8,855 research outputs found
Thermodynamical properties of metric fluctuations during inflation
I study a thermodynamical approach to scalar metric perturbations during the
inflationary stage. In the power-law expanding universe here studied, I find a
negative heat capacity as a manifestation of superexponential growing for the
number of states in super Hubble scales. The power spectrum depends on the
Gibbons-Hawking and Hagedorn temperatures.Comment: 7 pages, no figures (accepted to publication in General Relativity
and Gravitation
Fresh inflation and decoherence of super Hubble fluctuations
I study a stochastic approach to the recently introduced fresh inflation
model for super Hubble scales. I find that the state loses its coherence at the
end of the fresh inflationary period as a consequence of the damping of the
interference function in the reduced density matrix. This fact should be a
consequence of a) the relative evolutions of both the scale factor and the
horizon and b) the additional thermal and dissipative effects. This implies a
relevant difference with respect to supercooled inflationary scenarios which
require a very rapid expansion of the scale factor to give the decoherence of
super Hubble fluctuations.Comment: version with minor changes. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Warm inflation and scalar perturbations of the metric
A second-order expansion for the quantum fluctuations of the matter field was
considered in the framework of the warm inflation scenario. The friction and
Hubble parameters were expended by means of a semiclassical approach. The
fluctuations of the Hubble parameter generates fluctuations of the metric.
These metric fluctuations produce an effective term of curvature. The power
spectrum for the metric fluctuations can be calculated on the infrared sector.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, to be published in General Rel. and Gravitatio
A confirmation of agreement of different approaches for scalar gauge-invariant metric perturbations during inflation
We revisit an extension of the well-known formalism for gauge-invariant
scalar metric fluctuations, to study the spectrums for both, the inflaton and
gauge invariant (scalar) metric fluctuations in the framework of a single field
inflationary model where the quasi-exponential expansion is driven by an
inflation which is minimally coupled to gravity. The proposal here examined is
valid also for fluctuations with large amplitude, but for cosmological scales,
where vector and tensor perturbations can be neglected and the fluid is
irrotacional.Comment: Version accepted in EPJC with new title. 11 pages, no figure
Fresh inflation: a warm inflationary model from a zero temperature initial state
A two-components mixture fluid which complies with the gamma law is
considered in the framework of inflation with finite temperature. The model is
developed for a quartic scalar potential without symmetry breaking. The
radiation energy density is assumed to be zero when inflation starts and
remains below the GUT temperature during the inflationary stage. Furthermore,
provides the necessary number of e-folds and sufficient radiation energy
density to GUT baryogenesis can take place near the minimum energetic
configuration.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Chemical composition of stellar populations in Omega Centauri
We derive abundances of Fe, Na, O, and s-elements from GIRAFFE@VLT spectra
for more than 200 red giant stars in the Milky Way satellite Omega Centauri.
Our preliminary results are that: (i) we confirm that Omega Centauri exibiths
large star-to-star metallicity variations ( 1.4 dex); (ii) the
metallicity distribution reveals the presence of at least five stellar
populations with different [Fe/H]; (iii) a clear Na-O anticorrelation is
clearly observed for the metal-poor and metal-intermediate populations while
apparently the anticorrelation disappears for the most metal-rich populations.
Interestingly the Na level grows with iron.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of IAU Symp. 268
"Light elements in the Universe" (C. Charbonnel, M. Tosi, F. Primas, C.
Chiappini, eds., Cambridge Univ. Press
Scale invariant scalar metric fluctuations during inflation: non-perturbative formalism from a 5D vacuum
We extend to 5D an approach of a 4D non-perturbative formalism to study
scalar metric fluctuations of a 5D Riemann-flat de Sitter background metric. In
contrast with the results obtained in 4D, the spectrum of cosmological scalar
metric fluctuations during inflation can be scale invariant and the background
inflaton field can take sub-Planckian values.Comment: final version to be published in Eur. Phys. J.
Ground-based astrometry with wide field imagers. V. Application to near-infrared detectors: HAWK-I@VLT/ESO
High-precision astrometry requires accurate point-spread function modeling
and accurate geometric-distortion corrections. This paper demonstrates that it
is possible to achieve both requirements with data collected at the high acuity
wide-field K-band imager (HAWK-I), a wide-field imager installed at the Nasmyth
focus of UT4/VLT ESO 8m telescope. Our final astrometric precision reaches ~3
mas per coordinate for a well-exposed star in a single image with a systematic
error less than 0.1 mas. We constructed calibrated astro-photometric catalogs
and atlases of seven fields: the Baade's Window, NGC 6656, NGC 6121, NGC 6822,
NGC 6388, NGC 104, and the James Webb Space Telescope calibration field in the
Large Magellanic Cloud. We make these catalogs and images electronically
available to the community. Furthermore, as a demonstration of the efficacy of
our approach, we combined archival material taken with the optical wide-field
imager at the MPI/ESO 2.2m with HAWK-I observations. We showed that we are able
to achieve an excellent separation between cluster members and field objects
for NGC 6656 and NGC 6121 with a time base-line of about 8 years. Using both
HST and HAWK-I data, we also study the radial distribution of the SGB
populations in NGC 6656 and conclude that the radial trend is flat within our
uncertainty. We also provide membership probabilities for most of the stars in
NGC 6656 and NGC 6121 catalogs and estimate membership for the published
variable stars in these two fields.Comment: 36 pages (included appendix), 13 tables, 35 figures (26 in low
resolution), accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Online
materials will be soon available on CDS. Meanwhile, online materials can be
requested directly to the first autho
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