FAIR: Forwarding Accountability for Internet Reputability

This paper presents FAIR, a forwarding accountability mechanism that incentivizes ISPs to apply stricter security policies to their customers. The Autonomous System (AS) of the receiver specifies a traffic profile that the sender AS must adhere to. Transit ASes on the path mark packets. In case of traffic profile violations, the marked packets are used as a proof of misbehavior. FAIR introduces low bandwidth overhead and requires no per-packet and no per-flow state for forwarding. We describe integration with IP and demonstrate a software switch running on commodity hardware that can switch packets at a line rate of 120 Gbps, and can forward 140M minimum-sized packets per second, limited by the hardware I/O subsystem. Moreover, this paper proposes a "suspicious bit" for packet headers - an application that builds on top of FAIR's proofs of misbehavior and flags packets to warn other entities in the network.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Conformally coupled scalar black holes admit a flat horizon due to axionic charge

Static, charged black holes in the presence of a negative cosmological constant and with a planar horizon are found in four dimensions. The solutions have scalar secondary hair. We claim that these constitute the planar version of the Martinez-Troncoso-Zanelli black holes, only known up to now for a curved event horizon in four dimensions. Their planar version is rendered possible due to the presence of two, equal and homogeneously distributed, axionic charges dressing the flat horizon. The solutions are presented in the conformal and minimal frame and their basic properties and thermodynamics analysed. Entertaining recent applications to holographic superconductors, we expose two branches of solutions: the undressed axionic Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black hole, and the novel black hole carrying secondary hair. We show that there is a critical temperature at which the (bald) axionic Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black hole undergoes a second order phase transition to the hairy black hole spontaneously acquiring scalar hair.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

An Integrated Market for Electricity and Natural Gas Systems with Stochastic Power Producers

In energy systems with high shares of weather-driven renewable power sources, gas-fired power plants can serve as a back-up technology to ensure security of supply and provide short-term flexibility. Therefore, a tighter coordination between electricity and natural gas networks is foreseen. In this work, we examine different levels of coordination in terms of system integration and time coupling of trading floors. We propose an integrated operational model for electricity and natural gas systems under uncertain power supply by applying two-stage stochastic programming. This formulation co-optimizes day-ahead and real-time dispatch of both energy systems and aims at minimizing the total expected cost. Additionally, two deterministic models, one of an integrated energy system and one that treats the two systems independently, are presented. We utilize a formulation that considers the linepack of the natural gas system, while it results in a tractable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. Our analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model in accommodating high shares of renewables and the importance of proper natural gas system modeling in short-term operations to reveal valuable flexibility of the natural gas system. Moreover, we identify the coordination parameters between the two markets and show their impact on the system's operation and dispatch

AdS black holes with arbitrary scalar coupling

A general class of axionic and electrically charged black holes for a self-interacting scalar field nonminimally coupled to Einstein gravity with a negative cosmological constant is presented. These solutions are the first examples of black holes with an arbitrary nonminimal coupling $\xi$ in four dimensions. Moreover, due to the presence of two three-forms fields, the topology of the horizon of these black holes is planar. We discuss some properties of these solutions electing particular values of the nonminimal coupling parameter. A special case arises when $\xi=1/4$, for which the gravitational field is confined in a region close to the event horizon. We also show that these black holes emerge from stealth AdS configurations as the axionic fields are switched on, and that they can be generated through a Kerr-Schild transformation. Finally, in the appendix, we extend these results to arbitrary dimension.Comment: 23 page

Integrability in conformally coupled gravity: Taub-NUT spacetimes and rotating black holes

We consider four dimensional stationary and axially symmetric spacetimes for conformally coupled scalar-tensor theories. We show that, in analogy to the Lewis-Papapetrou problem in General Relativity (GR), the theory at hand can be recast in an analogous integrable form. We give the relevant rod formalism, introduced by Weyl for vacuum GR, explicitly giving the rod structure of the black hole of Bocharova et al. and Bekenstein (BBMB), in complete analogy to the Schwarzschild solution. The additional scalar field is shown to play the role of an extra Weyl potential. We then employ the Ernst method as a concrete solution generating example to obtain the Taub-NUT version of the BBMB hairy black hole, with or without a cosmological constant. We show that the anti-de Sitter hyperbolic version of this solution is free of closed timelike curves that plague usual Taub-NUT metrics, and thus consists of a rotating, asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter black hole. This stationary solution has no curvature singularities whatsoever in the conformal frame, and the NUT charge is shown here to regularize the central curvature singularity of the corresponding static black hole. Given our findings we discuss the anti-de Sitter hyperbolic version of Taub-NUT in four dimensions, and show that the curvature singularity of the NUT-less solution is now replaced by a neighboring chronological singularity screened by horizons. We argue that the properties of this rotating black hole are very similar to those of the rotating BTZ black hole in three dimensions.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur

Chirikov and Nekhoroshev diffusion estimates: bridging the two sides of the river

We present theoretical and numerical results pointing towards a strong connection between the estimates for the diffusion rate along simple resonances in multidimensional nonlinear Hamiltonian systems that can be obtained using the heuristic theory of Chirikov and a more formal one due to Nekhoroshev. We show that, despite a wide-spread impression, the two theories are complementary rather than antagonist. Indeed, although Chirikov's 1979 review has thousands of citations, almost all of them refer to topics such as the resonance overlap criterion, fast diffusion, the Standard or Whisker Map, and not to the constructive theory providing a formula to measure diffusion along a single resonance. However, as will be demonstrated explicitly below, Chirikov's formula provides values of the diffusion coefficient which are quite well comparable to the numerically computed ones, provided that it is implemented on the so-called optimal normal form derived as in the analytic part of Nekhoroshev's theorem. On the other hand, Chirikov's formula yields unrealistic values of the diffusion coefficient, in particular for very small values of the perturbation, when used in the original Hamiltonian instead of the optimal normal form. In the present paper, we take advantage of this complementarity in order to obtain accurate theoretical predictions for the local value of the diffusion coefficient along a resonance in a specific 3DoF nearly integrable Hamiltonian system. Besides, we compute numerically the diffusion coefficient and a full comparison of all estimates is made for ten values of the perturbation parameter, showing a very satisfactory agreement.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures. NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Physica D. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publicatio

Self-tuning and the derivation of the Fab Four

We have recently proposed a special class of scalar tensor theories known as the Fab Four. These arose from attempts to analyse the cosmological constant problem within the context of Horndeski's most general scalar tensor theory. The Fab Four together give rise to a model of self-tuning, with the relevant solutions evading Weinberg's no-go theorem by relaxing the condition of Poincare invariance in the scalar sector. The Fab Four are made up of four geometric terms in the action with each term containing a free potential function of the scalar field. In this paper we rigorously derive this model from the general model of Horndeski, proving that the Fab Four represents the only classical scalar tensor theory of this type that has any hope of tackling the cosmological constant problem. We present the full equations of motion for this theory, and give an heuristic argument to suggest that one might be able to keep radiative corrections under control. We also give the Fab Four in terms of the potentials presented in Deffayet et al's version of Horndeski.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figur