81,103 research outputs found
Low redshift constraints on energy-momentum-powered gravity models
There has been recent interest in the cosmological consequences of
energy-momentum-powered gravity models, in which the matter side of Einstein's
equations is modified by the addition of a term proportional to some power,
, of the energy-momentum tensor, in addition to the canonical linear term.
In this work we treat these models as phenomenological extensions of the
standard CDM, containing both matter and a cosmological constant. We
also quantitatively constrain the additional model parameters using low
redshift background cosmology data that are specifically from Type Ia
supernovas and Hubble parameter measurements. We start by studying specific
cases of these models with fixed values of which lead to an analytic
expression for the Friedmann equation; we discuss both their current
constraints and how the models may be further constrained by future
observations of Type Ia supernovas for WFIRST complemented by measurements of
the redshift drift by the ELT. We then consider and constrain a more extended
parameter space, allowing to be a free parameter and considering scenarios
with and without a cosmological constant. These models do not solve the
cosmological constant problem per se. Nonetheless these models can
phenomenologically lead to a recent accelerating universe without a
cosmological constant at the cost of having a preferred matter density of
around instead of the usual . Finally we
also briefly constrain scenarios without a cosmological constant, where the
single component has a constant equation of state which needs not be that of
matter; we provide an illustrative comparison of this model with a more
standard dynamical dark energy model with a constant equation of state.Comment: 13+2 pages, 12+1 figures; A&A (in press
Influence of Refractory Periods in the Hopfield model
We study both analytically and numerically the effects of including
refractory periods in the Hopfield model for associative memory. These periods
are introduced in the dynamics of the network as thresholds that depend on the
state of the neuron at the previous time. Both the retrieval properties and the
dynamical behaviour are analyzed.Comment: Revtex, 7 pages, 7 figure
Domain wall description of superconductivity
In the present work we shall address the issue of electrical conductivity in
superconductors in the perspective of superconducting domain wall solutions in
the realm of field theory. We take our set up made out of a dynamical complex
scalar field coupled to gauge field to be responsible for superconductivity and
an extra scalar real field that plays the role of superconducting domain walls.
The temperature of the system is interpreted through the fact that the soliton
following accelerating orbits is a Rindler observer experiencing a thermal
bath.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, Latex. Version to appear in PL
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
Spatial variations of the fine-structure constant in symmetron models
We investigate the variation of the fine-structure constant, {\alpha}, in
symmetron models using N-body simulations in which the full spatial
distribution of {\alpha} at different redshifts has been calculated. In
particular, we obtain simulated sky maps for this variation, and determine its
power spectrum. We find that in high-density regions of space (such as deep
inside dark matter halos) the value of {\alpha} approaches the value measured
on Earth. In the low-density outskirts of halos the scalar field value can
approach the symmetry breaking value and leads to significantly different
values of {\alpha}. If the scalar-photon coupling strength {\beta}{\gamma} is
of order unity we find that the variation of {\alpha} inside dark matter halos
can be of the same magnitude as the recent claims by Webb et al. of a dipole
variation. Importantly, our results also show that with low-redshift symmetry
breaking these models exhibit some dependence of {\alpha} on lookback time (as
opposed to a pure spatial dipole) which could in principle be detected by
sufficiently accurate spectroscopic measurements, such as those of ALMA and the
ELT-HIRES.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure
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