202 research outputs found
Angular momentum of isolated systems
Penrose's twistorial approach to the definition of angular momentum at null
infinity is developed so that angular momenta at different cuts can be
meaningfully compared. This is done by showing that the twistor spaces
associated with different cuts of scri can be identified as manifolds (but not
as vector spaces). The result is a well-defined, Bondi-Metzner-Sachs-invariant
notion of angular momentum in a radiating space-time; the difficulties and
ambiguities previously encountered are attached to attempts to express this in
special-relativistic terms, and in particular to attempts to identify a single
Minkowski space of origins. Unlike the special-relativistic case, the angular
momentum cannot be represented by a purely j=1 quantity M_{ab}, but has
higher-j contributions as well. Applying standard kinematic prescriptions,
these higher-j contributions are shown to correspond precisely to the shear.
Thus it appears that shear and angular momentum should be regarded as different
aspects of a single unified concept.Comment: 23 pages, to appear in GR
Four Dimensional Integrable Theories
There exist many four dimensional integrable theories. They include self-dual
gauge and gravity theories, all their extended supersymmetric generalisations,
as well the full (non-self-dual) N=3 super Yang-Mills equations. We review the
harmonic space formulation of the twistor transform for these theories which
yields a method of producing explicit connections and metrics. This formulation
uses the concept of harmonic space analyticity which is closely related to that
of quaternionic analyticity. (Talk by V. Ogievetsky at the G\"ursey Memorial
Conference I, Istanbul, June 1994)Comment: 11 pages, late
A comment on positive mass for scalar field sources
We use a transformation due to Bekenstein to relate the ADM and Bondi masses
of asymptotically-flat solutions of the Einstein equations with, respectively,
scalar sources and conformal-scalar sources. Although the conformal-scalar
energy-momentum tensor does not satisfy the Dominant Energy Condition one may,
by this means, still conclude that the ADM mass is positive.Comment: 6 page
Complex Kerr Geometry and Nonstationary Kerr Solutions
In the frame of the Kerr-Schild approach, we consider the complex structure
of Kerr geometry which is determined by a complex world line of a complex
source. The real Kerr geometry is represented as a real slice of this complex
structure. The Kerr geometry is generalized to the nonstationary case when the
current geometry is determined by a retarded time and is defined by a
retarded-time construction via a given complex world line of source. A general
exact solution corresponding to arbitrary motion of a spinning source is
obtained. The acceleration of the source is accompanied by a lightlike
radiation along the principal null congruence. It generalizes to the rotating
case the known Kinnersley class of "photon rocket" solutions.Comment: v.3, revtex, 16 pages, one eps-figure, final version (to appear in
PRD), added the relation to twistors and algorithm of numerical computations,
English is correcte
On the entropy production of time series with unidirectional linearity
There are non-Gaussian time series that admit a causal linear autoregressive
moving average (ARMA) model when regressing the future on the past, but not
when regressing the past on the future. The reason is that, in the latter case,
the regression residuals are only uncorrelated but not statistically
independent of the future. In previous work, we have experimentally verified
that many empirical time series indeed show such a time inversion asymmetry.
For various physical systems, it is known that time-inversion asymmetries are
linked to the thermodynamic entropy production in non-equilibrium states. Here
we show that such a link also exists for the above unidirectional linearity.
We study the dynamical evolution of a physical toy system with linear
coupling to an infinite environment and show that the linearity of the dynamics
is inherited to the forward-time conditional probabilities, but not to the
backward-time conditionals. The reason for this asymmetry between past and
future is that the environment permanently provides particles that are in a
product state before they interact with the system, but show statistical
dependencies afterwards. From a coarse-grained perspective, the interaction
thus generates entropy. We quantitatively relate the strength of the
non-linearity of the backward conditionals to the minimal amount of entropy
generation.Comment: 16 page
Continuous image distortion by astrophysical thick lenses
Image distortion due to weak gravitational lensing is examined using a
non-perturbative method of integrating the geodesic deviation and optical
scalar equations along the null geodesics connecting the observer to a distant
source. The method we develop continuously changes the shape of the pencil of
rays from the source to the observer with no reference to lens planes in
astrophysically relevant scenarios. We compare the projected area and the ratio
of semi-major to semi-minor axes of the observed elliptical image shape for
circular sources from the continuous, thick-lens method with the commonly
assumed thin-lens approximation. We find that for truncated singular isothermal
sphere and NFW models of realistic galaxy clusters, the commonly used thin-lens
approximation is accurate to better than 1 part in 10^4 in predicting the image
area and axes ratios. For asymmetric thick lenses consisting of two massive
clusters separated along the line of sight in redshift up to \Delta z = 0.2, we
find that modeling the image distortion as two clusters in a single lens plane
does not produce relative errors in image area or axes ratio more than 0.5%Comment: accepted to GR
Penrose Limit and String Theories on Various Brane Backgrounds
We investigate the Penrose limit of various brane solutions including
Dp-branes, NS5-branes, fundamental strings, (p,q) fivebranes and (p,q) strings.
We obtain special null geodesics with the fixed radial coordinate (critical
radius), along which the Penrose limit gives string theories with constant
mass. We also study string theories with time-dependent mass, which arise from
the Penrose limit of the brane backgrounds. We examine equations of motion of
the strings in the asymptotic flat region and around the critical radius. In
particular, for (p,q) fivebranes, we find that the string equations of motion
in the directions with the B field are explicitly solved by the spheroidal wave
functions.Comment: 41 pages, Latex, minor correction
The repulsive nature of naked singularities from the point of view of Quantum Mechanics
We use the Dirac equation coupled to a background metric to examine what
happens to quantum mechanical observables like the probability density and the
radial current in the vicinity of a naked singularity of the
Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m type. We find that the wave function of the Dirac
particle is regular in the point of the singularity. We show that the
probability density is exactly zero at the singularity reflecting
quantum-mechanically the repulsive nature of the naked singularity.
Furthermore, the surface integral of the radial current over a sphere in the
vicinity of the naked singularity turns out to be also zero.Comment: 11 page
An optimization principle for deriving nonequilibrium statistical models of Hamiltonian dynamics
A general method for deriving closed reduced models of Hamiltonian dynamical
systems is developed using techniques from optimization and statistical
estimation. As in standard projection operator methods, a set of resolved
variables is selected to capture the slow, macroscopic behavior of the system,
and the family of quasi-equilibrium probability densities on phase space
corresponding to these resolved variables is employed as a statistical model.
The macroscopic dynamics of the mean resolved variables is determined by
optimizing over paths of these probability densities. Specifically, a cost
function is introduced that quantifies the lack-of-fit of such paths to the
underlying microscopic dynamics; it is an ensemble-averaged, squared-norm of
the residual that results from submitting a path of trial densities to the
Liouville equation. The evolution of the macrostate is estimated by minimizing
the time integral of the cost function. The value function for this
optimization satisfies the associated Hamilton-Jacobi equation, and it
determines the optimal relation between the statistical parameters and the
irreversible fluxes of the resolved variables, thereby closing the reduced
dynamics. The resulting equations for the macroscopic variables have the
generic form of governing equations for nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and they
furnish a rational extension of the classical equations of linear irreversible
thermodynamics beyond the near-equilibrium regime. In particular, the value
function is a thermodynamic potential that extends the classical dissipation
function and supplies the nonlinear relation between thermodynamics forces and
fluxes
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