1,253 research outputs found
Prolongation of Friction Dominated Evolution for Superconducting Cosmic Strings
This investigation is concerned with cosmological scenarios based on particle
physics theories that give rise to superconducting cosmic strings (whose
subsequent evolution may produce stable loop configurations known as vortons).
Cases in which electromagnetic coupling of the string current is absent or
unimportant have been dealt with in previous work. The purpose of the present
work is to provide quantitative estimates for cases in which electromagnetic
interaction with the surrounding plasma significantly affects the string
dynamics. In particular it will be shown that the current can become
sufficiently strong for the initial period of friction dominated string motion
to be substantially prolonged, which would entail a reinforcement of the short
length scale end of the spectrum of the string distribution, with potentially
observable cosmological implications if the friction dominated scenario lasts
until the time of plasma recombination.Comment: 10 pages Late
Numerical Toy-Model Calculation of the Nucleon Spin Autocorrelation Function in a Supernova Core
We develop a simple model for the evolution of a nucleon spin in a hot and
dense nuclear medium. A given nucleon is limited to one-dimensional motion in a
distribution of external, spin-dependent scattering potentials. We calculate
the nucleon spin autocorrelation function numerically for a variety of
potential densities and distributions which are meant to bracket realistic
conditions in a supernova core. For all plausible configurations the width of
the spin-density structure function is found to be less than the temperature.
This is in contrast with a naive perturbative calculation based on the one-pion
exchange potential which overestimates the width and thus suggests a large
suppression of the neutrino opacities by nucleon spin fluctuations. Our results
suggest that it may be justified to neglect the collisional broadening of the
spin-density structure function for the purpose of estimating the neutrino
opacities in the deep inner core of a supernova. On the other hand, we find no
indication that processes such as axion or neutrino pair emission, which depend
on nucleon spin fluctuations, are substantially suppressed beyond the
multiple-scattering effect already discussed in the literature. Aside from
these practical conclusions, our model reveals a number of interesting and
unexpected insights. For example, the spin-relaxation rate saturates with
increasing potential strength only if bound states are not allowed to form by
including a repulsive core. There is no saturation with increasing density of
scattering potentials until localized eigenstates of energy begin to form.Comment: 14 latex pages in two-column format, 15 postscript figures included,
uses revtex.sty and epsf.sty. Submitted to Physical Review
Mu-tau neutrino refraction and collective three-flavor transformations in supernovae
We study three-flavor collective neutrino transformations in the
dense-neutrino region above the neutrino sphere of a supernova core. We find
that two-flavor conversions driven by the atmospheric mass difference and the
13-mixing angle capture the full effect if one neglects the second-order
difference between the muon and tau neutrino refractive index. Including this
"mu-tau matter term" provides a resonance at a density of approximately 3 x
10^7 g cm^-3 that typically causes significant modifications of the overall
electron neutrino and antineutrino survival probabilities. This effect is
surprisingly sensitive to deviations from maximal 23-mixing, being different
for each octant.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. New presentation of results, version to be
published in PR
Electron-, Mu-, and Tau-Number Conservation in a Supernova Core
We study if the neutrino mixing parameters suggested by the atmospheric
neutrino anomaly imply chemical equilibrium between mu- and tau-flavored
leptons in a supernova (SN) core. The initial flavor-conversion rate would
indeed be fast if the nu_mu-nu_tau-mixing angle were not suppressed by
second-order refractive effects. The neutrino diffusion coefficients are
different for nu_mu, anti-nu_mu, nu_tau and anti-nu_tau so that neutrino
transport will create a net mu and tau lepton number density. This will
typically lead to a situation where the usual first-order refractive effects
dominate, further suppressing the rate of flavor conversion. Altogether,
neutrino refraction has the nontrivial consequence of guaranteeing the separate
conservation of e, mu, and tau lepton number in a SN core on the infall and
cooling time scales, even when neutrino mixing angles are large.Comment: Slightly expanded version with improved presentation, no changes of
substanc
Cosmological Magnetic Fields from Primordial Helical Seeds
Most early Universe scenarios predict negligible magnetic fields on
cosmological scales if they are unprocessed during subsequent expansion of the
Universe. We present a new numerical treatment of the evolution of primordial
fields and apply it to weakly helical seeds as they occur in certain early
Universe scenarios. We find that initial helicities not much larger than the
baryon to photon number can lead to fields of about 10^{-13} Gauss with
coherence scales slightly below a kilo-parsec today.Comment: 4 revtex pages, 2 postscript figures include
A Cosmic Battery
We show that the Poynting-Robertson drag effect in an optically thin
advection-dominated accretion flow around active gravitating objects generates
strong azimuthal electric currents which give rise to astrophysically
significant magnetic fields. Although the mechanism is most effective in
accreting compact objects, it seems very promising to also account for the
generation of stellar dipolar fields during the late protostellar collapse
phase, when the star approaches the main sequence.Comment: 12 pages Latex, 1 postscript figure, to appear in the Astrophysical
Journa
Prompt neutrino fluxes in the atmosphere with PROSA parton distribution functions
Effects on atmospheric prompt neutrino fluxes of present uncertainties
affecting the nucleon composition are studied by using the PROSA fit to parton
distribution functions (PDFs). The PROSA fit extends the precision of the PDFs
to low x, which is the kinematic region of relevance for high-energy neutrino
production, by taking into account LHCb data on charm and bottom
hadroproduction. In the range of neutrino energies explored by present Very
Large Volume Neutrino Telescopes, it is found that PDF uncertainties are far
smaller with respect to those due to renormalization and factorization scale
variation and to assumptions on the cosmic ray composition, which at present
dominate and limit our knowledge of prompt neutrino fluxes. A discussion is
presented on how these uncertainties affect the expected number of atmospheric
prompt neutrino events in the analysis of high-energy events characterized by
interaction vertices fully contained within the instrumented volume of the
detector, performed by the IceCube collaboration.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figures, 1 tabl
Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Nuclei from Individual Magnetized Sources
We investigate the dependence of composition, spectrum and angular
distributions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays above 10^19 eV from individual
sources on their magnetization. We find that, especially for sources within a
few megaparsecs from the observer, observable spectra and composition are
severely modified if the source is surrounded by fields of ~ 10^-7 Gauss on
scales of a few megaparsecs. Low energy particles diffuse over larger distances
during their energy loss time. This leads to considerable hardening of the
spectrum up to the energy where the loss distance becomes comparable to the
source distance. Magnetized sources thus have very important consequences for
observations, even if cosmic rays arrive within a few degrees from the source
direction. At the same time, details in spectra and chemical composition may be
intrinsically unpredictable because they depend on the unknown magnetic field
structure. If primaries are predominantly nuclei of atomic mass A accelerated
up to a maximum energy E_max with spectra not much softer than E^-2, secondary
protons from photo-disintegration can produce a conspicuous peak in the
spectrum at energy ~ E_max/A. A related feature appears in the average mass
dependence on energy.Comment: 15 pages, 16 ps figures, published version with minor changes, see
http://stacks.iop.org/1475-7516/2004/i=08/a=01
Lepton asymmetry creation in the Early Universe
Oscillations of active to sterile neutrinos with a small mixing angle sin 2
\theta < 10^{-2} could generate a large lepton asymmetry in the Early Universe.
The final order of magnitude of the lepton asymmetry \eta is mainly determined
by its growth in the last stage of evolution, the so called power-law regime.
There exist two contradictory results in the literature, \eta \propto T^{-1}
and \eta \propto T^{-4}, where T is the background medium temperature. In the
first case, the lepton asymmetry does not exceed values of 10^{-4} for |\delta
m^2| < 1 eV^2, while in the second case it can become larger than 10^{-1}. In
this work we analytically investigate the case \eta \propto T^{-1}, using a new
approach to solve the kinetic equations. We find that the power-law solution
\eta \propto T^{-1} is not self-consistent. Instead, we find the power law \eta
\propto T^{-11/3} to be a good approximation, which leads to a large final
asymmetry.Comment: 33 pp, 7 figure
Probing Grand Unified Theories with Cosmic Ray, Gamma-Ray and Neutrino Astrophysics
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays are produced by new
particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical
simulations of extragalactic nucleon, gamma-ray, and neutrino propagation, we
show the existence of an interesting parameter range for which such scenarios
may explain part of the data and are consistent with all observational
constraints. A combination of proposed observatories for ultra-high energy
cosmic rays, neutrino telescopes of a few kilometer scale, and gamma-ray
astrophysics instruments should be able to test these scenarios. In particular,
for neutrino masses in the eV range, exclusive neutrino decay modes of
superheavy particles can give rise to neutrino fluxes comparable to those
predicted in models of active galactic nuclei.Comment: 15 latex pages, 5 postscript figures included, uses revtex.sty and
psfig.sty. Submitted to Physical Review
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