30 research outputs found
Gravitational physics with antimatter
The production of low-energy antimatter provides unique opportunities to
search for new physics in an unexplored regime. Testing gravitational
interactions with antimatter is one such opportunity. Here a scenario based on
Lorentz and CPT violation in the Standard- Model Extension is considered in
which anomalous gravitational effects in antimatter could arise.Comment: 5 pages, presented at the International Conference on Exotic Atoms
(EXA 2008) and the 9th International Conference on Low Energy Antiproton
Physics (LEAP 2008), Vienna, Austria, September 200
CPT and Lorentz-invariance violation
The largest gap in our understanding of nature at the fundamental level is
perhaps a unified description of gravity and quantum theory. Although there are
currently a variety of theoretical approaches to this question, experimental
research in this field is inhibited by the expected Planck-scale suppression of
quantum-gravity effects. However, the breakdown of spacetime symmetries has
recently been identified as a promising signal in this context: a number of
models for underlying physics can accommodate minuscule Lorentz and CPT
violation, and such effects are amenable to ultrahigh-precision tests. This
presentation will give an overview of the subject. Topics such as motivations,
the SME test framework, mechanisms for relativity breakdown, and experimental
tests will be reviewed. Emphasis is given to observations involving antimatter.Comment: 6 page
Effective Theory Approach to the Spontaneous Breakdown of Lorentz Invariance
We generalize the coset construction of Callan, Coleman, Wess and Zumino to
theories in which the Lorentz group is spontaneously broken down to one of its
subgroups. This allows us to write down the most general low-energy effective
Lagrangian in which Lorentz invariance is non-linearly realized, and to explore
the consequences of broken Lorentz symmetry without having to make any
assumptions about the mechanism that triggers the breaking. We carry out the
construction both in flat space, in which the Lorentz group is a global
spacetime symmetry, and in a generally covariant theory, in which the Lorentz
group can be treated as a local internal symmetry. As an illustration of this
formalism, we construct the most general effective field theory in which the
rotation group remains unbroken, and show that the latter is just the
Einstein-aether theory.Comment: 45 pages, no figures
Gravito-electromagnetic analogies
We reexamine and further develop different gravito-electromagnetic (GEM)
analogies found in the literature, and clarify the connection between them.
Special emphasis is placed in two exact physical analogies: the analogy based
on inertial fields from the so-called "1+3 formalism", and the analogy based on
tidal tensors. Both are reformulated, extended and generalized. We write in
both formalisms the Maxwell and the full exact Einstein field equations with
sources, plus the algebraic Bianchi identities, which are cast as the
source-free equations for the gravitational field. New results within each
approach are unveiled. The well known analogy between linearized gravity and
electromagnetism in Lorentz frames is obtained as a limiting case of the exact
ones. The formal analogies between the Maxwell and Weyl tensors are also
discussed, and, together with insight from the other approaches, used to
physically interpret gravitational radiation. The precise conditions under
which a similarity between gravity and electromagnetism occurs are discussed,
and we conclude by summarizing the main outcome of each approach.Comment: 60 pages, 2 figures. Improved version (compared to v2) with some
re-write, notation improvements and a new figure that match the published
version; expanded compared to the published version to include Secs. 2.3 and
Tests of Lorentz symmetry using antihydrogen
Signals of CPT and Lorentz violation are possible in the context of
spectroscopy using hydrogen and antihydrogen. We apply the Standard-Model
Extension, a broad framework for Lorentz breaking in physics, to various
transitions in the hydrogen and antihydrogen spectra. The results show an
unsuppressed effect in the transition between the upper two hyperfine sublevels
of the ground state of these systems. We also discuss related tests in Penning
traps, and recent work on Lorentz violation in curved spacetime.Comment: 11pp, invited talk at PQE 37 Conference, Snowbird, Utah, USA, 2-6 Jan
200
Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes
Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe