Is the proton radius puzzle evidence of extra dimensions?

The proton charge radius inferred from muonic hydrogen spectroscopy is not compatible with the previous value given by CODATA-2010, which, on its turn, essentially relies on measurements of the electron-proton interaction. The proton's new size was extracted from the 2S-2P Lamb shift in the muonic hydrogen, which showed an energy excess of 0.3 meV in comparison to the theoretical prediction, evaluated with the CODATA radius. Higher-dimensional gravity is a candidate to explain this discrepancy, since the muon-proton gravitational interaction is stronger than the electron-proton interaction and, in the context of braneworld models, the gravitational potential can be hugely amplified in short distances when compared to the Newtonian potential. Motivated by these ideas, we study a muonic hydrogen confined in a thick brane. We show that the muon-proton gravitational interaction modified by extra dimensions can provide the additional separation of 0.3 meV between 2S and 2P states. In this scenario, the gravitational energy depends on the higher-dimensional Planck mass and indirectly on the brane thickness. Studying the behavior of the gravitational energy with respect to the brane thickness in a realistic range, we find constraints for the fundamental Planck mass that solve the proton radius puzzle and are consistent with previous experimental bounds.Comment: Updated with new dat

Collapsing shells of radiation in anti-de Sitter spacetimes and the hoop and cosmic censorship conjectures

Gravitational collapse of radiation in an anti-de Sitter background is studied. For the spherical case, the collapse proceeds in much the same way as in the Minkowski background, i.e., massless naked singularities may form for a highly inhomogeneous collapse, violating the cosmic censorship, but not the hoop conjecture. The toroidal, cylindrical and planar collapses can be treated together. In these cases no naked singularity ever forms, in accordance with the cosmic censorship. However, since the collapse proceeds to form toroidal, cylindrical or planar black holes, the hoop conjecture in an anti-de Sitter spacetime is violated.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex Journal: to appear in Physical Review

Cylindrical wormholes

It is shown that the existence of static, cylindrically symmetric wormholes does not require violation of the weak or null energy conditions near the throat, and cylindrically symmetric wormhole geometries can appear with less exotic sources than wormholes whose throats have a spherical topology. Examples of exact wormhole solutions are given with scalar, spinor and electromagnetic fields as sources, and these fields are not necessarily phantom. In particular, there are wormhole solutions for a massless, minimally coupled scalar field in the presence of a negative cosmological constant, and for an azimuthal Maxwell electromagnetic field. All these solutions are not asymptotically flat. A no-go theorem is proved, according to which a flat (or string) asymptotic behavior on both sides of a cylindrical wormhole throat is impossible if the energy density of matter is everywhere nonnegative.Comment: 13 pages, no figures. Substantial changes, a no-go theorem and 2 references adde

Rydberg states of hydrogen-like ions in braneworld

It has been argued that precise measurements of optical transition frequencies between Rydberg states of hydrogen-like ions could be used to obtain an improved value of the Rydberg constant and even to test Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) theory more accurately, by avoiding the uncertainties about the proton radius. Motivated by this perspective, we investigate the influence of the gravitational interaction on the energy levels of Hydrogen-like ions in Rydberg states within the context of the braneworld models. As it is known, in this scenario, the gravitational interaction is amplified in short distances. We show that, for Rydberg states, the main contribution for the gravitational potential energy does not come from the rest energy concentrated on the nucleus but from the energy of the electromagnetic field created by its electrical charge, which is spread in space. The reason is connected to the fact that, when the ion is in a Rydberg state with high angular momentum, the gravitational potential energy is not computable in zero-width brane approximation due to the gravitational influence of the electrovacuum in which the lepton is moving. Considering a thick brane scenario, we calculate the gravitational potential energy associated to the nucleus charge in terms of the confinement parameter of the electric field in the brane. We show that the gravitational effects on the energy levels of a Rydberg state can be amplified by the extra dimensions even when the compactification scale of the hidden dimensions is shorter than the Bohr radius

