8,719 research outputs found

    Realizations of Hybrid Inflation in Supergravity with natural initial conditions

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    We present viable F-term realizations of the hybrid inflationary scenario in the context of supergravity addressing at the same time the well-known problems of the initial conditions and of the adequate suppression of the inflaton mass. An essential role in our construction is played by "decoupled" superheavy fields without superpotential acquiring large vevs due to D-terms associated with "anomalous" U(1) gauge symmetries. The naturalness of the initial conditions is achieved through a "chaotic" inflation starting at energies close to the Planck scale and driven by the "anomalous" D-terms. We discuss two distinct mechanisms leading to such an early "chaotic" D-term inflation which depend on the choice of the K\"ahler potential involving the superheavy fields. The one relies on a choice of the K\"ahler potential of the SU(1,1)/U(1)SU(1,1)/U(1) K\"ahler manifold of the type encountered in no-scale supergravity whereas the other employs a more "conventional" choice for the K\"ahler potential of the SU(1,1)/U(1)SU(1,1)/U(1) or SU(2)/U(1)SU(2)/U(1) K\"ahler manifold but invokes rather specific valuesof the Fayet-Iliopoulos ξ\xi term.Comment: 32 pages LATEX, no figure

    Cosmological Higgs fields

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    We present a time-dependent solution to the coupled Einstein-Higgs equations for general Higgs-type potentials in the context of flat FRW cosmological models. Possible implications are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. Version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett. Changes: references and citations added; introduction partly modified; expanded discussion of relations between parameters in the Higgs potentia

    False Vacuum Chaotic Inflation: The New Paradigm?

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    Recent work is reported on inflation model building in the context of supergravity and superstrings, with special emphasis on False Vacuum (`Hybrid') Chaotic Inflation. Globally supersymmetric models do not survive in generic supergravity theories, but fairly simple conditions can be formulated which do ensure successful supergravity inflation. The conditions are met in some of the versions of supergravity that emerge from superstrings.Comment: 4 pages, LATEX, LANCASTER-TH 94-1

    Linguistic methodology for the analysis of aviation accidents

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    A linguistic method for the analysis of small group discourse, was developed and the use of this method on transcripts of commercial air transpot accidents is demonstrated. The method identifies the discourse types that occur and determine their linguistic structure; it identifies significant linguistic variables based upon these structures or other linguistic concepts such as speech act and topic; it tests hypotheses that support significance and reliability of these variables; and it indicates the implications of the validated hypotheses. These implications fall into three categories: (1) to train crews to use more nearly optimal communication patterns; (2) to use linguistic variables as indices for aspects of crew performance such as attention; and (3) to provide guidelines for the design of aviation procedures and equipment, especially those that involve speech

    Evolving Role and Nature of Workplace Leaders and Diversity: A Theoretical and Empirical Approach

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    Blumer (1962) regarded the ‘many possibilities of uncertainty as inherent to the process of joint action.’ Joint action reflects the efforts of participants to work out the line of action in light of what they observe each other doing. Leadership appears to be approached from two fundamental perspectives: an organisational perspective (the influence that is exercised to change the direction of the organisation), and an individual task perspective (the influence that is directed at changing the work behaviour of an individual). In this article, it is suggested that the symbolic interaction of perspective integrates the two fundamental perspectives in that both perspectives require meaningful, reflexive integration and meaning, group membership, organisational role and experience. The evolving role of leaders to attract, retain and connect with a diverse workforce in a changing environment gives rise to interactive leadership competency requirements. This article suggests that managing diversity requires business leaders to adopt an approach to diversity management that is sensitive not only to race and ethnic differences, but also to the background and values of all individuals at work. The empirical study was done and four hundred and forty (440) leadership styles were measured in eleven (11) organisations. The study used the Hall and Hawker (1988) inventory leadership styles and a diversity questionnaire to measure diversity management experience.discrimination, diversity management, engaging leadership style, experience, heroic leadership style, management, transformational leadership

    Topological Defects as Seeds for Eternal Inflation

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    We investigate the global structure of inflationary universe both by analytical methods and by computer simulations of stochastic processes in the early Universe. We show that the global structure of the universe depends crucially on the mechanism of inflation. In the simplest models of chaotic inflation the Universe looks like a sea of thermalized phase surrounding permanently self-reproducing inflationary domains. In the theories where inflation occurs near a local extremum of the effective potential corresponding to a metastable state, the Universe looks like de Sitter space surrounding islands of thermalized phase. A similar picture appears even if the state ϕ=0\phi = 0 is unstable but the effective potential has a discrete symmetry ϕ=ϕ\phi \to =-\phi. In this case the Universe becomes divided into domains containing different phases. These domains will be separated from each other by domain walls. However, unlike ordinary domain walls, these domain walls will inflate, and their thickness will exponentially grow. In the theories with continuous symmetries inflation generates exponentially expanding strings and monopoles surrounded by thermalized phase. Inflating topological defects will be stable, and they will unceasingly produce new inflating topological defects. This means that topological defects may play a role of indestructible seeds for eternal inflation.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures (not included), Stanford University preprint SU--ITP--94--

    Two Tunnels to Inflation

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    We investigate the formation via tunneling of inflating (false-vacuum) bubbles in a true-vacuum background, and the reverse process. Using effective potentials from the junction condition formalism, all true- and false-vacuum bubble solutions with positive interior and exterior cosmological constant, and arbitrary mass are catalogued. We find that tunneling through the same effective potential appears to describe two distinct processes: one in which the initial and final states are separated by a wormhole (the Farhi-Guth-Guven mechanism), and one in which they are either in the same hubble volume or separated by a cosmological horizon. In the zero-mass limit, the first process corresponds to the creation of an inhomogenous universe from nothing, while the second mechanism is equivalent to the nucleation of true- or false-vacuum Coleman-De Luccia bubbles. We compute the probabilities of both mechanisms in the WKB approximation using semi-classical Hamiltonian methods, and find that -- assuming both process are allowed -- neither mechanism dominates in all regimes.Comment: 16 PRD-style pages, 13 figures. PRD, in press. Revised to match published versio

    Crew Communication as a Factor in Aviation Accidents

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    The crew communication process is analyzed. Planning and explanation are shown to be well-structured discourse types, described by formal rules. These formal rules are integrated with those describing the other most important discourse type within the cockpit: the command-and-control speech act chain. The latter is described as a sequence of speech acts for making requests (including orders and suggestions), for making reports, for supporting or challenging statements, and for acknowledging previous speech acts. Mitigation level, a linguistic indication of indirectness and tentativeness in speech, was an important variable in several hypotheses, i.e., the speech of subordinates is more mitigated than the speech of superiors, the speech of all crewmembers is less mitigated when they know that they are in either a problem or emergency situation, and mitigation is a factor in failures of crewmembers to initiate discussion of new topics or have suggestions ratified by the captain. Test results also show that planning and explanation are more frequently performed by captains, are done more during crew- recognized problems, and are done less during crew-recognized emergencies. The test results also indicated that planning and explanation are more frequently performed by captains than by other crewmembers, are done more during crew-recognized problems, and are done less during-recognized emergencies

    Towards a gauge invariant volume-weighted probability measure for eternal inflation

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    An improved volume-weighted probability measure for eternal inflation is proposed. For the models studied in this paper it leads to simple and intuitively expected gauge-invariant results.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figs, few misprints corrected, comments adde

    Remarks on non-gaussian fluctuations of the inflaton and constancy of \zeta outside the horizon

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    We point out that the non-gaussianity arising from cubic self interactions of the inflaton field is proportional to \xi N_e where \xi ~ V"' and N_e is the number of e-foldings from horizon exit till the end of inflation. For scales of interest N_e = 60, and for models of inflation such as new inflation, natural inflation and running mass inflation \xi is large compared to the slow roll parameter \epsilon ~ V'^{2}. Therefore the contribution from self interactions should not be outrightly ignored while retaining other terms in the non-gaussianity parameter f_{NL}. But the N_e dependent term seems to imply the growth of non-gaussianities outside the horizon. Therefore we briefly discuss the issue of the constancy of correlations of the curvature perturbation \zeta outside the horizon. We then calculate the 3-point function of the inflaton fluctuations using the canonical formalism and further obtain the 3-point function of \zeta_k. We find that the N_e dependent contribution to f_{NL} from self interactions of the inflaton field is cancelled by contributions from other terms associated with non-linearities in cosmological perturbation theory.Comment: 16 pages, Minor changes, matches the published version. v3: Minor typo correcte
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