Vacuum polarization by topological defects in de Sitter spacetime

In this paper we investigate the vacuum polarization effects associated with a massive quantum scalar field in de Sitter spacetime in the presence of gravitational topological defects. Specifically we calculate the vacuum expectation value of the field square, $$. Because this investigation has been developed in a pure de Sitter space, here we are mainly interested on the effects induced by the presence of the defects.Comment: Talk presented at the 1st. Mediterranean Conference on Classical and Quantum Gravity (MCCQG

Nonplanar integrability at two loops

In this article we compute the action of the two loop dilatation operator on restricted Schur polynomials that belong to the su(2) sector, in the displaced corners approximation. In this non-planar large N limit, operators that diagonalize the one loop dilatation operator are not corrected at two loops. The resulting spectrum of anomalous dimensions is related to a set of decoupled harmonic oscillators, indicating integrability in this sector of the theory at two loops. The anomalous dimensions are a non-trivial function of the 't Hooft coupling, with a spectrum that is continuous and starting at zero at large N, but discrete at finite N.Comment: version to appear in JHE

A double coset ansatz for integrability in AdS/CFT

We give a proof that the expected counting of strings attached to giant graviton branes in AdS_5 x S^5, as constrained by the Gauss Law, matches the dimension spanned by the expected dual operators in the gauge theory. The counting of string-brane configurations is formulated as a graph counting problem, which can be expressed as the number of points on a double coset involving permutation groups. Fourier transformation on the double coset suggests an ansatz for the diagonalization of the one-loop dilatation operator in this sector of strings attached to giant graviton branes. The ansatz agrees with and extends recent results which have found the dynamics of open string excitations of giants to be given by harmonic oscillators. We prove that it provides the conjectured diagonalization leading to harmonic oscillators.Comment: 33 pages, 3 figures; v2: references adde

Electronic Phase Separation Transition as the Origin of the Superconductivity and the Pseudogap Phase of Cuprates

We propose a new phase of matter, an electronic phase separation transition that starts near the upper pseudogap and segregates the holes into high and low density domains. The Cahn-Hilliard approach is used to follow quantitatively this second order transition. The resulting grain boundary potential confines the charge in domains and favors the development of intragrain superconducting amplitudes. The zero resistivity transition arises only when the intergrain Josephson coupling $E_J$ is of the order of the thermal energy and phase locking among the superconducting grains takes place. We show that this approach explains the pseudogap and superconducting phases in a natural way and reproduces some recent scanning tunneling microscopy dataComment: 4 pages and 5 eps fig

Decohering d-dimensional quantum resistance

The Landauer scattering approach to 4-probe resistance is revisited for the case of a d-dimensional disordered resistor in the presence of decoherence. Our treatment is based on an invariant-embedding equation for the evolution of the coherent reflection amplitude coefficient in the length of a 1-dimensional disordered conductor, where decoherence is introduced at par with the disorder through an outcoupling, or stochastic absorption, of the wave amplitude into side (transverse) channels, and its subsequent incoherent re-injection into the conductor. This is essentially in the spirit of B{\"u}ttiker's reservoir-induced decoherence. The resulting evolution equation for the probability density of the 4-probe resistance in the presence of decoherence is then generalised from the 1-dimensional to the d-dimensional case following an anisotropic Migdal-Kadanoff-type procedure and analysed. The anisotropy, namely that the disorder evolves in one arbitrarily chosen direction only, is the main approximation here that makes the analytical treatment possible. A qualitatively new result is that arbitrarily small decoherence reduces the localisation-delocalisation transition to a crossover making resistance moments of all orders finite.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Dynamics of Enceladus and Dione inside the 2:1 Mean-Motion Resonance under Tidal Dissipation

In a previous work (Callegari and Yokoyama 2007, Celest. Mech. Dyn. Astr. vol. 98), the main features of the motion of the pair Enceladus-Dione were analyzed in the frozen regime, i.e., without considering the tidal evolution. Here, the results of a great deal of numerical simulations of a pair of satellites similar to Enceladus and Dione crossing the 2:1 mean-motion resonance are shown. The resonance crossing is modeled with a linear tidal theory, considering a two-degrees-of-freedom model written in the framework of the general three-body planar problem. The main regimes of motion of the system during the passage through resonance are studied in detail. We discuss our results comparing them with classical scenarios of tidal evolution of the system. We show new scenarios of evolution of the Enceladus-Dione system through resonance not shown in previous approaches of the problem.Comment: 36 pages, 12 figures. Accepted in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronom

Vacuum Polarization for a Massless Spin-1/2 Field in the Global Monopole Spacetime at Nonzero Temperature

In this paper we present the effects produced by the temperature in the renormalized vacuum expectation value of the zero-zero component of the energy-momentum tensor associated with massless left-handed spinor field in the pointlike global monopole spacetime. In order to develop this calculation we had to obtain the Euclidean thermal Green function in this background. Because the expression obtained for the thermal energy density cannot be expressed in a closed form, its explicit dependence on the temperature is not completely evident. So, in order to obtain concrete information about its thermal behavior, we develop a numerical analysis of our result in the high-temperature limit for specific values of the parameter $\alpha$ which codify the presence of the monopole.Comment: 22 pages, LaTex format, 5 figure

Solving Four Dimensional Field Theories with the Dirichlet Fivebrane

The realization of ${\cal N}=2$ four dimensional super Yang-Mills theories in terms of a single Dirichlet fivebrane in type IIB string theory is considered. A classical brane computation reproduces the full quantum low energy effective action. This result has a simple explanation in terms of mirror symmetry.Comment: Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.