Two-Dimensional Black Holes and Planar General Relativity

The Einstein-Hilbert action with a cosmological term is used to derive a new action in 1+1 spacetime dimensions. It is shown that the two-dimensional theory is equivalent to planar symmetry in General Relativity. The two-dimensional theory admits black holes and free dilatons, and has a structure similar to two-dimensional string theories. Since by construction these solutions also solve Einstein's equations, such a theory can bring two-dimensional results into the four-dimensional real world. In particular the two-dimensional black hole is also a black hole in General Relativity.Comment: 11 pages, plainte

Thin-shell wormholes in d-dimensional general relativity: Solutions, properties, and stability

We construct thin-shell electrically charged wormholes in d-dimensional general relativity with a cosmological constant. The wormholes constructed can have different throat geometries, namely, spherical, planar and hyperbolic. Unlike the spherical geometry, the planar and hyperbolic geometries allow for different topologies and in addition can be interpreted as higher-dimensional domain walls or branes connecting two universes. In the construction we use the cut-and-paste procedure by joining together two identical vacuum spacetime solutions. Properties such as the null energy condition and geodesics are studied. A linear stability analysis around the static solutions is carried out. A general result for stability is obtained from which previous results are recovered.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

The Two-Dimensional Analogue of General Relativity

General Relativity in three or more dimensions can be obtained by taking the limit $\omega\rightarrow\infty$ in the Brans-Dicke theory. In two dimensions General Relativity is an unacceptable theory. We show that the two-dimensional closest analogue of General Relativity is a theory that also arises in the limit $\omega\rightarrow\infty$ of the two-dimensional Brans-Dicke theory.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, preprint DF/IST-17.9

BLACK HOLES IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL DILATON GRAVITY THEORIES

Three dimensional black holes in a generalized dilaton gravity action theory are analysed. The theory is specified by two fields, the dilaton and the graviton, and two parameters, the cosmological constant and the Brans-Dicke parameter. It contains seven different cases, of which one distinguishes as special cases, string theory, general relativity and a theory equivalent to four dimensional general relativity with one Killing vector. We study the causal structure and geodesic motion of null and timelike particles in the black hole geometries and find the ADM masses of the different solutions.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures as uuencoded postscript file

Full-Duplex Relaying in MIMO-OFDM Frequency-Selective Channels with Optimal Adaptive Filtering

In-band full-duplex transmission allows a relay station to theoretically double its spectral efficiency by simultaneously receiving and transmitting in the same frequency band, when compared to the traditional half-duplex or out-of-band full-duplex counterpart. Consequently, the induced self-interference suffered by the relay may reach considerable power levels, which decreases the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in a decode-and-forward (DF) relay, leading to a degradation of the relay performance. This paper presents a technique to cope with the problem of self-interference in broadband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relays. The proposed method uses a time-domain cancellation in a DF relay, where a replica of the interfering signal is created with the help of a recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm that estimates the interference frequency-selective channel. Its convergence mean time is shown to be negligible by simulation results, when compared to the length of a typical orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) sequences. Moreover, the bit-error-rate (BER) and the SINR in a OFDM transmission are evaluated, confirming that the proposed method extends significantly the range of self-interference power to which the relay is resilient to, when compared with other mitigation schemes

Gravitational collapse to toroidal, cylindrical and planar black holes

Gravitational collapse of non-spherical symmetric matter leads inevitably to non-static external spacetimes. It is shown here that gravitational collapse of matter with toroidal topology in a toroidal anti-de Sitter background proceeds to form a toroidal black hole. According to the analytical model presented, the collapsing matter absorbs energy in the form of radiation (be it scalar, neutrinos, electromagnetic, or gravitational) from the exterior spacetime. Upon decompactification of one or two coordinates of the torus one gets collapsing solutions of cylindrical or planar matter onto black strings or black membranes, respectively. The results have implications on the hoop conjecture.Comment: 6 pages, Revtex, modifications in the title and in the interpretation of some results, to appear in Physical Review