Brane inflation without slow-roll

The scenario of brane inflation without using the conventional slow-roll approximations has been investigated. Based on the mechanism of generating the curvature perturbations at the end of inflation, a new brane inflation paradigm was developed. The conditions for making a sufficiently large enough number of e-foldings and for generating the curvature perturbations without producing dangerous relics were also examined. Benefits of our scenario are subsequently discussed in detail.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, added an appendix, accepted for publication in JHE

Generating the curvature perturbation with instant preheating

A new mechanism for generating the curvature perturbation at the end of inflaton has been investigated. The dominant contribution to the primordial curvature perturbation may be generated during the period of instant preheating. The mechanism converts isocurvature perturbation related to a light field into curvature perturbation, where the ``light field'' is not the inflaton field. This mechanism is important in inflationary models where kinetic energy is significant at the end of inflaton. We show how one can apply this mechanism to various brane inflationary models.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure, To appear in JCA

Dark matter production from cosmic necklaces

Cosmic strings have gained a great interest, since they are formed in a large class of brane inflationary models. The most interesting story is that cosmic strings in brane models are distinguished in future cosmological observations. If the strings in brane models are branes or superstrings that can move along compactified space, and also if there are degenerated vacua along the compactified space, kinks interpolate between degenerated vacua become ``beads'' on the strings. In this case, strings turn into necklaces. In the case that the compact manifold in not simply connected, a string loop that winds around a nontrivial circle is stable due to the topological reason. Since the existence of the (quasi-)degenerated vacua and the nontrivial circle is a common feature of the brane models, it is important to study cosmological constraints on the cosmic necklaces and the stable winding states. In this paper, we consider dark matter production from loops of the cosmic necklaces. Our result suggests that necklaces can put stringent bound on certain kinds of brane models.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures, added many comments and 3 figures, accepted for publication in JCA

Electrolyte composition of renal tubular cells in gentamicin nephrotoxicity

Electrolyte composition of renal tubular cells in gentamicin nephrotoxicity. The effect of long-term gentamicin administration on sodium, potassium, chloride and phosphorus concentrations was studied in individual rat renal tubular cells using electron microprobe analysis. Histological damage was apparent only in proximal tubular cells. The extent of damage was only mild after 7 days of gentamicin administration (60 mg/kg body wt/day) but much more pronounced after 10 days. GFR showed a progressive decline during gentamicin treatment. In non-necrotic proximal tubular cells, sodium was increased from 14.6 ± 0.3 (mean ± SEM) in controls to 20.6 ± 0.4 after 7 and 22.0 ± 0.8 mmol/kg wet wt after 10 days of gentamicin administration. Chloride concentration was higher only after 10 days (20.6 ± 0.6 vs. 17.3 ± 0.2 mmol/kg wet wt). Both cell potassium and phosphorus concentrations were diminished by 6 and 15, and by 8 and 25 mmol/kg wet wt after 7 and 10 days of treatment, respectively. In contrast, no major alterations in distal tubular cell electrolyte concentrations could be observed after either 7 or 10 days of gentamicin administration. As in proximal tubular cells, distal tubular cell phosphorus concentrations were, however, lowered by gentamicin treatment. These results clearly indicate that gentamicin exerts its main effect on proximal tubular cells. Decreased potassium and increased sodium and chloride concentrations were observed in proximal tubular cells exhibiting only mild histological damage prior to the onset of advanced tissue injury. Necrotic cells, on the other hand, showed widely variable intracellular electrolyte concentration patterns

Quantum and classical criticalities in the frustrated two-leg Heisenberg ladder

This talk was about the frustration-induced criticality in the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the two-leg ladder with exchange interactions along the chains, rungs, and diagonals, and also about the effect of thermal fluctuations on this criticlity. The method used is the bond mean-field theory, which is based on the Jordan-Wigner transformation in dimensions higher than one. In this paper, we will summarize the main results presented in this talk, and report on new results about the couplings and temperature dependences of the spin susceptibility.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, talk presented at the Theory Canada 3 conference in 2007, submitted to the Canadian Journal of Physic

Abrupt Change of Josephson Plasma Frequency at the Phase Boundary of the Bragg Glass in Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta}

We report the first detailed and quantitative study of the Josephson coupling energy in the vortex liquid, Bragg glass and vortex glass phases of Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta} by the Josephson plasma resonance. The measurements revealed distinct features in the T- and H-dependencies of the plasma frequency $\omega_{pl}$ for each of these three vortex phases. When going across either the Bragg-to-vortex glass or the Bragg-to-liquid transition line, $\omega_{pl}$ shows a dramatic change. We provide a quantitative discussion on the properties of these phase transitions, including the first order nature of the Bragg-to-vortex glass transition.Comment: 5pages, 4figure

Voltage-ampere characteristics of YBCO coated conductor under inhomogeneous oscillating magnetic field

Direct current carrying type II superconductors present a dynamic resistance when subjected to an oscillating magnetic field perpendicular to the current direction. If a superconductor is under a homogeneous field with high magnitude, the dynamic resistance value is nearly independent of transport current. Hoffmann and coworkers [Hoffmann et al., IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 21, 1628 (2011)] discovered, however, flux pumping effect when a superconducting tape is under an inhomogeneous field orthogonal to the tape surface generated by rotating magnets. Following their work, we report the whole Voltage-Ampere (V-I) curves of an YBCO coated conductor under permanent magnets rotating with different frequencies and directions. We discovered that the two curves under opposite rotating directions differ from each other constantly when the transport current is less than the critical current, whereas the difference gradually reduces after the transport current exceeds the critical value. We also find that for different field frequencies, the difference between the two curves decreases faster with lower field frequency. The result indicates that the transport loss is dependent on the relative direction of the transport current and field travelling, which is distinct from traditional dynamic resistance model. The work may be instructive for the design of superconducting motors.Cambridge Trust (Cambridge International Scholarship)This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by the American Institute of Physics