Knot soliton in Weinberg-Salam model

We study numerically the topological knot solution suggested recently in the Weinberg-Salam model. Applying the SU(2) gauge invariant Abelian projection we demonstrate that the restricted part of the Weinberg-Salam Lagrangian containing the interaction of the neutral boson with the Higgs scalar can be reduced to the Ginzburg-Landau model with the hidden SU(2) symmetry. The energy of the knot composed from the neutral boson and Higgs field has been evaluated by using the variational method with a modified Ward ansatz. The obtained numerical value is 39 Tev which provides the upper bound on the electroweak knot energy.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, analysis of stability adde

M-flation: Inflation From Matrix Valued Scalar Fields

We propose an inflationary scenario, M-flation, in which inflation is driven by three $N\times N$ hermitian matrices $\Phi_i, i=1,2,3$. The inflation potential of our model, which is strongly motivated from string theory, is constructed from $\Phi_{i}$ and their commutators. We show that one can consistently restrict the classical dynamics to a sector in which the $\Phi_i$ are proportional to the $N\times N$ irreducible representations of SU(2). In this sector our model effectively behaves as an N-flation model with $3 N^2$ number of fields and the effective inflaton field has a super-Planckian field value. Furthermore, the fine-tunings associated with unnaturally small couplings in the chaotic type inflationary scenarios are removed. Due to the matrix nature of the inflaton fields there are $3N^2-1$ extra scalar fields in the dynamics. These have the observational effects such as production of iso-curvature perturbations on cosmic microwave background. Moreover, the existence of these extra scalars provides us with a natural preheating mechanism and exit from inflation. As the effective inflaton field can traverse super-Planckian distances in the field space, the model is capable of producing a considerable amount of gravity waves that can be probed by future CMB polarization experiments such as PLANCK, QUIET and CMBPOL.Comment: minor changes, the counting of the alpha and beta modes are corrected, references adde

Large Transverse Momenta in Statistical Models of High Energy Interactions

The creation of particles with large transverse momenta in high energy hadronic collisions is a long standing problem. The transition from small- (soft) to hard- parton scattering `high-pt' events is rather smooth. In this paper we apply the non-extensive statistical framework to calculate transverse momentum distributions of long lived hadrons created at energies from low (sqrt(s)~10 GeV) to the highest energies available in collider experiments (sqrt(s)~2000 GeV). Satisfactory agreement with the experimental data is achieved. The systematic increase of the non-extensivity parameter with energy found can be understood as phenomenological evidence for the increased role of long range correlations in the hadronization process. Predictions concerning the rise of average transverse momenta up to the highest cosmic ray energies are also given and discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

Nitrogen and Iron Availability Drive Metabolic Remodeling and Natural Selection of Diverse Phytoplankton during Experimental Upwelling

Nearly half of carbon fixation and primary production originates from marine phytoplankton, and much of it occurs in episodic blooms in upwelling regimes. Here, we simulated blooms limited by nitrogen and iron by incubating Monterey Bay surface waters with subnutricline waters and inorganic nutrients and measured the wholecommunity transcriptomic response during mid- and late-bloom conditions. Cell counts revealed that centric and pennate diatoms (largely Pseudo-nitzschia and Chaetoceros spp.) were the major blooming taxa, but dinoflagellates, prasinophytes, and prymnesiophytes also increased. Viral mRNA significantly increased in late bloom and likely played a role in the bloom\u27s demise. We observed conserved shifts in the genetic similarity of phytoplankton populations to cultivated strains, indicating adaptive population-level changes in community composition. Additionally, the density of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) declined in late-bloom samples for most taxa, indicating a loss of intraspecific diversity as a result of competition and a selective sweep of adaptive alleles. We noted differences between mid- and late-bloom metabolism and differential regulation of light-harvesting complexes (LHCs) under nutrient stress. While most LHCs are diminished under nutrient stress, we showed that diverse taxa upregulated specialized, energy-dissipating LHCs in low iron. We also suggest the relative expression of NRT2 compared to the expression of GSII as a marker of cellular nitrogen status and the relative expression of iron starvationinduced protein genes (ISIP1, ISIP2, and ISIP3) compared to the expression of the thiamine biosynthesis gene (thiC) as a marker of iron status in natural diatom communities

Non-Abelian Vortices, Super-Yang-Mills Theory and Spin(7)-Instantons

We consider a complex vector bundle E endowed with a connection A over the eight-dimensional manifold R^2 x G/H, where G/H = SU(3)/U(1)xU(1) is a homogeneous space provided with a never integrable almost complex structure and a family of SU(3)-structures. We establish an equivalence between G-invariant solutions A of the Spin(7)-instanton equations on R^2 x G/H and general solutions of non-Abelian coupled vortex equations on R^2. These vortices are BPS solitons in a d=4 gauge theory obtained from N=1 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in ten dimensions compactified on the coset space G/H with an SU(3)-structure. The novelty of the obtained vortex equations lies in the fact that Higgs fields, defining morphisms of vector bundles over R^2, are not holomorphic in the generic case. Finally, we introduce BPS vortex equations in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory and show that they have the same feature.Comment: 14 pages; v2: typos fixed, published versio

The status of GEO 600

The GEO 600 laser interferometer with 600m armlength is part of a worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors. GEO 600 is unique in having advanced multiple pendulum suspensions with a monolithic last stage and in employing a signal recycled optical design. This paper describes the recent commissioning of the interferometer and its operation in signal recycled mode