Cosmological Signature of Tachyon Condensation

We consider the dynamics of the open string tachyon condensation in a framework of the cubic fermionic String Field Theory including a non-minimal coupling with closed string massless modes, the graviton and the dilaton. Coupling of the open string tachyon and the dilaton is motivated by the open String Field Theory in a linear dilaton background and the flat space-time. We note that the dilaton gravity provides several restrictions on the tachyon condensation and show explicitly that the influence of the dilaton on the tachyon condensation is essential and provides a significant effect: oscillations of the Hubble parameter and the state parameter become of a cosmological scale. We give an estimation for the period of these oscillations (0.1-1) Gyr and note a good agreement of this period with the observed oscillations with a period (0.15-0.65) Gyr in a distribution of quasar spectra.Comment: 19 pages, JHEP3 class; v2: presentation in Section 3 improve

Electrodynamics of Josephson vortex lattice in high-temperature superconductors

We studied response of the Josephson vortex lattice in layered superconductors to the high-frequency c-axis electric field. We found a simple relation connecting the dynamic dielectric constant with the perturbation of the superconducting phase, induced by oscillating electric field. Numerically solving equations for the oscillating phases, we computed the frequency dependences of the loss function at different magnetic fields, including regions of both dilute and dense Josephson vortex lattices. The overall behavior is mainly determined by the c-axis and in-plane dissipation parameters, which is inversely proportional to the anisotropy. The cases of weak and strong dissipation are realized in $\mathrm{Bi_{2}Sr_{2}CaCu_{2}O_{x}}$ and underdoped $\mathrm{YBa_{2}Cu_{3} O_{x}}$ correspondingly. The main feature of the response is the Josephson-plasma-resonance peak. In the weak-dissipation case additional satellites appear in the dilute regime mostly in the higher-frequency region due to excitation of the plasma modes with the wave vectors set by the lattice structure. In the dense-lattice limit the plasma peak moves to higher frequency and its intensity rapidly decreases, in agreement with experiment and analytical theory. Behavior of the loss function at low frequencies is well described by the phenomenological theory of vortex oscillations. In the case of very strong in-plane dissipation an additional peak in the loss function appears below the plasma frequency. Such peak has been observed experimentally in underdoped $\mathrm{YBa_{2}Cu_{3} O_{x}}$. It is caused by frequency dependence of in-plane contribution to losses rather then a definite mode of phase oscillations.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Phys.Rev.B, supplementary animations of oscillating local electric field can be found at http://mti.msd.anl.gov/homepages/koshelev/projects/JPRinJVL/Nz2vc0_32vab6_0Anim.ht

R2R^2 inflation to probe non-perturbative quantum gravity

It is natural to expect a consistent inflationary model of the very early Universe to be an effective theory of quantum gravity, at least at energies much less than the Planck one. For the moment, $R+R^2$, or shortly $R^2$, inflation is the most successful in accounting for the latest CMB data from the PLANCK satellite and other experiments. Moreover, recently it was shown to be ultra-violet (UV) complete via an embedding into an analytic infinite derivative (AID) non-local gravity. In this paper, we derive a most general theory of gravity that contributes to perturbed linear equations of motion around maximally symmetric space-times. We show that such a theory is quadratic in the Ricci scalar and the Weyl tensor with AID operators along with the Einstein-Hilbert term and possibly a cosmological constant. We explicitly demonstrate that introduction of the Ricci tensor squared term is redundant. Working in this quadratic AID gravity framework without a cosmological term we prove that for a specified class of space homogeneous space-times, a space of solutions to the equations of motion is identical to the space of backgrounds in a local $R^2$ model. We further compute the full second order perturbed action around any background belonging to that class. We proceed by extracting the key inflationary parameters of our model such as a spectral index ($n_s$), a tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r$) and a tensor tilt ($n_t$). It appears that $n_s$ remains the same as in the local $R^2$ inflation in the leading slow-roll approximation, while $r$ and $n_t$ get modified due to modification of the tensor power spectrum. This class of models allows for any value of $r<0.07$ with a modified consistency relation which can be fixed by future observations of primordial $B$-modes of the CMB polarization. This makes the UV complete $R^2$ gravity a natural target for future CMB probes.Comment: 37 page

Plasma resonance at low magnetic fields as a probe of vortex line meandering in layered superconductors

We consider the magnetic field dependence of the plasma resonance frequency in pristine and in irradiated Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_8$ crystals near $T_c$. At low magnetic fields we relate linear in field corrections to the plasma frequency to the average distance between the pancake vortices in the neighboring layers (wandering length). We calculate the wandering length in the case of thermal wiggling of vortex lines, taking into account both Josephson and magnetic interlayer coupling of pancakes. Analyzing experimental data, we found that (i) the wandering length becomes comparable with the London penetration depth near T$_{c}$ and (ii) at small melting fields ($< 20$ G) the wandering length does not change much at the melting transition. This shows existence of the line liquid phase in this field range. We also found that pinning by columnar defects affects weakly the field dependence of the plasma resonance frequency near $T_c$.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages, 2 PS figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Noncommutative Field Theories and (Super)String Field Theories

In this lecture notes we explain and discuss some ideas concerning noncommutative geometry in general, as well as noncommutative field theories and string field theories. We consider noncommutative quantum field theories emphasizing an issue of their renormalizability and the UV/IR mixing. Sen's conjectures on open string tachyon condensation and their application to the D-brane physics have led to wide investigations of the covariant string field theory proposed by Witten about 15 years ago. We review main ingredients of cubic (super)string field theories using various formulations: functional, operator, conformal and the half string formalisms. The main technical tools that are used to study conjectured D-brane decay into closed string vacuum through the tachyon condensation are presented. We describe also methods which are used to study the cubic open string field theory around the tachyon vacuum: construction of the sliver state, ``comma'' and matrix representations of vertices.Comment: 160 pages, LaTeX, 29 EPS figures. Lectures given by I.Ya.Aref'eva at the Swieca Summer School, Brazil, January 2001; Summer School in Modern Mathematical Physics, Sokobanja, Yugoslavia, August 2001; Max Born Symposium, Karpacz, Poland, September, 2001; Workshop "Noncommutative Geometry, Strings and Renormalization", Leipzig, Germany, September 2001. Typos corrected, references adde