10,712 research outputs found
Hidden Dirac Monopoles
Dirac showed that the existence of one magnetic pole in the universe could
offer an explanation of the discrete nature of the electric charge. Magnetic
poles appear naturally in most grand unified theories. Their discovery would be
of greatest importance for particle physics and cosmology. The intense
experimental search carried thus far has not met with success. I proposed a
universe with magnetic poles which are not observed free because they hide in
deeply bound monopole--anti-monopole states named monopolium. I discuss the
realization of this proposal and its consistency with known cosmological
features. I furthermore analyze its implications and the experimental
signatures that confirm the scenario.Comment: Comments: 15 pages, 3 figure
Dark Matter Axions Revisited
We study for what specific values of the theoretical parameters the axion can
form the totality of cold dark matter. We examine the allowed axion parameter
region in the light of recent data collected by the WMAP5 mission plus baryon
acoustic oscillations and supernovae, and assume an inflationary scenario and
standard cosmology. If the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is restored after inflation,
we recover the usual relation between axion mass and density, so that an axion
mass makes the axion 100% of the cold dark matter. If
the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is broken during inflation, the axion can instead be
100% of the cold dark matter for provided a specific value
of the initial misalignment angle is chosen in correspondence to a
given value of its mass . Large values of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry
breaking scale correspond to small, perhaps uncomfortably small, values of the
initial misalignment angle .Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
Constraining super-critical string/brane cosmologies with astrophysical data
We discuss fits of unconventional dark energy models to the available data
from high-redshift supernovae, distant galaxies and baryon oscillations. The
models are based either on brane cosmologies or on Liouville strings in which a
relaxation dark energy is provided by a rolling dilaton field (Q-cosmology).
Such cosmologies feature the possibility of effective four-dimensional
negative-energy dust and/or exotic scaling of dark matter. We find evidence for
a negative-energy dust at the current era, as well as for exotic-scaling
(a^{-delta}) contributions to the energy density, with delta ~= 4, which could
be due to dark matter coupling with the dilaton in Q-cosmology models. We
conclude that Q-cosmology fits the data equally well with the LambdaCDM model
for a range of parameters that are in general expected from theoretical
considerations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contributed to 11th International Conference on
Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2009) 1-5 Jul 2009,
Rome, Italy; J. Phys. Conf. Series to appea
Accelerating universes driven by bulk particles
We consider our universe as a 3d domain wall embedded in a 5d dimensional
Minkowski space-time. We address the problem of inflation and late time
acceleration driven by bulk particles colliding with the 3d domain wall. The
expansion of our universe is mainly related to these bulk particles. Since our
universe tends to be permeated by a large number of isolated structures, as
temperature diminishes with the expansion, we model our universe with a 3d
domain wall with increasing internal structures. These structures could be
unstable 2d domain walls evolving to fermi-balls which are candidates to cold
dark matter. The momentum transfer of bulk particles colliding with the 3d
domain wall is related to the reflection coefficient. We show a nontrivial
dependence of the reflection coefficient with the number of internal dark
matter structures inside the 3d domain wall. As the population of such
structures increases the velocity of the domain wall expansion also increases.
The expansion is exponential at early times and polynomial at late times. We
connect this picture with string/M-theory by considering BPS 3d domain walls
with structures which can appear through the bosonic sector of a
five-dimensional supergravity theory.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. D, 16 pages, 3 eps figures, minor changes and
references adde
Classical Strongly Coupled QGP II: Screening and Equation of State
We analyze the screening and bulk energy of a classical and strongly
interacting plasma of color charges, a model we recently introduced for the
description of a quark-gluon plasma at T=(1-3)Tc. The partition function is
organized around the Debye-Huckel limit. The linear Debye-Huckel limit is
corrected by a virial expansion. For the pressure, the expansion is badly
convergent even in the dilute limit. The non-linear Debye-Huckel theory is
studied numerically as an alternative for moderately strong plasmas. We use
Debye theory of solid to extend the analysis to the crystal phase at very
strong coupling. The analytical results for the bulk energy per particle
compare well with the numerical results from molecular dynamics simulation for
all couplings.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Muon spin rotation studies of niobium for superconducting RF applications
In this work we investigate superconducting properties of niobium samples via
application of the muon spin rotation/relaxation (muSR) technique. We employ
for the first time the muSR technique to study samples that are cutout from
large and small grain 1.5 GHz radio frequency (RF) single cell niobium
cavities. The RF test of these cavities was accompanied by full temperature
mapping to characterize the RF losses in each of the samples. Results of the
muSR measurements show that standard cavity surface treatments like mild baking
and buffered chemical polishing (BCP) performed on the studied samples affect
their surface pinning strength. We find an interesting correlation between high
field RF losses and field dependence of the sample magnetic volume fraction
measured via muSR. The muSR line width observed in ZF-muSR measurements matches
the behavior of Nb samples doped with minute amounts of Ta or N impurities. An
upper bound for the upper critical field Hc2 of these cutouts is found.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure
B-L Violating Nucleon Decay and GUT Scale Baryogenesis in SO(10)
We show that grand unified theories based on SO(10) generate naturally the
next-to-leading baryon number violating operators of dimension seven. These
operators, which violate B-L, lead to unconventional decays of the nucleon such
as n -> e^-K^+, e^- \pi^+ and p -> \nu \pi^+. In two-step breaking schemes of
non-supersymmetric SO(10), nucleon lifetime for decays into these modes is
found to be within reach of experiments. We also identify supersymmetric
scenarios where these decays may be accessible, consistent with gauge coupling
unification. Further, we show that the (B-L)-asymmetry generated in the decays
of GUT scale scalar bosons and/or gauge bosons can explain consistently the
observed baryon asymmetry of the universe. The induced (B-L)-asymmetry is
sphaleron-proof, and survives down to the weak scale without being erased by
the electroweak interactions. This mechanism works efficiently in a large class
of non-SUSY and SUSY SO(10) models, with either a 126 or a 16 Higgs field
employed for rank reduction. In minimal models the induced baryon asymmetry is
tightly connected to the masses of quarks, leptons and neutrinos and is found
to be compatible with observations.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure
On cosmological observables in a swiss-cheese universe
Photon geodesics are calculated in a swiss-cheese model, where the cheese is
made of the usual Friedmann-Robertson-Walker solution and the holes are
constructed from a Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi solution of Einstein's equations. The
observables on which we focus are the changes in the redshift, in the
angular-diameter--distance relation, in the luminosity-distance--redshift
relation, and in the corresponding distance modulus. We find that redshift
effects are suppressed when the hole is small because of a compensation effect
acting on the scale of half a hole resulting from the special case of spherical
symmetry. However, we find interesting effects in the calculation of the
angular distance: strong evolution of the inhomogeneities (as in the approach
to caustic formation) causes the photon path to deviate from that of the FRW
case. Therefore, the inhomogeneities are able to partly mimic the effects of a
dark-energy component. Our results also suggest that the nonlinear effects of
caustic formation in cold dark matter models may lead to interesting effects on
photon trajectories.Comment: 25 pages, 21 figures; replaced to fit the version accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev.
Axino dark matter in brane world cosmology
We discuss dark matter in the brane world scenario. We work in the
Randall-Sundrum type II brane world and assume that the lightest supersymmetric
particle is the axino. We find that the axinos can play the role of cold dark
matter in the universe, provided that the five-dimensional Planck mass is
bounded both from below and from above. This is possible for higher reheating
temperatures compared to the conventional four-dimensional cosmology due to a
novel expansion law for the universe.Comment: 1+11 pages, version submitted to JCA
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