On the link between rotation, chromospheric activity and Li abundance in subgiant stars

The connection rotation-CaII emission flux-lithium abundance is analyzed for a sample of bona fide subgiant stars, with evolutionary status determined from HIPPARCOS trigonometric parallax measurements and from the Toulouse-Geneva code.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Causal Structure and Birefringence in Nonlinear Electrodynamics

We investigate the causal structure of general nonlinear electrodynamics and determine which Lagrangians generate an effective metric conformal to Minkowski. We also proof that there is only one analytic nonlinear electrodynamics presenting no birefringence.Comment: 11 pages, no figure

Measuring stellar differential rotation with high-precision space-borne photometry

We introduce a method of measuring a lower limit to the amplitude of surface differential rotation from high-precision, evenly sampled photometric time series. It is applied to main-sequence late-type stars whose optical flux modulation is dominated by starspots. An autocorrelation of the time series was used to select stars that allow an accurate determination of starspot rotation periods. A simple two-spot model was applied together with a Bayesian information criterion to preliminarily select intervals of the time series showing evidence of differential rotation with starspots of almost constant area. Finally, the significance of the differential rotation detection and a measurement of its amplitude and uncertainty were obtained by an a posteriori Bayesian analysis based on a Monte Carlo Markov Chain approach. We applied our method to the Sun and eight other stars for which previous spot modelling had been performed to compare our results with previous ones. We find that autocorrelation is a simple method for selecting stars with a coherent rotational signal that is a prerequisite for successfully measuring differential rotation through spot modelling. For a proper Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis, it is necessary to take the strong correlations among different parameters that exist in spot modelling into account. For the planet-hosting star Kepler-30, we derive a lower limit to the relative amplitude of the differential rotation of \Delta P / P = 0.0523 \pm 0.0016. We confirm that the Sun as a star in the optical passband is not suitable for measuring differential rotation owing to the rapid evolution of its photospheric active regions. In general, our method performs well in comparison to more sophisticated and time-consuming approaches.Comment: Accepted to Astronomy and Astrophysics, 15 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables and an Appendi

Four-dimensional topological Einstein-Maxwell gravity

The complete on-shell action of topological Einstein-Maxwell gravity in four-dimensions is presented. It is shown explicitly how this theory for SU(2) holonomy manifolds arises from four-dimensional Euclidean N=2 supergravity. The twisted local BRST symmetries and twisted local Lorentz symmetries are given and the action and stress tensor are shown to be BRST-exact. A set of BRST-invariant topological operators is given. The vector and antisymmetric tensor twisted supersymmetries and their algebra are also found.Comment: Published version. Expanded discussion of new results in the introduction and some clarifying remarks added in later sections. 22 pages, uses phyzz

Controlled flavor violation in the MSSM from a unified Δ(27)\Delta(27) flavor symmetry

We study the phenomenology of a unified supersymmetric theory with a flavor symmetry $\Delta(27)$. The model accommodates quark and lepton masses, mixing angles and CP phases. In this model, the Dirac and Majorana mass matrices have a unified texture zero structure in the $(1,1)$ entry that leads to the Gatto-Sartori-Tonin relation between the Cabibbo angle and ratios of the masses in the quark sectors, and to a natural departure from zero of the $\theta_{13}^\ell$ angle in the lepton sector. We derive the flavor structures of the trilinears and soft mass matrices, and show their general non-universality. This causes large flavor violating effects. As a consequence, the parameter space for this model is constrained, allowing it to be (dis)proven by flavor violation searches in the next decade. Although the results are model specific, we compare them to previous studies to show similar flavour effects (and associated constraints) are expected in general in supersymmetric flavor models, and may be used to distinguish them.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Torsion-Adding and Asymptotic Winding Number for Periodic Window Sequences

In parameter space of nonlinear dynamical systems, windows of periodic states are aligned following routes of period-adding configuring periodic window sequences. In state space of driven nonlinear oscillators, we determine the torsion associated with the periodic states and identify regions of uniform torsion in the window sequences. Moreover, we find that the measured of torsion differs by a constant between successive windows in periodic window sequences. We call this phenomenon as torsion-adding. Finally, combining the torsion and the period adding rules, we deduce a general rule to obtain the asymptotic winding number in the accumulation limit of such periodic window sequences

de Broglie-Proca and Bopp-Podolsky massive photon gases in cosmology

We investigate the influence of massive photons on the evolution of the expanding universe. Two particular models for generalized electrodynamics are considered, namely de Broglie-Proca and Bopp-Podolsky electrodynamics. We obtain the equation of state (EOS) $P=P(\varepsilon)$ for each case using dispersion relations derived from both theories. The EOS are inputted into the Friedmann equations of a homogeneous and isotropic space-time to determine the cosmic scale factor $a(t)$. It is shown that the photon non-null mass does not significantly alter the result $a\propto t^{1/2}$ valid for a massless photon gas; this is true either in de Broglie-Proca's case (where the photon mass $m$ is extremely small) or in Bopp-Podolsky theory (for which $m$ is extremely large).Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; v2 matches the published versio