9,935 research outputs found
Regulating Eternal Inflation II: The Great Divide
In a previous paper, two of the authors presented a "regulated" picture of
eternal inflation. This picture both suggested and drew support from a
conjectured discontinuity in the amplitude for tunneling from positive to
negative vacuum energy, as the positive vacuum energy was sent to zero;
analytic and numerical arguments supporting this conjecture were given. Here we
show that this conjecture is false, but in an interesting way. There are no
cases where tunneling amplitudes are discontinuous at vanishing cosmological
constant; rather, the space of potentials separates into two regions. In one
region decay is strongly suppressed, and the proposed picture of eternal
inflation remains viable; sending the (false) vacuum energy to zero in this
region results in an absolutely stable asymptotically flat space. In the other
region, we argue that the space-time at vanishing cosmological constant is
unstable, but not asymptotically Minkowski. The consequences of our results for
theories of supersymmetry breaking are unchanged.Comment: JHEP3, 19 Pages, 7 Figure
Evolution of the 1-mlb mercury ion thruster subsystem
The developmental history, performance, and major lifetests of each component of the present 1-mlb (4.5 mN) thruster system are traced over the past 10 years. The 1-mlb thruster subsystem consists of an 8 cm diameter ion thruster mounted on 2 axis gimbals, a mercury propellant tank, a power electronics unit, a controller/digital interface unit, and necessary electrical harnesses plus propellant tankage and feed lines
An 8-cm electron bombardment thruster for auxiliary propulsion
Thruster size, beam current level, and specific impulse trade-offs are considered for mercury electron bombardment ion thrusters to be used for north-south station keeping of geosynchronous spacecraft. An 8-cm diameter thruster operating at 2750 seconds specific impulse at thrust levels of 4.4 mN (1 m1b) to 8.9 mN (2 m6b) with a design life of 20,000 hours and 10,000 cycles is being developed. The thruster will have a dished two-grid system capable of thrust vectoring of + or - 10 degrees in two orthogonal directions. A preliminary thruster has been fabricated and tested; thruster performance characteristics have been determined at 4.45, 6.68, and 8.90 millinewtons
High performance auxiliary-propulsion ion thruster with ion-machined accelerator grid
An improvement in thruster performance was achieved by reducing the diameter of the accelerator grid holes. The smaller accelerator grid holes resulted in a reduction in neutral mercury atoms escaping the discharge chamber, which in turn enhanced the discharge propellant utilization from approximately 68 percent to 92 percent. The accelerator grids were fabricated by ion machining with an 8-centimeter-diameter thruster, and the screen grid holes individually focused ion beamlets onto the blank accelerator grid. The resulting accelerator grid holes are less than 1.12 millimeters in diameter, while previously used accelerator grids had hole diameters of 1.69 millimeters. The thruster could be operated with the small-hole accelerator grid at neutralizer potential
High Temperature Limit of the IIA Matrix Model
The high temperature limit of a system of two D-0 branes is investigated. The
partition function can be expressed as a power series in (inverse
temperature). The leading term in the high temperature expression of the
partition function and effective potential is calculated {\em exactly}.
Physical quantities like the mean square separation can also be exactly
determined in the high temperature limit. We comment on SU(3) IIB matrix model
and the difficulties to study it.Comment: Lattice 2000 (Gravity and Matrix Models
Interacting Strings in Matrix String Theory
It is here explained how the Green-Schwarz superstring theory arises from
Matrix String Theory. This is obtained as the strong YM-coupling limit of the
theory expanded around its BPS instantonic configurations, via the
identification of the interacting string diagram with the spectral curve of the
relevant configuration. Both the GS action and the perturbative weight
, where is the Euler characteristic of the world-sheet
surface and the string coupling, are obtained.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, two references adde
de Sitter Vacua, Renormalization and Locality
We analyze the renormalization properties of quantum field theories in de
Sitter space and show that only two of the maximally invariant vacuum states of
free fields lead to consistent perturbation expansions. One is the Euclidean
vacuum, and the other can be viewed as an analytic continuation of Euclidean
functional integrals on . The corresponding Lorentzian manifold is the
future half of global de Sitter space with boundary conditions on fields at the
origin of time. We argue that the perturbation series in this case has
divergences at the origin, which render the future evolution of the system
indeterminate without a better understanding of high energy physics.Comment: JHEP Latex, 13 pages, v2. references adde
The Number of States of Two Dimensional Critical String Theory
We discuss string theory vacua which have the wrong number of spacetime
dimensions, and give a crude argument that vacua with more than four large
dimensions are improbable. We then turn to two dimensional vacua, which naively
appear to violate Bekenstein's entropy principle. A classical analysis shows
that the naive perturbative counting of states is unjustified. All excited
states of the system have strong coupling singularities which prevent us from
concluding that they really exist. A speculative interpretation of the
classical solutions suggests only a finite number of states will be found in
regions bounded by a finite area. We also argue that the vacuum degeneracy of
two dimensional classical string theory is removed in quantum mechanics. The
system appears to be in a Kosterlitz-Thouless phase. This leads to the
conclusion that it is also improbable to have only two large spacetime
dimensions in string theory. However, we note that, unlike our argument for
high dimensions, our conclusions about the ground state have neglected two
dimensional quantum gravitational effects, and are at best incomplete.Comment: 12 pages, harvma
Matrix Theory Description of Schwarzschild Black Holes in the Regime N >> S
We study the description of Schwarzschild black holes, of entropy S, within
matrix theory in the regime . We obtain the most general matrix
theory equation of state by requiring that black holes admit a description
within this theory. It has a recognisable form in various cases. In some cases
a D dimensional black hole can plausibly be thought of as a
dimensional black hole, described by another auxiliary matrix theory, but in
its regime. We find what appears to be a matrix theory
generalisation to higher dynamical branes of the normalisation of dynamical
string tension, seen in other contexts. We discuss a further possible
generalisation of the matrix theory equation of state. In a special case, it is
governed by dynamical degrees of freedom.Comment: 22 pages. Latex fil
- âŠ