3,171 research outputs found
Degenerate Stars and Gravitational Collapse in AdS/CFT
We construct composite CFT operators from a large number of fermionic primary
fields corresponding to states that are holographically dual to a zero
temperature Fermi gas in AdS space. We identify a large N regime in which the
fermions behave as free particles. In the hydrodynamic limit the Fermi gas
forms a degenerate star with a radius determined by the Fermi level, and a mass
and angular momentum that exactly matches the boundary calculations. Next we
consider an interacting regime, and calculate the effect of the gravitational
back-reaction on the radius and the mass of the star using the
Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations. Ignoring other interactions, we determine
the "Chandrasekhar limit" beyond which the degenerate star (presumably)
undergoes gravitational collapse towards a black hole. This is interpreted on
the boundary as a high density phase transition from a cold baryonic phase to a
hot deconfined phase.Comment: 75 page
Holographic dilepton production in a thermalizing plasma
We determine the out-of-equilibrium production rate of dileptons at rest in
strongly coupled N=4 Super Yang-Mills plasma using the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Thermalization is achieved via the gravitational collapse of a thin shell of
matter in AdS_5 space and the subsequent formation of a black hole, which we
describe in a quasistatic approximation. Prior to thermalization, the dilepton
spectral function is observed to oscillate as a function of frequency, but the
amplitude of the oscillations decreases when thermal equilibrium is approached.
At the same time, we follow the flow of the quasinormal spectrum of the
corresponding U(1) vector field towards its equilibrium limit.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures. v2: Version accepted for publication in JHEP;
minor modifications, added reference
Stability Constraints on Classical de Sitter Vacua
We present further no-go theorems for classical de Sitter vacua in Type II
string theory, i.e., de Sitter constructions that do not invoke
non-perturbative effects or explicit supersymmetry breaking localized sources.
By analyzing the stability of the 4D potential arising from compactification on
manfiolds with curvature, fluxes, and orientifold planes, we found that
additional ingredients, beyond the minimal ones presented so far, are necessary
to avoid the presence of unstable modes. We enumerate the minimal setups for
(meta)stable de Sitter vacua to arise in this context.Comment: 18 pages; v2: argument improved, references adde
Uniformly Accelerated Observer in Moyal Spacetime
In Minkowski space, an accelerated reference frame may be defined as one that
is related to an inertial frame by a sequence of instantaneous Lorentz
transformations. Such an accelerated observer sees a causal horizon, and the
quantum vacuum of the inertial observer appears thermal to the accelerated
observer, also known as the Unruh effect. We argue that an accelerating frame
may be similarly defined (i.e. as a sequence of instantaneous Lorentz
transformations) in noncommutative Moyal spacetime, and discuss the twisted
quantum field theory appropriate for such an accelerated observer. Our analysis
shows that there are several new features in the case of noncommutative
spacetime: chiral massless fields in dimensions have a qualitatively
different behavior compared to massive fields. In addition, the vacuum of the
inertial observer is no longer an equilibrium thermal state of the accelerating
observer, and the Bose-Einstein distribution acquires -dependent
corrections.Comment: 19 pages. Typos correcte
Thermalization from gauge/gravity duality: Evolution of singularities in unequal time correlators
We consider a gauge/gravity dual model of thermalization which consists of a
collapsing thin matter shell in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter space. A central
aspect of our model is to consider a shell moving at finite velocity as
determined by its equation of motion, rather than a quasi-static approximation
as considered previously in the literature. By applying a divergence matching
method, we obtain the evolution of singularities in the retarded unequal time
correlator , which probes different stages of the thermalization. We
find that the number of singularities decreases from a finite number to zero as
the gauge theory thermalizes. This may be interpreted as a sign of decoherence.
Moreover, in a second part of the paper, we show explicitly that the thermal
correlator is characterized by the existence of singularities in the complex
time plane. By studying a quasi-static state, we show the singularities at real
times originate from contributions of normal modes. We also investigate the
possibility of obtaining complex singularities from contributions of
quasi-normal modes.Comment: 35 pages, 4 figure
Time singularities of correlators from Dirichlet conditions in AdS/CFT
Within AdS/CFT, we establish a general procedure for obtaining the leading
singularity of two-point correlators involving operator insertions at different
times. The procedure obtained is applied to operators dual to a scalar field
which satisfies Dirichlet boundary conditions on an arbitrary time-like surface
in the bulk. We determine how the Dirichlet boundary conditions influence the
singularity structure of the field theory correlation functions. New
singularities appear at boundary points connected by null geodesics bouncing
between the Dirichlet surface and the boundary. We propose that their
appearance can be interpreted as due to a non-local double trace deformation of
the dual field theory, in which the two insertions of the operator are
separated in time. The procedure developed in this paper provides a technical
tool which may prove useful in view of describing holographic thermalization
using gravitational collapse in AdS space.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures. Version as in JHE
Integrating omics datasets with the OmicsPLS package
Background: With the exponential growth in available biomedical data, there is a need for data integration methods that can extract information about relationships between the data sets. However, these data sets might have very different characteristics. For interpretable results, data-specific variation needs to be quantified. For this task, Two-way Orthogonal Partial Least Squares (O2PLS) has been proposed. To facilitate application and development of the methodology, free and open-source software is required. However, this is not the case with O2PLS. Results: We introduce OmicsPLS, an open-source implementation of the O2PLS method in R. It can handle both low- and high-dimensional datasets efficiently. Generic methods for inspecting and visualizing results are implemented. Both a standard and faster alternative cross-validation methods are available to determine the number of components. A simulation study shows good performance of OmicsPLS compared to alternatives, in terms of accuracy and CPU runtime. We demonstrate OmicsPLS by integrating genetic and glycomic data. Conclusions: We propose the OmicsPLS R package: a free and open-source implementation of O2PLS for statistical data integration. OmicsPLS is available at https://cran.r-project.org/package=OmicsPLSand can be installed in R via install.packages("OmicsPLS")
Holographic Evolution of Entanglement Entropy
We study the evolution of entanglement entropy in a 2-dimensional
equilibration process that has a holographic description in terms of a Vaidya
geometry. It models a unitary evolution in which the field theory starts in a
pure state, its vacuum, and undergoes a perturbation that brings it far from
equilibrium. The entanglement entropy in this set up provides a measurement of
the quantum entanglement in the system. Using holographic techniques we recover
the same result obtained before from the study of processes triggered by a
sudden change in a parameter of the hamiltonian, known as quantum quenches.
Namely, entanglement in 2-dimensional conformal field theories propagates with
velocity v^2=1. Both in quantum quenches and in the Vaidya model equilibration
is only achieved at the local level. Remarkably, the holographic derivation of
this last fact requires information from behind the apparent horizon generated
in the process of gravitational collapse described by the Vaidya geometry. In
the early stages of the evolution the apparent horizon seems however to play no
relevant role with regard to the entanglement entropy. We speculate on the
possibility of deriving a thermalization time for occupation numbers from our
analysis.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure
GNAS1 T393C polymorphism and disease progression in patients with malignant melanoma
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Once metastasized, despite a variety of therapeutic options, the prognosis of patients with malignant melanoma (MM) is still poor. Therefore, the search for reliable markers to identify patients with high risk of disease progression is of high clinical importance. We have recently shown that TT genotypes of the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) T393C in the gene <it>GNAS1 </it>are significantly associated with better outcome in a variety of carcinomas.</p> <p>Patients</p> <p>In the present study we assessed whether the T393C SNP is also related to the clinical course in MM. 328 patients with MM were retrospectively genotyped and genotypes were correlated with clinical outcome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>While the allele frequency in the MM group (fC 0.52) did not significantly differ from that of healthy blood donors, the T393C SNP was associated with tumor progression of MM. Carriers of the C-allele showed a significantly more severe tumor progression as estimated from the time period to develop metastasis (HR 2.2, 95% CI 1.1-3.2, p = 0.017). Proportions of 5-year metastasis-free intervals were 87.1% for TT genotypes and 66.0% for C-allele carriers. Moreover, multivariable Cox regression analysis including tumor stage and melanoma subtype proved the T393C polymorphism to be an independent factor for metastasis (p = 0.012).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In summary, the <it>GNAS1 </it>T393C SNP represents a genetic host factor for predicting tumor progression also in patients with MM; genotyping of this SNP may contribute to better define patients who could benefit from an early individualized therapy.</p
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