4,925 research outputs found
Probing gravitational non-minimal coupling with dark energy surveys
We investigate observational constraints on a specific one-parameter
extension to the minimal quintessence model, where the quintessence field
acquires a quadratic coupling to the scalar curvature through a coupling
constant . The value of is highly suppressed in typical tracker
models if the late-time cosmic acceleration is driven at some field values near
the Planck scale. We test in a second class of models in which the field
value today becomes a free model parameter. We use the combined data from
type-Ia supernovae, cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations
and matter power spectrum, to weak lensing measurements and find a best-fit
value where is excluded outside the 95 per cent
confidence region. The effective gravitational constant subject
to the hint of a non-zero is constrained to at the same confidence level on cosmological scales, and can be narrowed
down to when combining with Solar
System tests.Comment: Context extended, figures and references added, title changed to
match with accepted version for publicatio
"Teleparallel" Dark Energy
Using the "teleparallel" equivalent of General Relativity as the
gravitational sector, which is based on torsion instead of curvature, we add a
canonical scalar field, allowing for a nonminimal coupling with gravity.
Although the minimal case is completely equivalent to standard quintessence,
the nonminimal scenario has a richer structure, exhibiting quintessence-like or
phantom-like behavior, or experiencing the phantom-divide crossing. The richer
structure is manifested in the absence of a conformal transformation to an
equivalent minimally-coupled model.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, Version published in PLB704 (2011) 384-38
Sensitive frequency-dependence of the carrier-envelope phase effect on bound-bound transition: an interference perspective
We investigate numerically with Hylleraas coordinates the frequency
dependence of the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) effect on bound-bound
transitions of helium induced by an ultrashort laser pulse of few cycles. We
find that the CEP effect is very sensitive to the carrier frequency of the
laser pulse, occurring regularly even at far-off resonance frequencies. By
analyzing a two-level model, we find that the CEP effect can be attributed to
the quantum interference between neighboring multi-photon transition pathways,
which is made possible by the broadened spectrum of the ultrashort laser pulse.
A general picture is developed along this line to understand the sensitivity of
the CEP effect to laser's carrier frequency. Multi-level influence on the CEP
effect is also discussed
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