Cosmology with mirror dark matter II: Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure

This is the second paper of a series devoted to the study of the cosmological implications of the existence of mirror dark matter. The parallel hidden mirror world has the same microphysics as the observable one and couples the latter only gravitationally. The primordial nucleosynthesis bounds demand that the mirror sector should have a smaller temperature T' than the ordinary one T, and by this reason its evolution can be substantially deviated from the standard cosmology. In this paper we took scalar adiabatic perturbations as the input in a flat Universe, and computed the power spectra for ordinary and mirror CMB and LSS, changing the cosmological parameters, and always comparing with the CDM case. We found differences in both the CMB and LSS power spectra, and we demonstrated that the LSS spectrum is particularly sensitive to the mirror parameters, due to the presence of both the oscillatory features of mirror baryons and the collisional mirror Silk damping. For x<0.3 the mirror baryon-photon decoupling happens before the matter-radiation equality, so that CMB and LSS power spectra in linear regime are equivalent for mirror and CDM cases. For higher x-values the LSS spectra strongly depend on the amount of mirror baryons. Finally, qualitatively comparing with the present observational limits on the CMB and LSS spectra, we show that for x<0.3 the entire dark matter could be made of mirror baryons, while in the case x>0.3 the pattern of the LSS power spectrum excludes the possibility of dark matter consisting entirely of mirror baryons, but they could present as admixture (up to 50%) to the conventional CDM.Comment: 36 pages, 19 figures; minor corrections in introduction, conclusions and references; accepted for publication in IJMP

Entanglement entropy with localized and extended interface defects

The quantum Ising chain of length, L, which is separated into two parts by localized or extended defects is considered at the critical point where scaling of the interface magnetization is non-universal. We measure the entanglement entropy between the two halves of the system in equilibrium, as well as after a quench, when the interaction at the interface is changed for time t>0. For the localized defect the increase of the entropy with log(L) or with log(t) involves the same effective central charge, which is a continuous function of the strength of the defect. On the contrary for the extended defect the equilibrium entropy is saturated, but the non-equilibrium entropy has a logarithmic time-dependence the prefactor of which depends on the strength of the defect.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Cosmology with mirror dark matter I: linear evolution of perturbations

This is the first paper of a series devoted to the study of the cosmological implications of the parallel mirror world with the same microphysics as the ordinary one, but having smaller temperature, with a limit set by the BBN constraints. The difference in temperature of the ordinary and mirror sectors generates shifts in the key epochs for structure formation, which proceeds in the mirror sector under different conditions. We consider adiabatic scalar primordial perturbations as an input and analyze the trends of all the relevant scales for structure formation (Jeans length and mass, Silk scale, horizon scale) for both ordinary and mirror sectors, comparing them with the CDM case. These scales are functions of the fundamental parameters of the theory (the temperature of the mirror plasma and the amount of mirror baryonic matter), and in particular they are influenced by the difference between the cosmological key epochs in the two sectors. Then we used a numerical code to compute the evolution in linear regime of density perturbations for all the components of a Mirror Universe: ordinary baryons and photons, mirror baryons and photons, and possibly cold dark matter. We analyzed the evolution of the perturbations for different values of mirror temperature and baryonic density, and obtained that for x=T'/T less than a typical value x_eq, for which the mirror baryon-photon decoupling happens before the matter-radiation equality, mirror baryons are equivalent to the CDM for the linear structure formation process. Indeed, the smaller the value of x, the closer mirror dark matter resembles standard cold dark matter during the linear regime.Comment: 33 pages, 24 figures; minor corrections in introduction, conclusions and references; accepted for publication in IJMP

Particle-Level Modeling of the Charge-Discharge Behavior of Nanoparticulate Phase-Separating Li-Ion Battery Electrodes

In nanoparticulate phase-separating electrodes, phase separation inside the particles can be hindered during their charge/discharge cycles even when a thermodynamic driving force for phase separation exists. In such cases, particles may (de)lithiate discretely in a process referred to as mosaic instability. This instability could be the key to elucidating the complex charge/discharge dynamics in nanoparticulate phase-separating electrodes. In this paper, the dynamics of the mosaic instability is studied using Smoothed Boundary Method simulations at the particle level, where the concentration and electrostatic potential fields are spatially resolved around individual particles. Two sets of configurations consisting of spherical particles with an identical radius are employed to study the instability in detail. The effect of an activity-dependent exchange current density on the mosaic instability, which leads to asymmetric charge/discharge, is also studied. While we show that our model reproduces the results of a porous-electrode model for the simple setup studied here, it is a powerful framework with the capability to predict the detailed dynamics in three-dimensional complex electrodes and provides further insights into the complex dynamics that result from the coupling of electrochemistry, thermodynamics, and transport kinetics