51,131 research outputs found
New coupled quintessence cosmology
A component of dark energy has been recently proposed to explain the current
acceleration of the Universe. Unless some unknown symmetry in Nature prevents
or suppresses it, such a field may interact with the pressureless component of
dark matter, giving rise to the so-called models of coupled quintessence. In
this paper we propose a new cosmological scenario where radiation and baryons
are conserved, while the dark energy component is decaying into cold dark
matter (CDM). The dilution of CDM particles, attenuated with respect to the
usual scaling due to the interacting process, is characterized by a
positive parameter , whereas the dark energy satisfies the equation
of state (). We carry out a joint statistical
analysis involving recent observations from type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic
oscillation peak, and Cosmic Microwave Background shift parameter to check the
observational viability of the coupled quintessence scenario here proposed.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Minor corrections to match published versio
Mass distribution and structural parameters of Small Magellanic Cloud star clusters
In this work we estimate, for the first time, the total masses and mass
function slopes of a sample of 29 young and intermediate-age SMC clusters from
CCD Washington photometry. We also derive age, interstellar reddening and
structural parameters for most of the studied clusters by employing a
statistical method to remove the unavoidable field star contamination. Only
these 29 clusters out of 68 originally analysed cluster candidates present
stellar overdensities and coherent distribution in their colour-magnitude
diagrams compatible with the existence of a genuine star cluster. We employed
simple stellar population models to derive general equations for estimating the
cluster mass based only on its age and integrated light in the B, V, I, C and
T1 filter. These equations were tested against mass values computed from
luminosity functions, showing an excellent agreement. The sample contains
clusters with ages between 60 Myr and 3 Gyr and masses between 300 and 3000 Mo
distributed between ~0.5 deg. and ~2 deg. from the SMC optical centre. We
determined mass function slopes for 24 clusters, of which 19 have slopes
compatible with that of Kroupa IMF (2.3 +/- 0.7), considering the
uncertainties. The remaining clusters - H86-188, H86-190, K47, K63 and NGC242 -
showed flatter MFs. Additionally, only clusters with masses lower than ~1000 Mo
and flatter MF were found within ~0.6 deg. from the SMC rotational centre.Comment: 12 pages, 19 figures. Includes another 29 full-page figures of
supplementary material. Accepted for publication in the MNRA
Is the transition redshift a new cosmological number?
Observations from Supernovae Type Ia (SNe Ia) provided strong evidence for an
expanding accelerating Universe at intermediate redshifts. This means that the
Universe underwent a transition from deceleration to acceleration phases at a
transition redshift of the order unity whose value in principle depends
on the cosmology as well as on the assumed gravitational theory. Since
cosmological accelerating models endowed with a transition redshift are
extremely degenerated, in principle, it is interesting to know whether the
value of itself can be observationally used as a new cosmic
discriminator. After a brief discussion of the potential dynamic role played by
the transition redshift, it is argued that future observations combining SNe
Ia, the line-of-sight (or "radial") baryon acoustic oscillations, the
differential age of galaxies, as well as the redshift drift of the spectral
lines may tightly constrain , thereby helping to narrow the parameter
space for the most realistic models describing the accelerating Universe.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Some discussions about how to estimate the
transition redshift have been added. New data by Planck and H(z) data have
been mentioned. New references have been adde
On FRW Model in Conformal Teleparallel Gravity
In this paper we use the conformal teleparallel gravity to study an isotropic
and homogeneous Universe which is settled by the FRW metric. We solve the field
equations and we obtain the behavior of some cosmological parameters such as
scale factor, deceleration parameter and the energy density of the perfect
fluid which is the matter field of our model. The field equations, that we
called modified Friedmann equations, allow us to define a dark fluid, with dark
energy density and dark pressure, responsible for the acceleration in the
Universe.Comment: Accepted in EPJ
Lorentz-violating nonminimal coupling contributions in mesonic hydrogen atoms and generation of photon higher-order derivative terms
We have studied the contributions of Lorentz-violating CPT-odd and CPT-even
nonminimal couplings to the energy spectrum of the mesonic hydrogen and the
higher-order radiative corrections to the effective action of the photon sector
of a Lorentz-violating version of the scalar electrodynamics. By considering
the complex scalar field describes charged mesons (pion or kaon), the
non-relativistic limit of the model allows to attain upper-bounds by analyzing
its contribution to the mesonic hydrogen energy. By using the experimental data
for the strong correction shift and the pure QED transitions , the best upper-bound for the CPT-odd coupling is
and for the CPT-even one is
. Besides, the CPT-odd radiative correction to the
photon action is a dimension-5 operator which looks like a higher-order
Carroll-Field-Jackiw term. The CPT-even radiative contribution to the photon
effective action is a dimension-6 operator which would be a higher-order
derivative version of the minimal CPT-even term of the standard model
extension
Steady-state entanglement between distant quantum dots in photonic crystal dimers
We show that two spatially separated semiconductor quantum dots under
resonant and continuous-wave excitation can be strongly entangled in the
steady-state, thanks to their radiative coupling by mutual interaction through
the normal modes of a photonic crystal dimer. We employ a quantum master
equation formalism to quantify the steady-state entanglement by calculating the
system {\it negativity}. Calculations are specified to consider realistic
semiconductor nanostructure parameters for the photonic crystal dimer-quantum
dots coupled system, determined by a guided mode expansion solution of Maxwell
equations. Negativity values of the order of 0.1 ( of the maximum value)
are shown for interdot distances that are larger than the resonant wavelength
of the system. It is shown that the amount of entanglement is almost
independent of the interdot distance, as long as the normal mode splitting of
the photonic dimer is larger than their linewidths, which becomes the only
requirement to achieve a local and individual qubit addressing. Considering
inhomogeneously broadened quantum dots, we find that the steady-state
entanglement is preserved as long as the detuning between the two quantum dot
resonances is small when compared to their decay rates. The steady-state
entanglement is shown to be robust against the effects of pure dephasing of the
quantum dot transitions. We finally study the entanglement dynamics for a
configuration in which one of the two quantum dots is initially excited and
find that the transient negativity can be enhanced by more than a factor of two
with respect to the steady-state value. These results are promising for
practical applications of entangled states at short time scales.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
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