7,034 research outputs found
Singularity Theory in Classical Cosmology
This paper compares recent approaches appearing in the literature on the
singularity problem for space-times with nonvanishing torsion.Comment: 4 pages, plain-tex, published in Nuovo Cimento B, volume 107, pages
849-851, year 199
New Developments in the Spectral Asymptotics of Quantum Gravity
A vanishing one-loop wave function of the Universe in the limit of small
three-geometry is found, on imposing diffeomorphism-invariant boundary
conditions on the Euclidean 4-ball in the de Donder gauge. This result suggests
a quantum avoidance of the cosmological singularity driven by full
diffeomorphism invariance of the boundary-value problem for one-loop quantum
theory. All of this is made possible by a peculiar spectral cancellation on the
Euclidean 4-ball, here derived and discussed.Comment: 7 pages, latex file. Paper prepared for the Conference "QFEXT05:
Quantum Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions", Barcelona,
September 5 - September 9, 2005. In the final version, the presentation has
been further improved, and yet other References have been adde
An introduction to quantum gravity
After an overview of the physical motivations for studying quantum gravity,
we reprint THE FORMAL STRUCTURE OF QUANTUM GRAVITY, i.e. the 1978 Cargese
Lectures by Professor B.S. DeWitt, with kind permission of Springer. The reader
is therefore introduced, in a pedagogical way, to the functional integral
quantization of gravitation and Yang-Mills theory. It is hoped that such a
paper will remain useful for all lecturers or Ph.D. students who face the task
of introducing (resp. learning) some basic concepts in quantum gravity in a
relatively short time. In the second part, we outline selected topics such as
the braneworld picture with the same covariant formalism of the first part, and
spectral asymptotics of Euclidean quantum gravity with diffeomorphism-invariant
boundary conditions. The latter might have implications for singularity
avoidance in quantum cosmology.Comment: 68 pages, Latex file. Sections from 2 to 17 are published thanks to
kind permission of Springe
Models of planetary rings
The Voyager occultations provide several uniform and high quality data sets for Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. These data are intercompared, and theoretical models for the particle sizes and the particle transport are developed. The major topics covered include: ring size distribution, torques and resonances, and satellite wakes
Spectral asymptotics of Euclidean quantum gravity with diff-invariant boundary conditions
A general method is known to exist for studying Abelian and non-Abelian gauge
theories, as well as Euclidean quantum gravity, at one-loop level on manifolds
with boundary. In the latter case, boundary conditions on metric perturbations
h can be chosen to be completely invariant under infinitesimal diffeomorphisms,
to preserve the invariance group of the theory and BRST symmetry. In the de
Donder gauge, however, the resulting boundary-value problem for the Laplace
type operator acting on h is known to be self-adjoint but not strongly
elliptic. The latter is a technical condition ensuring that a unique smooth
solution of the boundary-value problem exists, which implies, in turn, that the
global heat-kernel asymptotics yielding one-loop divergences and one-loop
effective action actually exists. The present paper shows that, on the
Euclidean four-ball, only the scalar part of perturbative modes for quantum
gravity are affected by the lack of strong ellipticity. Further evidence for
lack of strong ellipticity, from an analytic point of view, is therefore
obtained. Interestingly, three sectors of the scalar-perturbation problem
remain elliptic, while lack of strong ellipticity is confined to the remaining
fourth sector. The integral representation of the resulting zeta-function
asymptotics is also obtained; this remains regular at the origin by virtue of a
spectral identity here obtained for the first time.Comment: 25 pages, Revtex-4. Misprints in Eqs. (5.11), (5.14), (5.16) have
been correcte
Ellipticity Conditions for the Lax Operator of the KP Equations
The Lax pseudo-differential operator plays a key role in studying the general
set of KP equations, although it is normally treated in a formal way, without
worrying about a complete characterization of its mathematical properties. The
aim of the present paper is therefore to investigate the ellipticity condition.
For this purpose, after a careful evaluation of the kernel with the associated
symbol, the majorization ensuring ellipticity is studied in detail. This leads
to non-trivial restrictions on the admissible set of potentials in the Lax
operator. When their time evolution is also considered, the ellipticity
conditions turn out to involve derivatives of the logarithm of the
tau-function.Comment: 21 pages, plain Te
One-loop effective potential for SO(10) GUT theories in de Sitter space
Zeta-function regularization is applied to evaluate the one-loop effective
potential for SO(10) grand-unified theories in de Sitter cosmologies. When the
Higgs scalar field belongs to the 210-dimensional irreducible representation of
SO(10), attention is focused on the mass matrix relevant for the
SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) symmetry-breaking direction, to agree with low-energy
phenomenology of the particle-physics standard model. The analysis is
restricted to those values of the tree-level-potential parameters for which the
absolute minima of the classical potential have been evaluated. As shown in the
recent literature, such minima turn out to be SO(6)xSO(4)- or
SU(3)xSU(2)xSU(2)xU(1)-invariant. Electroweak phenomenology is more naturally
derived, however, from the former minima. Hence the values of the parameters
leading to the alternative set of minima have been discarded. Within this
framework, flat-space limit and general form of the one-loop effective
potential are studied in detail by using analytic and numerical methods. It
turns out that, as far as the absolute-minimum direction is concerned, the
flat-space limit of the one-loop calculation about a de Sitter background does
not change the results previously obtained in the literature, where the
tree-level potential in flat space-time was studied. Moreover, when curvature
effects are no longer negligible in the one-loop potential, it is found that
the early universe remains bound to reach only the SO(6)xSO(4) absolute
minimum.Comment: 25 pages, plain Tex, plus Latex file of the tables appended at the
end. Published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 11, pp. 2031-2044,
August 199
Spin-Raising Operators and Spin-3/2 Potentials in Quantum Cosmology
Local boundary conditions involving field strengths and the normal to the
boundary, originally studied in anti-de Sitter space-time, have been recently
considered in one-loop quantum cosmology. This paper derives the conditions
under which spin-raising operators preserve these local boundary conditions on
a 3-sphere for fields of spin 0,1/2,1,3/2 and 2. Moreover, the two-component
spinor analysis of the four potentials of the totally symmetric and independent
field strengths for spin 3/2 is applied to the case of a 3-sphere boundary. It
is shown that such boundary conditions can only be imposed in a flat Euclidean
background, for which the gauge freedom in the choice of the potentials
remains.Comment: 13 pages, plain-tex, recently appearing in Classical and Quantum
Gravity, volume 11, April 1994, pages 897-903. Apologies for the delay in
circulating the file, due to technical problems now fixe
- …