Distributed multi-generation systems: energy models and analyses

Libro riguardante la caratterizzazione di sistemi per la produzione combinata di energia da sistemi di multi-generazione distribuita (Distributed Multi-Generation, DMG). Il libro tratta componenti, schemi e modelli di sistemi di multi-generazione distribuita, illustra concetti derivanti da proposte originali degli autori in merito all'analisi e alla pianificazione dei sistemi, con i corrispondenti indicatori energetici e ambientali approccio formulati secondo un approccio unificato. Numerosi esempi applicativi inclusi nel libro riguardano in particolare sistemi di cogenerazione e trigenerazion

Statistical Mechanics of an Ideal Gas of Non-Abelian Anyons

We study the thermodynamical properties of an ideal gas of non-Abelian Chern-Simons particles and we compute the second virial coefficient, considering the effect of general soft-core boundary conditions for the two-body wavefunction at zero distance. The behaviour of the second virial coefficient is studied as a function of the Chern-Simons coupling, the isospin quantum number and the hard-coreness parameters. Expressions for the main thermodynamical quantities at the lower order of the virial expansion are also obtained: we find that at this order the relation between the internal energy and the pressure is the same found (exactly) for 2D Bose and Fermi ideal gases. A discussion of the comparison of obtained findings with available results in literature for systems of hard-core non-Abelian Chern-Simons particles is also supplied.Comment: Submitted versio

Conformal symmetry and nonlinear extensions of nonlocal gravity

We study two nonlinear extensions of the nonlocal $R\,\Box^{-2}R$ gravity theory. We extend this theory in two different ways suggested by conformal symmetry, either replacing $\Box^{-2}$ with $(-\Box + R/6)^{-2}$, which is the operator that enters the action for a conformally-coupled scalar field, or replacing $\Box^{-2}$ with the inverse of the Paneitz operator, which is a four-derivative operator that enters in the effective action induced by the conformal anomaly. We show that the former modification gives an interesting and viable cosmological model, with a dark energy equation of state today $w_{\rm DE}\simeq -1.01$, which very closely mimics $\Lambda$CDM and evolves asymptotically into a de Sitter solution. The model based on the Paneitz operator seems instead excluded by the comparison with observations. We also review some issues about the causality of nonlocal theories, and we point out that these nonlocal models can be modified so to nicely interpolate between Starobinski inflation in the primordial universe and accelerated expansion in the recent epoch.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figure

Effective Theory of Dark Energy at Redshift Survey Scales

We explore the phenomenological consequences of general late-time modifications of gravity in the quasi-static approximation, in the case where cold dark matter is non-minimally coupled to the gravitational sector. Assuming spectroscopic and photometric surveys with configuration parameters similar to those of the Euclid mission, we derive constraints on our effective description from three observables: the galaxy power spectrum in redshift space, tomographic weak-lensing shear power spectrum and the correlation spectrum between the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect and the galaxy distribution. In particular, with $\Lambda$CDM as fiducial model and a specific choice for the time dependence of our effective functions, we perform a Fisher matrix analysis and find that the unmarginalized $68\%$ CL errors on the parameters describing the modifications of gravity are of order $\sigma\sim10^{-2}$--$10^{-3}$. We also consider two other fiducial models. A nonminimal coupling of CDM enhances the effects of modified gravity and reduces the above statistical errors accordingly. In all cases, we find that the parameters are highly degenerate, which prevents the inversion of the Fisher matrices. Some of these degeneracies can be broken by combining all three observational probes.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, improved analysis of ISW-galaxy correlation, matches published version on JCA

Non-local gravity with a Weyl-square term

Recent work has shown that modifications of General Relativity based on the addition to the action of a non-local term $R\,\Box^{-2}R$, or on the addition to the equations of motion of a term involving $(g_{\mu\nu}\Box^{-1} R)$, produce dynamical models of dark energy which are cosmologically viable both at the background level and at the level of cosmological perturbations. We explore a more general class of models based on the addition to the action of terms proportional to $R_{\mu\nu}\,\Box^{-2}R^{\mu\nu}$ and $C_{\mu\nu\rho\sigma}\, \Box^{-2}C^{\mu\nu\rho\sigma}$, where $C_{\mu\nu\rho\sigma}$ is the Weyl tensor. We find that the term $R_{\mu\nu}\,\Box^{-2}R^{\mu\nu}$ does not give a viable background evolution. The non-local Weyl-square term, in contrast, does not contribute to the background evolution but we find that, at the level of cosmological perturbations, it gives instabilities in the tensor sector. Thus, only non-local terms which depend just on the Ricci scalar $R$ appear to be cosmologically viable. We discuss how these results can provide a hint for the mechanism that might generate these effective non-local terms from a fundamental local theory.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures. v2: the version to appear in PR