127 research outputs found
Solid State Systems for Electron Electric Dipole Moment and other Fundamental Measurements
In 1968, F.L. Shapiro published the suggestion that one could search for an
electron EDM by applying a strong electric field to a substance that has an
unpaired electron spin; at low temperature, the EDM interaction would lead to a
net sample magnetization that can be detected with a SQUID magnetometer. One
experimental EDM search based on this technique was published, and for a number
of reasons including high sample conductivity, high operating temperature, and
limited SQUID technology, the result was not particularly sensitive compared to
other experiments in the late 1970's.
Advances in SQUID and conventional magnetometery had led us to reconsider
this type of experiment, which can be extended to searches and tests other than
EDMs (e.g., test of Lorentz invariance). In addition, the complementary
measurement of an EDM-induced sample electric polarization due to application
of a magnetic field to a paramagnetic sample might be effective using modern
ultrasensitive charge measurement techniques. A possible paramagnetic material
is Gd-substituted YIG which has very low conductivity and a net enhancement
(atomic enhancement times crystal screening) of order unity. Use of a
reasonable volume (100's of cc) sample of this material at 50 mK and 10 kV/cm
might yield an electron EDM sensitivity of e cm or better, a factor
of improvement over current experimental limits.Comment: 6 pages. Prepared for ITAMP workshop on fundamental physics that was
to be held Sept 20-22 2001 in Cambride, MA, but was canceled due to terrorist
attack on U.S New version incorporates a number of small changes, most
notably the scaling of the sensitivity of the Faraday magnetometer with
linewidth is now treated in a saner fashion. The possibility of operating at
an even lower temperarture, say 10 microkelvin, is also discusse
Evaluating the effectiveness of explanations for recommender systems : Methodological issues and empirical studies on the impact of personalization
Peer reviewedPostprin
The Future Evolution of White Dwarf Stars Through Baryon Decay and Time Varying Gravitational Constant
Motivated by the possibility that the fundamental ``constants'' of nature
could vary with time, this paper considers the long term evolution of white
dwarf stars under the combined action of proton decay and variations in the
gravitational constant. White dwarfs are thus used as a theoretical laboratory
to study the effects of possible time variations, especially their implications
for the future history of the universe. More specifically, we consider the
gravitational constant to vary according to the parametric relation , where the time scale is the same order as
the proton lifetime. We then study the long term fate and evolution of white
dwarf stars. This treatment begins when proton decay dominates the stellar
luminosity, and ends when the star becomes optically thin to its internal
radiation.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted to Astrophysics and Space Scienc
Spin polarised nuclear matter and its application to neutron stars
An equation of state(EOS) of nuclear matter with explicit inclusion of a
spin-isospin dependent force is constructed from a finite range, momentum and
density dependent effective interaction. This EOS is found to be in good
agreement with those obtained from more sophisticated models for unpolarised
nuclear matter. Introducing spin degrees of freedom, it is found that at
density about 2.5 times the density of normal nuclear matter the neutron matter
undergoes a ferromagnetic transition. The maximum mass and the radius of the
neutron star agree favourably with the observations. Since finding quark matter
rather than spin polarised nuclear matter at the core of neutron stars is more
probable, the proposed EOS is also applied to the study of hybrid stars. It is
found using the bag model picture that one can in principle describe both the
mass and size as well as the surface magnetic field of hybrid stars
satisfactorily.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures available on reques
Reionization: Characteristic Scales, Topology and Observability
Recently the numerical simulations of the process of reionization of the
universe at z>6 have made a qualitative leap forward, reaching sufficient sizes
and dynamic range to determine the characteristic scales of this process. This
allowed making the first realistic predictions for a variety of observational
signatures. We discuss recent results from large-scale radiative transfer and
structure formation simulations on the observability of high-redshift Ly-alpha
sources. We also briefly discuss the dependence of the characteristic scales
and topology of the ionized and neutral patches on the reionization parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures (4 in color), to appear in Astronomy and Space
Science special issue "Space Astronomy: The UV window to the Universe",
proceedings of 1st NUVA Conference ``Space Astronomy: The UV window to the
Universe'' in El Escorial (Spain
Neutrino Cooling of Neutron Stars. Medium effects
This review demonstrates that neutrino emission from dense hadronic component
in neutron stars is subject of strong modifications due to collective effects
in the nuclear matter. With the most important in-medium processes incorporated
in the cooling code an overall agreement with available soft X ray data can be
easily achieved. With these findings so called "standard" and "non-standard"
cooling scenarios are replaced by one general "nuclear medium cooling scenario"
which relates slow and rapid neutron star coolings to the star masses (interior
densities). In-medium effects take important part also at early hot stage of
neutron star evolution decreasing the neutrino opacity for less massive and
increasing for more massive neutron stars. A formalism for calculation of
neutrino radiation from nuclear matter is presented that treats on equal
footing one-nucleon and multiple-nucleon processes as well as reactions with
resonance bosons and condensates. Cooling history of neutron stars with quark
cores is also discussed.Comment: To be published in "Physics of Neutron Star Interiors", Eds. D.
