Large classical universes emerging from quantum cosmology

It is generally believed that one cannot obtain a large Universe from quantum cosmological models without an inflationary phase in the classical expanding era because the typical size of the Universe after leaving the quantum regime should be around the Planck length, and the standard decelerated classical expansion after that is not sufficient to enlarge the Universe in the time available. For instance, in many quantum minisuperspace bouncing models studied in the literature, solutions where the Universe leave the quantum regime in the expanding phase with appropriate size have negligible probability amplitude with respect to solutions leaving this regime around the Planck length. In this paper, I present a general class of moving gaussian solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation where the velocity of the wave in minisuperspace along the scale factor axis, which is the new large parameter introduced in order to circumvent the abovementioned problem, induces a large acceleration around the quantum bounce, forcing the Universe to leave the quantum regime sufficiently big to increase afterwards to the present size, without needing any classical inflationary phase in between, and with reasonable relative probability amplitudes with respect to models leaving the quantum regime around the Planck scale. Furthermore, linear perturbations around this background model are free of any transplanckian problem.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Inertial forces in the Casimir effect with two moving plates

We combine linear response theory and dimensional regularization in order to derive the dynamical Casimir force in the low frequency regime. We consider two parallel plates moving along the normal direction in $D-$dimensional space. We assume the free-space values for the mass of each plate to be known, and obtain finite, separation-dependent mass corrections resulting from the combined effect of the two plates. The global mass correction is proportional to the static Casimir energy, in agreement with Einstein's law of equivalence between mass and energy for stressed rigid bodies.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; title and abstract changed; to appear in Physical Review

Particle Creation by a Moving Boundary with Robin Boundary Condition

We consider a massless scalar field in 1+1 dimensions satisfying a Robin boundary condition (BC) at a non-relativistic moving boundary. We derive a Bogoliubov transformation between input and output bosonic field operators, which allows us to calculate the spectral distribution of created particles. The cases of Dirichlet and Neumann BC may be obtained from our result as limiting cases. These two limits yield the same spectrum, which turns out to be an upper bound for the spectra derived for Robin BC. We show that the particle emission effect can be considerably reduced (with respect to the Dirichlet/Neumann case) by selecting a particular value for the oscillation frequency of the boundary position

A 3-form Gauge Potential in 5D in connection with a Possible Dark Sector of 4D-Electrodynamics

We here propose a 5-dimensional {\bf Abelian gauge} model based on the mixing between a $U(1)$ potential and an Abelian 3-form field by means of a topological mass term. An extended covariant derivative is introduced to minimally couple a Dirac field to the $U(1)$ potential, while this same covariant derivative non-minimally couples the 3-form field to the charged fermion. A number of properties are discussed in 5D; in particular, the appearance of a topological fermionic current. A 4-dimensional reduced version of the model is investigated and, { \bf in addition to the $U(1)$ electric- and magnetic-sort of fields,} there emerges an extra set of electric- and magnetic-like fields which contribute a negative pressure and may be identified as a possible fraction of dark energy. The role of the topological fermionic current is also contemplated upon dimensional reduction from 5D to 4D. Other issues we present in 4 space-time dimensions are the emergence {\bf of a pseudo-scalar massive particle,} an extra massive neutral gauge boson,{\bf which we interpret as a kind of paraphoton}, and the calculation of spin- and velocity-dependent interparticle potentials associated to the exchange of the intermediate bosonic fields of the model.Comment: -- 30 pages -- L. P. R. Ospedal appears as a new co-author; modifications by inclusion of the gravitational sector and the attainment of a spin- and velocity-dependent potential as an application have been worked out in this Revised Versio

An alternative approach for the dynamics of polarons in one dimension

We developed a new method based on functional integration to treat the dynamics of polarons in one-dimensional systems. We treat the acoustical and the optical case in an unified manner, showing their differences and similarities. The mobility and diffusion coefficients are calculated in the Markovian approximation in the strong coupling limit.Comment: 57 page

Modeling disorder in graphene

We present a study of different models of local disorder in graphene. Our focus is on the main effects that vacancies -- random, compensated and uncompensated --, local impurities and substitutional impurities bring into the electronic structure of graphene. By exploring these types of disorder and their connections, we show that they introduce dramatic changes in the low energy spectrum of graphene, viz. localized zero modes, strong resonances, gap and pseudogap behavior, and non-dispersive midgap zero modes.Comment: 16 pages, lower resolution figure

Probing the two-scale-factor universality hypothesis by exact rotation symmetry-breaking mechanism

We probe the two-scale factor universality hypothesis by evaluating, firstly explicitly and analytically at the one-loop order, the loop quantum corrections to the amplitude ratios for O($N$) $\lambda\phi^{4}$ scalar field theories with rotation symmetry-breaking in three distinct and independent methods in which the rotation symmetry-breaking mechanism is treated exactly. We show that the rotation symmetry-breaking amplitude ratios turn out to be identical in the three methods and equal to their respective rotation symmetry-breaking ones, although the amplitudes themselves, in general, depend on the method employed and on the rotation symmetry-breaking parameter. At the end, we show that all these results can be generalized, through an inductive process based on a general theorem emerging from the exact calculation, to any loop level and physically interpreted based on symmetry ideas.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Statistical models of mixtures with a biaxial nematic phase

We consider a simple Maier-Saupe statistical model with the inclusion of disorder degrees of freedom to mimic the phase diagram of a mixture of rod-like and disc-like molecules. A quenched distribution of shapes leads to the existence of a stable biaxial nematic phase, in qualitative agreement with experimental findings for some ternary lyotropic liquid mixtures. An annealed distribution, however, which is more adequate to liquid mixtures, precludes the stability of this biaxial phase. We then use a two-temperature formalism, and assume a separation of relaxation times, to show that a partial degree of annealing is already sufficient to stabilize a biaxial nematic structure.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure