Preventing eternality in phantom inflation

We have investigated the necessary conditions that prevent phantom inflation from being eternal. Allowing additionally for a nonminimal coupling between the phantom field and gravity, we present the slow-climb requirements, perform an analysis of the fluctuations, and finally we extract the overall conditions that are necessary in order to prevent eternality. Furthermore, we verify our results by solving explicitly the cosmological equations in a simple example of an exponential potential, formulating the classical motion plus the stochastic effect of the fluctuations through Langevin equations. Our analysis shows that phantom inflation can be finite without the need of additional exotic mechanisms.Comment: 8 pages, V2 references added. V3 version published in Phys. Rev.

Latest Observational Constraints to the Ghost Dark Energy Model by Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo Approach

Recently, the vacuum energy of the QCD ghost in a time-dependent background is proposed as a kind of dark energy candidate to explain the acceleration of the universe. In this model, the energy density of the dark energy is proportional to the Hubble parameter $H$, which is the Hawking temperature on the Hubble horizon of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe. In this paper, we perform a constraint on the ghost dark energy model with and without bulk viscosity, by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and the combined latest observational data from the type Ia supernova compilations including Union2.1(580) and Union2(557), cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillation, and the observational Hubble parameter data.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Magnetic transitions and magnetodielectric effect in the antiferromagnet SrNdFeO4_4

We investigated the magnetic phase diagram of single crystals of SrNdFeO$_{4}$ by measuring the magnetic properties, the specific heat and the dielectric permittivity. The system has two magnetically active ions, Fe$^{3+}$ and Nd$^{3+}$. The Fe$^{3+}$ spins are antiferromagnetically ordered below 360 K with the moments lying in the ab-plane, and undergo a reorientation transition at about 35-37 K to an antiferromagnetic order with the moments along the c-axis. A short-range, antiferromagnetic ordering of Nd$^{3+}$ along the c-axis was attributed to the reorientation of Fe$^{3+}$ followed by a long-range ordering at lower temperature [S. Oyama {\it et al.} J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. {\bf 16}, 1823 (2004)]. At low temperatures and magnetic fields above 8 T, the Nd$^{3+}$ moments are completely spin-polarized. The dielectric permittivity also shows anomalies associated with spin configuration changes, indicating that this compound has considerable coupling between spin and lattice. A possible magnetic structure is proposed to explain the results.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures, submitted to PR

Geographical effects on epidemic spreading in scale-free networks

Many real networks are embedded in a metric space: the interactions among individuals depend on their spatial distances and usually take place among their nearest neighbors. In this paper, we introduce a modified susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model to study geographical effects on the spread of diseases by assuming that the probability of a healthy individual infected by an infectious one is inversely proportional to the Euclidean distance between them. It is found that geography plays a more important role than hubs in disease spreading: the more geographically constrained the network is, the more highly the epidemic prevails.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure