597 research outputs found
Anisotropic Flow from RHIC to the LHC
Anisotropic flow is recognized as one of the main observables providing
information on the early stage of a heavy-ion collision. At RHIC the large
observed anisotropic flow and its successful description by ideal hydrodynamics
is considered evidence for an early onset of thermalization and almost ideal
fluid properties of the produced strongly coupled Quark Gluon Plasma. This
write-up discusses some key RHIC anisotropic flow measurements and for
anisotropic flow at the LHC some predictions.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, hotquarks 200
Poly-instanton Inflation
We propose a new inflationary scenario in type IIB Calabi-Yau
compactifications, where the inflaton is a K\"ahler modulus parameterising the
volume of an internal four-cycle. The inflaton potential is generated via
poly-instanton corrections to the superpotential which give rise to a naturally
flat direction due to their double exponential suppression. Given that the
volume mode is kept stable during inflation, all the inflaton-dependent higher
dimensional operators are suppressed. Moreover, string loop effects can be
shown to be negligible throughout all the inflationary dynamics for natural
values of the underlying parameters. The model is characterised by a reheating
temperature of the order GeV which requires e-foldings of inflation. All the inflationary observables are compatible
with current observations since the spectral index is , while
the tensor-to-scalar ratio is . The volume of the Calabi-Yau
is of order in string units, corresponding to an inflationary scale
around GeVComment: 20 pages, 4 figure
Particlization in hybrid models
In hybrid models, which combine hydrodynamical and transport approaches to
describe different stages of heavy-ion collisions, conversion of fluid to
individual particles, particlization, is a non-trivial technical problem. We
describe in detail how to find the particlization hypersurface in a 3+1
dimensional model, and how to sample the particle distributions evaluated using
the Cooper-Frye procedure to create an ensemble of particles as an initial
state for the transport stage. We also discuss the role and magnitude of the
negative contributions in the Cooper-Frye procedure.Comment: 18 pages, 28 figures, EPJA: Topical issue on "Relativistic Hydro- and
Thermodynamics"; version accepted for publication, typos and error in Eq.(1)
corrected, the purpose of sampling and change from UrQMD to fluid clarified,
added discussion why attempts to cancel negative contributions of Cooper-Frye
are not applicable her
Regime mapping and the role of the intermediate region in wall-coated microreactors
Operation of a wall-coated microreactor can occur in several mass transfer-reaction regimes. We define these regimes analytically in several planes of a multi-parametric map, taking into account the different degrees of concentration profile development, as well as the influence of non-unity orders of reaction and reactant inhibition in the kinetic law. It was found that the regions where conversion can be calculated from simplified mass transfer models are not discriminated by common results for entrance-length. We also illustrate the trade-offs that exist across this operating map concerning the catalyst design (costs associated with loading and volume) and overall system performance (evaluated in terms of reactant conversion, flow efficiency and microreactor effectiveness). It is shown that under certain conditions, the existence of moderate mass transfer resistance can be advantageous (even if internal limitations cannot be avoided), clarifying the role of the intermediate transport-reaction region
Cosmological background solutions and cosmological backreactions
The cosmological backreaction proposal, which attempts to account for
observations without a primary dark energy source in the stress-energy tensor,
has been developed and discussed by means of different approaches. Here, we
focus on the concept of cosmological background solutions in order to develop a
framework to study different backreaction proposals.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures; major changes, replaced to match the version
published in General Relativity and Gravitatio
Energy Transfer between Throats from a 10d Perspective
Strongly warped regions, also known as throats, are a common feature of the
type IIB string theory landscape. If one of the throats is heated during
cosmological evolution, the energy is subsequently transferred to other throats
or to massless fields in the unwarped bulk of the Calabi-Yau orientifold. This
energy transfer proceeds either by Hawking radiation from the black hole
horizon in the heated throat or, at later times, by the decay of
throat-localized Kaluza-Klein states. In both cases, we calculate in a 10d
setup the energy transfer rate (respectively decay rate) as a function of the
AdS scales of the throats and of their relative distance. Compared to existing
results based on 5d models, we find a significant suppression of the energy
transfer rates if the size of the embedding Calabi-Yau orientifold is much
larger than the AdS radii of the throats. This effect can be partially
compensated by a small distance between the throats. These results are
relevant, e.g., for the analysis of reheating after brane inflation. Our
calculation employs the dual gauge theory picture in which each throat is
described by a strongly coupled 4d gauge theory, the degrees of freedom of
which are localized at a certain position in the compact space.Comment: 25 pages; a comment adde
Reconciling inflation with openness
It is already understood that the increasing observational evidence for an
open Universe can be reconciled with inflation if our horizon is contained
inside one single huge bubble nucleated during the inflationary phase
transition. In this frame of ideas, we show here that the probability of living
in a bubble with the right (now the observations require ) can be comparable with unity, rather than infinitesimally small.
For this purpose we modify both quantitatively and qualitatively an intuitive
toy model based upon fourth order gravity. As this scheme can be implemented in
canonical General Relativity as well (although then the inflation driving
potential must be designed entirely ad hoc), inferring from the observations
that not only does not conflict with the inflationary paradigm,
but rather supports therein the occurrence of a primordial phase transition.Comment: 4 pages, one postscript figure, to be published on Physical Review D
PACS: 98.80. C
Inflating in a Better Racetrack
We present a new version of our racetrack inflation scenario which, unlike
our original proposal, is based on an explicit compactification of type IIB
string theory: the Calabi-Yau manifold P^4_[1,1,1,6,9]. The axion-dilaton and
all complex structure moduli are stabilized by fluxes. The remaining 2 Kahler
moduli are stabilized by a nonperturbative superpotential, which has been
explicitly computed. For this model we identify situations for which a linear
combination of the axionic parts of the two Kahler moduli acts as an inflaton.
As in our previous scenario, inflation begins at a saddle point of the scalar
potential and proceeds as an eternal topological inflation. For a certain range
of inflationary parameters, we obtain the COBE-normalized spectrum of metric
perturbations and an inflationary scale of M = 3 x 10^{14} GeV. We discuss
possible changes of parameters of our model and argue that anthropic
considerations favor those parameters that lead to a nearly flat spectrum of
inflationary perturbations, which in our case is characterized by the spectral
index n_s = 0.95.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. Brief discussion on the non-gaussianity of this
model, one more figure of the field trajectories added as well as other minor
changes to the tex
Potential-density pairs for axisymmetric galaxies: the influence of scalar fields
We present a formulation for potential-density pairs to describe axisymmetric
galaxies in the Newtonian limit of scalar-tensor theories of gravity. The
scalar field is described by a modified Helmholtz equation with a source that
is coupled to the standard Poisson equation of Newtonian gravity. The net
gravitational force is given by two contributions: the standard Newtonian
potential plus a term stemming from massive scalar fields. General solutions
have been found for axisymmetric systems and the multipole expansion of the
Yukawa potential is given. In particular, we have computed potential-density
pairs of galactic disks for an exponential profile and their rotation curves.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, corrected version to the one that will appear in
Gen. Relativ. Gravit., where a small typo in eq. (13) is presen
Illusions of general relativity in Brans-Dicke gravity
Contrary to common belief, the standard tenet of Brans-Dicke theory reducing
to general relativity when omega tends to infinity is false if the trace of the
matter energy-momentum tensor vanishes. The issue is clarified in a new
approach using conformal transformations. The otherwise unaccountable limiting
behavior of Brans-Dicke gravity is easily understood in terms of the conformal
invariance of the theory when the sources of gravity have radiation-like
properties. The rigorous computation of the asymptotic behavior of the
Brans-Dicke scalar field is straightforward in this new approach.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, to appear in Physical Review
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