Bimetric gravity is cosmologically viable

Bimetric theory describes gravitational interactions in the presence of an extra spin-2 field. Previous work has suggested that its cosmological solutions are generically plagued by instabilities. We show that by taking the Planck mass for the second metric, Mf , to be small, these instabilities can be pushed back to unobservably early times. In this limit, the theory approaches general relativity with an effective cosmological constant which is, remarkably, determined by the spin-2 interaction scale. This provides a late-time expansion history which is extremely close to ΛCDM, but with a technically-natural value for the cosmological constant. We find Mf should be no larger than the electroweak scale in order for cosmological perturbations to be stable by big-bang nucleosynthesis. We further show that in this limit the helicity-0 mode is no longer strongly-coupled at low energy scales

On the determination of the leptonic CP phase

The combination of data from long-baseline and reactor oscillation experiments leads to a preference of the leptonic CP phase δ CP in the range between π and 2π. We study the statistical significance of this hint by performing a Monte Carlo simulation of the relevant data. We find that the distribution of the standard test statistic used to derive confidence intervals for δ CP is highly non-Gaussian and depends on the unknown true values of θ 23 and the neutrino mass ordering. Values of δ CP around π/2 are disfavored at between 2σ and 3σ, depending on the unknown true values of θ 23 and the mass ordering. Typically the standard χ 2 approximation leads to over-coverage of the confidence intervals for δ CP . For the 2-dimensional confidence region in the ( δ CP , θ 23 ) plane the usual χ 2 approximation is better justified. The 2-dimensional region does not include the value δ CP = π/2 up to the 86.3% (89.2%) CL assuming a true normal (inverted) mass ordering. Furthermore, we study the sensitivity to δ CP and θ 23 of an increased exposure of the T2K experiment, roughly a factor 12 larger than the current exposure and including also anti-neutrino data. Also in this case deviations from Gaussianity may be significant, especially if the mass ordering is unknown

Classical and quantum temperature fluctuations via holography

We study local temperature fluctuations in a 2+1 dimensional CFT on the sphere, dual to a black hole in asymptotically AdS spacetime. The fluctuation spectrum is governed by the lowest-lying hydrodynamic modes of the system whose frequency and damping rate determine whether temperature fluctuations are thermal or quantum. We calculate numerically the corresponding quasinormal frequencies and match the result with the hydrodynamics of the dual CFT at high temperature. As a by-product of our analysis we determine the appropriate boundary conditions for calculating low-lying quasinormal modes for a four-dimensional Reissner-Nordström black hole in global AdS

Strings from 3D gravity: asymptotic dynamics of AdS 3 gravity with free boundary conditions

Pure three-dimensional gravity in anti-de Sitter space can be formulated as an SL(2 , R ) × SL(2 , R ) Chern-Simons theory, and the latter can be reduced to a WZW theory at the boundary. In this paper we show that AdS 3 gravity with free boundary conditions is described by a string at the boundary whose target spacetime is also AdS 3 . While boundary conditions in the standard construction of Coussaert, Henneaux, and van Driel are enforced through constraints on the WZW currents, we find that free boundary conditions are partially enforced through the string Virasoro constraints

Revisiting perturbations in extended quasidilaton massive gravity

In this work we study the theory of extended quasidilaton massive gravity together with the presence of matter fields. After discussing the homogeneous and isotropic fully dynamical background equations, which governs the exact expansion history of the universe, we consider small cosmological perturbations around these general FLRW solutions. The stability of tensor, vector and scalar perturbations on top of these general background solutions give rise to slightly different constraints on the parameters of the theory than those obtained in the approximative assumption of the late-time asymptotic form of the expansion history, which does not correspond to our current epoch. This opens up the possibility of stable FLRW solutions to be compared with current data on cosmic expansion with the restricted parameter space based on theoretical ground

Higher rank Wilson loops in N = 2 ∗ super-Yang-Mills theory

The N = 2 ∗ $$\mathcal{N}={2}^{\ast }$$ Super-Yang-Mills theory (SYM*) undergoes an infinite sequence of large- N quantum phase transitions. We compute expectation values of Wilson loops in k -symmetric and antisymmetric representations of the SU( N ) gauge group in this theory and show that the same phenomenon that causes the phase transitions at finite coupling leads to a non-analytic dependence of Wilson loops on k/N when the coupling is strictly infinite, thus making the higher-representation Wilson loops ideal holographic probes of the non-trivial phase structure of SYM*

Universal scaling properties of extremal cohesive holographic phases

We show that strongly-coupled, translation-invariant holographic IR phases at finite density can be classified according to the scaling behaviour of the metric, the electric potential and the electric flux introducing four critical exponents, independently of the details of the setup. Solutions fall into two classes, depending on whether they break relativistic symmetry or not. The critical exponents determine key properties of these phases, like thermodynamic stability, the (ir)relevant deformations around them, the low-frequency scaling of the optical conductivity and the nature of the spectrum for electric perturbations. We also study the scaling behaviour of the electric flux through bulk minimal surfaces using the Hartnoll-Radicevic order parameter, and characterize the deviation from the Ryu-Takayanagi prescription in terms of the criti cal exponents

Charge transport in holography with momentum dissipation

In this work, we examine how charge is transported in a theory where momentum is relaxed by spatially dependent, massless scalars. We analyze the possible IR phases in terms of various scaling exponents and the (ir)relevance of operators in the IR effective holographic theory with a dilaton. We compute the (finite) resistivity and encounter broad families of (in)coherent metals and insulators, characterized by universal scaling behaviour. The optical conductivity at zero temperature and low frequencies exhibits power tails which can violate scaling symmetries, due to the running of the dilaton. At low temperatures, our model captures features of random-field disorder

Halo-independent tests of dark matter direct detection signals: local DM density, LHC, and thermal freeze-out

From an assumed signal in a Dark Matter (DM) direct detection experiment a lower bound on the product of the DM-nucleon scattering cross section and the local DM density is derived, which is independent of the local DM velocity distribution. This can be combined with astrophysical determinations of the local DM density. Within a given particle physics model the bound also allows a robust comparison of a direct detection signal with limits from the LHC. Furthermore, the bound can be used to formulate a condition which has to be fulfilled if the particle responsible for the direct detection signal is a thermal relic, regardless of whether it constitutes all DM or only part of it. We illustrate the arguments by adopting a simplified DM model with a Z′ mediator and assuming a signal in a future xenon direct detection experiment

Quantum phase transitions in mass-deformed ABJM matrix model

When mass-deformed ABJM theory is considered on S 3 , the partition function of the theory localises, and is given by a matrix model. At large N , we solve this model in the decompactification limit, where the radius of the three-sphere is taken to infinity. In this limit, the theory exhibits a rich phase structure with an infinite number of third-order quantum phase transitions, accumulating at strong coupling