Reflection and Transmission at the Apparent Horizon during Gravitational Collapse

We examine the wave-functionals describing the collapse of a self-gravitating dust ball in an exact quantization of the gravity-dust system. We show that ingoing (collapsing) dust shell modes outside the apparent horizon must necessarily be accompanied by outgoing modes inside the apparent horizon, whose amplitude is suppressed by the square root of the Boltzmann factor at the Hawking temperature. Likewise, ingoing modes in the interior must be accompanied by outgoing modes in the exterior, again with an amplitude suppressed by the same factor. A suitable superposition of the two solutions is necessary to conserve the dust probability flux across the apparent horizon, thus each region contains both ingoing and outgoing dust modes. If one restricts oneself to considering only the modes outside the apparent horizon then one should think of the apparent horizon as a partial reflector, the probability for a shell to reflect being given by the Boltzmann factor at the Hawking temperature determined by the mass contained within it. However, if one considers the entire wave function, the outgoing wave in the exterior is seen to be the transmission through the horizon of the interior outgoing wave that accompanies the collapsing shells. This transmission could allow information from the interior to be transferred to the exterior.Comment: 19 pages, no figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Matching LTB and FRW spacetimes through a null hypersurface

Matching of a LTB metric representing dust matter to a background FRW universe across a null hypersurface is studied. In general, an unrestricted matching is possible only if the background FRW is flat or open. There is in general no gravitational impulsive wave present on the null hypersurface which is shear-free and expanding. Special cases of the vanishing pressure or energy density on the hypersurface is discussed. In the case of vanishing energy momentum tensor of the null hypersurface, i.e. in the case of a null boundary, it turns out that all possible definitions of the Hubble parameter on the null hypersurface, being those of LTB or that of FRW, are equivalent, and that a flat FRW can only be joined smoothly to a flat LTB.Comment: 9 page

Direct probing of band-structure Berry phase in diluted magnetic semiconductors

We report on experimental evidence of the Berry phase accumulated by the charge carrier wave function in single-domain nanowires made from a (Ga,Mn)(As,P) diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor layer. Its signature on the mesoscopic transport measurements is revealed as unusual patterns in the magnetoconductance, that are clearly distinguished from the universal conductance fluctuations. We show that these patterns appear in a magnetic field region where the magnetization rotates coherently and are related to a change in the band-structure Berry phase as the magnetization direction changes. They should be thus considered as a band structure Berry phase fingerprint of the effective magnetic monopoles in the momentum space. We argue that this is an efficient method to vary the band structure in a controlled way and to probe it directly. Hence, (Ga,Mn)As appears to be a very interesting test bench for new concepts based on this geometrical phase.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Alternative Methods of Describing Structure Formation in the Lemaitre-Tolman Model

We describe several new ways of specifying the behaviour of Lemaitre-Tolman (LT) models, in each case presenting the method for obtaining the LT arbitrary functions from the given data, and the conditions for existence of such solutions. In addition to our previously considered `boundary conditions', the new ones include: a simultaneous big bang, a homogeneous density or velocity distribution in the asymptotic future, a simultaneous big crunch, a simultaneous time of maximal expansion, a chosen density or velocity distribution in the asymptotic future, only growing or only decaying fluctuations. Since these conditions are combined in pairs to specify a particular model, this considerably increases the possible ways of designing LT models with desired properties.Comment: Accepted by Phys Rev D. RevTeX 4, 13 pages, no figures. Part of a series: gr-qc/0106096, gr-qc/0303016, gr-qc/0309119. Replacement contains very minor correction

Symmetry analysis and exact solutions of modified Brans-Dicke cosmological equations

We perform a symmetry analysis of modified Brans-Dicke cosmological equations and present exact solutions. We discuss how the solutions may help to build models of cosmology where, for the early universe, the expansion is linear and the equation of state just changes the expansion velocity but not the linearity. For the late universe the expansion is exponential and the effect of the equation of state on the rate of expansion is just to change the constant Hubble parameter.Comment: LaTeX2e source file, 14 pages, 7 reference

Optically probing the fine structure of a single Mn atom in an InAs quantum dot

We report on the optical spectroscopy of a single InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) doped with a single Mn atom in a longitudinal magnetic field of a few Tesla. Our findings show that the Mn impurity is a neutral acceptor state A^0 whose effective spin J=1 is significantly perturbed by the QD potential and its associated strain field. The spin interaction with photo-carriers injected in the quantum dot is shown to be ferromagnetic for holes, with an effective coupling constant of a few hundreds of micro-eV, but vanishingly small for electrons.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

CMB anisotropies seen by an off-center observer in a spherically symmetric inhomogeneous universe

The current authors have previously shown that inhomogeneous, but spherically symmetric universe models containing only matter can yield a very good fit to the SNIa data and the position of the first CMB peak. In this work we examine how far away from the center of inhomogeneity the observer can be located in these models and still fit the data well. Furthermore, we investigate whether such an off-center location can explain the observed alignment of the lowest multipoles of the CMB map. We find that the observer has to be located within a radius of 15 Mpc from the center for the induced dipole to be less than that observed by the COBE satellite. But for such small displacements from the center, the induced quadru- and octopoles turn out to be insufficiently large to explain the alignment.Comment: 8 pages (REVTeX4), 7 figures; v2: minor changes, matches published versio