Blaschke, N.K. Glendenning, A. Sedrakian, Springer, Heidelberg (2001
Hubble expansion and structure formation in the "running FLRW model" of the cosmic evolution
A new class of FLRW cosmological models with time-evolving fundamental
parameters should emerge naturally from a description of the expansion of the
universe based on the first principles of quantum field theory and string
theory. Within this general paradigm, one expects that both the gravitational
Newton's coupling, G, and the cosmological term, Lambda, should not be strictly
constant but appear rather as smooth functions of the Hubble rate. This
scenario ("running FLRW model") predicts, in a natural way, the existence of
dynamical dark energy without invoking the participation of extraneous scalar
fields. In this paper, we perform a detailed study of these models in the light
of the latest cosmological data, which serves to illustrate the
phenomenological viability of the new dark energy paradigm as a serious
alternative to the traditional scalar field approaches. By performing a joint
likelihood analysis of the recent SNIa data, the CMB shift parameter, and the
BAOs traced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we put tight constraints on the
main cosmological parameters. Furthermore, we derive the theoretically
predicted dark-matter halo mass function and the corresponding redshift
distribution of cluster-size halos for the "running" models studied. Despite
the fact that these models closely reproduce the standard LCDM Hubble
expansion, their normalization of the perturbation's power-spectrum varies,
imposing, in many cases, a significantly different cluster-size halo redshift
distribution. This fact indicates that it should be relatively easy to
distinguish between the "running" models and the LCDM cosmology using realistic
future X-ray and Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster surveys.Comment: Version published in JCAP 08 (2011) 007: 1+41 pages, 6 Figures, 1
Table. Typos corrected. Extended discussion on the computation of the
linearly extrapolated density threshold above which structures collapse in
time-varying vacuum models. One appendix, a few references and one figure
adde
CDM Accelerating Cosmology as an Alternative to LCDM model
A new accelerating cosmology driven only by baryons plus cold dark matter
(CDM) is proposed in the framework of general relativity. In this model the
present accelerating stage of the Universe is powered by the negative pressure
describing the gravitationally-induced particle production of cold dark matter
particles. This kind of scenario has only one free parameter and the
differential equation governing the evolution of the scale factor is exactly
the same of the CDM model. For a spatially flat Universe, as predicted
by inflation (), it is found that the
effectively observed matter density parameter is ,
where is the constant parameter specifying the CDM particle creation
rate. The supernovae test based on the Union data (2008) requires so that as independently derived from weak
gravitational lensing, the large scale structure and other complementary
observations.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Interacting new agegraphic viscous dark energy with varying
We consider the new agegraphic model of dark energy with a varying
gravitational constant, , in a non-flat universe. We obtain the equation of
state and the deceleration parameters for both interacting and noninteracting
new agegraphic dark energy. We also present the equation of motion determining
the evolution behavior of the dark energy density with a time variable
gravitational constant. Finally, we generalize our study to the case of viscous
new agegraphic dark energy in the presence of an interaction term between both
dark components.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in IJTP (2010
Observational tests for \Lambda(t)CDM cosmology
We investigate the observational viability of a class of cosmological models
in which the vacuum energy density decays linearly with the Hubble parameter,
resulting in a production of cold dark matter particles at late times.
Similarly to the flat \Lambda CDM case, there is only one free parameter to be
adjusted by the data in this class of \Lambda(t)CDM scenarios, namely, the
matter density parameter. To perform our analysis we use three of the most
recent SNe Ia compilation sets (Union2, SDSS and Constitution) along with the
current measurements of distance to the BAO peaks at z = 0.2 and z = 0.35 and
the position of the first acoustic peak of the CMB power spectrum. We show that
in terms of statistics both models provide good fits to the data and
similar results. A quantitative analysis discussing the differences in
parameter estimation due to SNe light-curve fitting methods (SALT2 and MLCS2k2)
is studied using the current SDSS and Constitution SNe Ia compilations. A
matter power spectrum analysis using the 2dFGRS is also performed, providing a
very good concordance with the constraints from the SDSS and Constitution
MLCS2k2 data.Comment: Revised version, to appear in JCA
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