Interferometers as Probes of Planckian Quantum Geometry

A theory of position of massive bodies is proposed that results in an observable quantum behavior of geometry at the Planck scale, $t_P$. Departures from classical world lines in flat spacetime are described by Planckian noncommuting operators for position in different directions, as defined by interactions with null waves. The resulting evolution of position wavefunctions in two dimensions displays a new kind of directionally-coherent quantum noise of transverse position. The amplitude of the effect in physical units is predicted with no parameters, by equating the number of degrees of freedom of position wavefunctions on a 2D spacelike surface with the entropy density of a black hole event horizon of the same area. In a region of size $L$, the effect resembles spatially and directionally coherent random transverse shear deformations on timescale $\approx L/c$ with typical amplitude $\approx \sqrt{ct_PL}$. This quantum-geometrical "holographic noise" in position is not describable as fluctuations of a quantized metric, or as any kind of fluctuation, dispersion or propagation effect in quantum fields. In a Michelson interferometer the effect appears as noise that resembles a random Planckian walk of the beamsplitter for durations up to the light crossing time. Signal spectra and correlation functions in interferometers are derived, and predicted to be comparable with the sensitivities of current and planned experiments. It is proposed that nearly co-located Michelson interferometers of laboratory scale, cross-correlated at high frequency, can test the Planckian noise prediction with current technology.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, Latex. To appear in Physical Review

New strong sector, odd-parity processes, and the Tevatron

The color-octet isosinglet "rho" of a new strong-interaction sector is readily produced in ppbar collisions. Its odd-parity decay to an "eta" and a gluon may exceed its decay rate to dijets. At center of mass energies sufficiently greater than the colored "rho" mass, the odd-parity production of ("omega" + colored "eta") or ("rho" + colored "pion") may be comparable to ttbar production. Considering that the "omega" has a dominant odd-parity decay mode, we end up with (Z, W, or gamma) + 4 jet events with two of the jets containing b or bbar.Comment: 8 pages, uuencoded PS file, try ghostscript or direct printing rather than ghostview, PS file of paper without figure is available on WWW at http://bigmac2.physics.utoronto.ca/BHpapers.htm

Investing in Mobility: Freight Transport in the Hudson Region

Proposes a framework for assessing alternative investments in freight rail, highway, and transit capacity that would increase the ability to improve mobility and air quality in the New York metropolitan area

The Theory of a Quantum Noncanonical Field in Curved Spacetimes

Much attention has been recently devoted to the possibility that quantum gravity effects could lead to departures from Special Relativity in the form of a deformed Poincar\`e algebra. These proposals go generically under the name of Doubly or Deformed Special Relativity (DSR). In this article we further explore a recently proposed class of quantum field theories, involving noncanonically commuting complex scalar fields, which have been shown to entail a DSR-like symmetry. An open issue for such theories is whether the DSR-like symmetry has to be taken as a physically relevant symmetry, or if in fact the "true" symmetries of the theory are just rotations and translations while boost invariance has to be considered broken. We analyze here this issue by extending the known results to curved spacetime under both of the previous assumptions. We show that if the symmetry of the free theory is taken to be a DSR-like realization of the Poincar\'e symmetry, then it is not possible to render such a symmetry a gauge symmetry of the curved physical spacetime. However, it is possible to introduce an auxiliary spacetime which allows to describe the theory as a standard quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Alternatively, taking the point of view that the noncanonical commutation of the fields actually implies a breakdown of boost invariance, the physical spacetime manifold has to be foliated in surfaces of simultaneity and the field theory can be coupled to gravity by making use of the ADM prescription.Comment: 9 pages, no figure

Lorentz Violating Inflation

We explore the impact of Lorentz violation on the inflationary scenario. More precisely, we study the inflationary scenario in the scalar-vector-tensor theory where the vector is constrained to be unit and time like. It turns out that the Lorentz violating vector affects the dynamics of the chaotic inflationary model and divides the inflationary stage into two parts; the Lorentz violating stage and the standard slow roll stage. We show that the universe is expanding as an exact de Sitter spacetime in the Lorentz violating stage although the inflaton field is rolling down the potential. Much more interestingly, we find exact Lorentz violating inflationary solutions in the absence of the inflaton potential. In this case, the inflation is completely associated with the Lorentz violation. We also mention some consequences of Lorentz violating inflation which can be tested by observations.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report 2016

The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI), one of the country's three federally-funded poverty centers, is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to monitoring trends in poverty and inequality, examining what is driving those trends, and developing science-based policy on poverty and inequality. We present here our third annual report examining the "state of the union" on poverty, inequality, and labor market outcomes.The purpose of establishing this annual series of reports is to ensure that critical facts on poverty and inequality enjoy the same visibility as other indicators of the country's health. There are of course all manner of analyses that take on separately such issues as poverty, employment, income inequality, health inequality, economic mobility, or educational access. This report instead provides a unified analysis that brings together evidence across these and other domains and thus allows for a comprehensive assessment of where the country stands

Non-local on-shell field redefinition for the SME

This work instigates a study of non-local field mappings within the Lorentz- and CPT-violating Standard-Model Extension (SME). An example of such a mapping is constructed explicitly, and the conditions for the existence of its inverse are investigated. It is demonstrated that the associated field redefinition can remove b-type Lorentz violation from free SME fermions in certain situations. These results are employed to obtain explicit expressions for the corresponding Lorentz-breaking momentum-space eigenspinors and their orthogonality relations.Comment: 12 pages, REVTeX

Lorentz-symmetry violating decays in a medium

Various decay processes, such as the decay of a spin-1 particle into two photons or the gravitational decay of a spin-1/2 fermion, are forbidden in the vacuum by a combination of requirements, including angular momentum conservation, Lorentz invariance and gauge invariance. We show that such processes can occur in a medium, such as a thermal background of particles, even if it is homogeneous and isotropic. We carry out a model-independent analysis of the vertex function for such processes in terms of a set of form factors, and show that the amplitude can be non-zero while remaining consistent with the symmetry principles mentioned above. The results simulate Lorentz symmetry violating effects, although in this case they arise from completely Lorentz-invariant physics.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, no figure