480 research outputs found
Is Cosmology Solved?
We have fossil evidence from the thermal background radiation that our
universe expanded from a considerably hotter denser state. We have a well
defined and testable description of the expansion, the relativistic
Friedmann-Lemaitre model. Its observational successes are impressive but I
think hardly enough for a convincing scientific case. The lists of
observational constraints and free hypotheses within the model have similar
lengths. The scorecard on the search for concordant measures of the mass
density parameter and the cosmological constant shows that the high density
Einstein-de Sitter model is challenged, but that we cannot choose between low
density models with and without a cosmological constant. That is, the
relativistic model is not strongly overconstrained, the usual test of a mature
theory. Work in progress will greatly improve the situation and may at last
yield a compelling test. If so, and the relativistic model survives, it will
close one line of research in cosmology: we will know the outlines of what
happened as our universe expanded and cooled from high density. It will not end
research: some of us will occupy ourselves with the details of how galaxies and
other large-scale structures came to be the way they are, others with the issue
of what our universe was doing before it was expanding. The former is being
driven by rapid observational advances. The latter is being driven mainly by
theory, but there are hints of observational guidance.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. To be published in PASP as part of the
proceedings of the Smithsonian debate, Is Cosmology Solved
Designing fractional factorial split-plot experiments with few whole-plot factors
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73673/1/j.1467-9876.2003.05029.x.pd
Gibbons-Hawking Effect in the Sonic de Sitter Space-Time of an Expanding Bose-Einstein-Condensed Gas
We propose an experimental scheme to observe the Gibbons-Hawking effect in
the acoustic analog of a 1+1-dimensional de Sitter universe, produced in an
expanding, cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate. It is shown that a two-level
system created at the center of the trap, an atomic quantum dot interacting
with phonons, observes a thermal Bose distribution at the de Sitter
temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, RevTex4; as publishe
The most storage economical Runge-Kutta methods for the solution of large systems of coupled first-order differential equations
AbstractIt is shown how the attainable minimum for the memory requirements of Runge-Kutta methods can be realised for methods of the third order. These economisable third order methods belong to a one parameter sub-family from which two particular members with low error bound are selected
On Gravitational Waves in Spacetimes with a Nonvanishing Cosmological Constant
We study the effect of a cosmological constant on the propagation
and detection of gravitational waves. To this purpose we investigate the
linearised Einstein's equations with terms up to linear order in in a
de Sitter and an anti-de Sitter background spacetime. In this framework the
cosmological term does not induce changes in the polarization states of the
waves, whereas the amplitude gets modified with terms depending on .
Moreover, if a source emits a periodic waveform, its periodicity as measured by
a distant observer gets modified. These effects are, however, extremely tiny
and thus well below the detectability by some twenty orders of magnitude within
present gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO or future planned ones such
as LISA.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Time-Varying Fine-Structure Constant Requires Cosmological Constant
Webb et al. presented preliminary evidence for a time-varying fine-structure
constant. We show Teller's formula for this variation to be ruled out within
the Einstein-de Sitter universe, however, it is compatible with cosmologies
which require a large cosmological constant.Comment: 3 pages, no figures, revtex, to be published in Mod. Phys. Lett.
Experimental Designs for Binary Data in Switching Measurements on Superconducting Josephson Junctions
We study the optimal design of switching measurements of small Josephson
junction circuits which operate in the macroscopic quantum tunnelling regime.
Starting from the D-optimality criterion we derive the optimal design for the
estimation of the unknown parameters of the underlying Gumbel type
distribution. As a practical method for the measurements, we propose a
sequential design that combines heuristic search for initial estimates and
maximum likelihood estimation. The presented design has immediate applications
in the area of superconducting electronics implying faster data acquisition.
The presented experimental results confirm the usefulness of the method. KEY
WORDS: optimal design, D-optimality, logistic regression, complementary log-log
link, quantum physics, escape measurement
A Testable Solution of the Cosmological Constant and Coincidence Problems
We present a new solution to the cosmological constant (CC) and coincidence
problems in which the observed value of the CC, , is linked to other
observable properties of the universe. This is achieved by promoting the CC
from a parameter which must to specified, to a field which can take many
possible values. The observed value of Lambda ~ 1/(9.3 Gyrs)^2\Lambda$-values
and does not rely on anthropic selection effects. Our model includes no
unnatural small parameters and does not require the introduction of new
dynamical scalar fields or modifications to general relativity, and it can be
tested by astronomical observations in the near future.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures; v2: version accepted by Phys. Rev.
Particle decays and stability on the de Sitter universe
We study particle decay in de Sitter space-time as given by first order
perturbation theory in a Lagrangian interacting quantum field theory. We study
in detail the adiabatic limit of the perturbative amplitude and compute the
"phase space" coefficient exactly in the case of two equal particles produced
in the disintegration. We show that for fields with masses above a critical
mass there is no such thing as particle stability, so that decays
forbidden in flat space-time do occur here. The lifetime of such a particle
also turns out to be independent of its velocity when that lifetime is
comparable with de Sitter radius. Particles with mass lower than critical have
a completely different behavior: the masses of their decay products must obey
quantification rules, and their lifetime is zero.Comment: Latex, 38 pages, 1 PostScript figure; added references, minor
corrections and remark
A Note on the Integral Formulation of Einstein's Equations Induced on a Braneworld
We revisit the integral formulation (or Green's function approach) of
Einstein's equations in the context of braneworlds. The integral formulation
has been proposed independently by several authors in the past, based on the
assumption that it is possible to give a reinterpretation of the local metric
field in curved spacetimes as an integral expression involving sources and
boundary conditions. This allows one to separate source-generated and
source-free contributions to the metric field. As a consequence, an exact
meaning to Mach's Principle can be achieved in the sense that only
source-generated (matter fields) contributions to the metric are allowed for;
universes which do not obey this condition would be non-Machian. In this paper,
we revisit this idea concentrating on a Randall-Sundrum-type model with a
non-trivial cosmology on the brane. We argue that the role of the surface term
(the source-free contribution) in the braneworld scenario may be quite subtler
than in the 4D formulation. This may pose, for instance, an interesting issue
to the cosmological constant problem.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in the General
Relativity and Gravitation Journa
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