vacuum energy has been proposed in which our universe is a flat 3-brane in a 5-dimensional spacetime. In this letter, the self-tuning mechanism of dark energy is proposed by considering the cosmological matter in the brane world. In our model, the bulk scalar field takes the role of the dark energy and its value is slowly varying in time. The claim is that even if the enormous amount of vacuum energy exists on the brane we can adjust the present value of the dark energy to be consistent with the current observations. In this self-tuning mechanism, the existence of the constant of integration associated with the bulk scalar is crucial.Comment: 11pages, LaTe

Quasi Non-linear Evolution of Stochastic Bias

It is generally believed that the spatial distribution of galaxies does not trace that of the total mass. The understanding of the bias effect is therefore necessary to determine the cosmological parameters and the primordial density fluctuation spectrum from the galaxy survey. The deterministic description of bias may not be appropriate because of the various stochasticity of galaxy formation process. In nature, the biasing is epoch dependent and recent deep survey of the galaxy shows the large biasing at high redshift. Hence, we investigate quasi non-linear evolution of the stochastic bias by using the tree level perturbation method. Especially, the influence of the initial cross correlation on the evolution of the skewness and the bi-spectrum is examined in detail. We find that the non-linear bias can be generated dynamically. The small value of the initial cross correlation can bend the \dg-\dm relation effectively and easily lead to the negative curvature ($b_2<0$). We also propose a method to predict the bias, cross correlation and skewness at high redshift. As an illustration, the possibility of the large biasing at high redshift is discussed. Provided the present bias parameter as $b=1.5$ and $\Omega=1.0$, we predict the large scale bias as $b=4.63$ at $z=3$ by fitting the bi-spectrum to the Lick catalog data. Our results will be important for the future deep sky survey.Comment: 20 pages, 5 Encapsulated Postscript figures, aastex, final version to appear in Ap

Braneworld Flux Inflation

We propose a geometrical model of brane inflation where inflation is driven by the flux generated by opposing brane charges and terminated by the collision of the branes, with charge annihilation. We assume the collision process is completely inelastic and the kinetic energy is transformed into the thermal energy after collision. Thereafter the two branes coalesce together and behave as a single brane universe with zero effective cosmological constant. In the Einstein frame, the 4-dimensional effective theory changes abruptly at the collision point. Therefore, our inflationary model is necessarily 5-dimensional in nature. As the collision process has no singularity in 5-dimensional gravity, we can follow the evolution of fluctuations during the whole history of the universe. It turns out that the radion field fluctuations have a steeply tilted, red spectrum, while the primordial gravitational waves have a flat spectrum. Instead, primordial density perturbations could be generated by a curvaton mechanism.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, references adde

Thermodynamics of Squashed Kaluza-Klein Black Holes and Black Strings -- A Comparison of Reference Backgrounds --

We investigate thermodynamics constructed on different background reference spacetimes for squashed Kaluza-Klein (SqKK) black hole and electrically charged black string in five-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell system. Two spacetimes are possible to be reference spacetimes giving finite gravitational classical actions: one is four-dimensional Minkowski times a circle and the other is the KK monopole. The boundary of the SqKK black hole can not be matched perfectly to that of the former reference spacetime because of the difference in topology. However, the resultant classical action coincides with that calculated by the counterterm subtraction scheme. The boundary of the KK monopole has the same topology with that of the SqKK black hole and can be matched to the boundary of the black hole perfectly. The resultant action takes different value from the result given by using the former reference spacetime. After a brief review of thermodynamic quantities of the black hole solutions, we calculate thermodynamic potentials relevant for several thermodynamic environments. The most stable state is different for each environment: For example, the KK monopole is the most stable state in isothermal environment with fixed gravitational tension. On the other hand, when the size of the extra-dimension is fixed, the Minkowski times a circle is the most stable. It is shown that these two spacetimes can be reference spacetimes of the five-dimensional black string.Comment: 28 pages; references added, typo corrected;version accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Gra

Evaluation of the probiotic potential of lactic acid bacteria isolated from faeces of breast-fed infants in Egypt

The probiotic-related characteristics of 55 strains of lactic acid bacteria isolated from the faeces of 3 - 6 months old breast-fed infants were determined. The API 50 CH and SDS-PAGE techniques wereemployed to ascertain the identity of the isolated strains. The predominant species among the isolated strains were Lactobacillus (Lb.) acidophilus, Lb. plantarum, Enterococcus (E.) faecium, and E. faecalis. Probiotic properties such as bile resistance, acid tolerance, and adhesion to intestinal mucous were assessed. In vitro results obtained showed that five strains, Lb. plantarum (P1 and P164), Lb. pentosus (P191), and Lb. fermentum (P10, P193) were able to meet the basic requirements for probiotic functions as they demonstrated probiotic characteristics such as tolerance to pH 3, growth in 0.4% oxgall and adhesion to intestinal mucous. The results obtained in this investigation will be used to selectpotentially probiotic strains for in vivo study

Higher Curvature Corrections to Primordial Fluctuations in Slow-roll Inflation

We study higher curvature corrections to the scalar spectral index, the tensor spectral index, the tensor-to-scalar ratio, and the polarization of gravitational waves. We find that the higher curvature corrections can not be negligible in the dynamics of the scalar field, although they are energetically negligible. Indeed, it turns out that the tensor-to-scalar ratio could be enhanced and the tensor spectral index could be blue due to the Gauss-Bonnet term. We estimate the degree of circular polarization of gravitational waves generated during the slow-roll inflation. We argue that the circular polarization can be observable with the help both of the Gauss-Bonnet and parity violating terms. We also present several examples to reveal observational implications of higher curvature corrections for chaotic inflationary models.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

3+1 Approach to the Long Wavelength Iteration Scheme

Large-scale inhomogeneities and anisotropies are modeled using the Long Wavelength Iteration Scheme. In this scheme solutions are obtained as expansions in spatial gradients, which are taken to be small. It is shown that the choice of foliation for spacetime can make the iteration scheme more effective in two respects: (i) the shift vector can be chosen so as to dilute the effect of anisotropy on the late-time value of the extrinsic curvature of the spacelike hypersurfaces of the foliation; and (ii) pure gauge solutions present in a similar calculation using the synchronous gauge vanish when the spacelike hypersurfaces have extrinsic curvature with constant trace. We furthermore verify the main conclusion of the synchronous gauge calculation which is large-scale inhomogeneity decays if the matter--considered to be that of a perfect-fluid with a barotropic equation of state--violates the strong-energy condition. Finally, we obtain the solution for the lapse function and discuss its late-time behaviour. It is found that the lapse function is well-behaved when the matter violates the strong energy condition.Comment: 21 pages, TeX file, already publishe

Bound State and Order Parameter Mixing Effect by Nonmagnetic Impurity Scattering in Two-band Superconductors

We investigate nonmagnetic impurity effects in two-band superconductors, focusing on the effects of interband scatterings. Within the Born approximation, it is known that interband scatterings mix order parameters in the two bands. In particular, only one averaged energy gap appears in the excitation spectrum in the dirty limit. [G. Gusman: J. Phys. Chem. Solids {\bf 28} (1967) 2327.] In this paper, we take into account the interband scattering within the $t$-matrix approximation beyond the Born approximation in the previous work. We show that, although the interband scattering is responsible for the mixing effect, this effect becomes weak when the interband scattering becomes very strong. In the strong interband scattering limit, a two-gap structure corresponding to two order parameters recovers in the superconducting density of states. We also show that a bound state appears around a nonmagnetic impurity depending on the phase of interband scattering potential.Comment: 28pages, 10 figure