465 research outputs found
Academic Collaborative Efforts to Promote STEM Equity in High Needs Schools
America is at risk of facing a shortage of workers in STEM fields in the near future because lack of interest by its youth. It is well known that providing early exposure for P-12 students to engaging science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) experiences can lead to lifelong learning and positively impact future career decisions. This manuscript describes one university’s collective efforts to bring equity to STEM education for an urban high needs school district in the northeastern part of the United States through various STEM initiatives over a five-year period. Through multiple projects and initiatives targeting both P-12 students and their teachers, descriptive results revealed a positive impact while pinpointing areas that still require attention. P-12 students indicated an increase in STEM knowledge and an increased interest in STEM careers following exposure to various STEM lessons and interactive experiences. P-12 teachers specified that Professional Development (PD) they received from university faculty as well as engaging in STEM experiences with their students enhanced their confidence in their ability to incorporate STEM lessons within their classrooms. An urban partner administrator viewed these various STEM initiatives as vital in their quest to bring equity for STEM education to their diverse student population
Tracking Quintessence and Cold Dark Matter Candidates
We study the generation of a kination-dominated phase in the context of a
quintessential model with an inverse-power-law potential and a Hubble-induced
mass term for the quintessence field. The presence of kination is associated
with an oscillating evolution of the quintessence field and the barotropic
index. We find that, in sizeable regions of the parameter space, a tracker
scaling solution can be reached sufficiently early to alleviate the coincidence
problem. Other observational constraints originating from nucleosynthesis, the
inflationary scale, the present acceleration of the universe and the
dark-energy-density parameter can be also met. The impact of this modified
kination-dominated phase on the thermal abundance of cold dark matter
candidates is investigated too. We find that: (i) the enhancement of the relic
abundance of the WIMPs with respect to the standard paradigm, crucially depends
on the hierarchy between the freeze-out temperature and the temperature at
which the extrema in the evolution of the quintessence field are encountered,
and (ii) the relic abundance of e-WIMPs takes its present value close to the
temperature at which the earliest extremum of the evolution of the quintessence
field occurs and, as a consequence, both gravitinos and axinos arise as natural
cold dark matter candidates. In the case of unstable gravitinos, the gravitino
constraint can be satisfied for values of the initial temperature well above
those required in the standard cosmology.Comment: Final versio
Quintessential Kination and Leptogenesis
Thermal leptogenesis induced by the CP-violating decay of a right-handed
neutrino (RHN) is discussed in the background of quintessential kination, i.e.,
in a cosmological model where the energy density of the early Universe is
assumed to be dominated by the kinetic term of a quintessence field during some
epoch of its evolution. This assumption may lead to very different
observational consequences compared to the case of a standard cosmology where
the energy density of the Universe is dominated by radiation. We show that,
depending on the choice of the temperature T_r above which kination dominates
over radiation, any situation between the strong and the super--weak wash--out
regime are equally viable for leptogenesis, even with the RHN Yukawa coupling
fixed to provide the observed atmospheric neutrino mass scale ~ 0.05 eV. For M<
T_r < M/100, i.e., when kination stops to dominate at a time which is not much
later than when leptogenesis takes place, the efficiency of the process,
defined as the ratio between the produced lepton asymmetry and the amount of CP
violation in the RHN decay, can be larger than in the standard scenario of
radiation domination. This possibility is limited to the case when the neutrino
mass scale is larger than about 0.01 eV. The super--weak wash--out regime is
obtained for T_r << M/100, and includes the case when T_r is close to the
nucleosynthesis temperature ~ 1 MeV. Irrespective of T_r, we always find a
sufficient window above the electroweak temperature T ~ 100 GeV for the
sphaleron transition to thermalize, so that the lepton asymmetry can always be
converted to the observed baryon asymmetry.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
Quintessential Kination and Cold Dark Matter Abundance
The generation of a kination-dominated phase by a quintessential exponential
model is investigated and the parameters of the model are restricted so that a
number of observational constraints (originating from nucleosynthesis, the
present acceleration of the universe and the dark-energy-density parameter) are
satisfied. The decoupling of a thermal cold dark matter particle during the
period of kination is analyzed, the relic density is calculated both
numerically and semi-analytically and the results are compared with each other.
It is argued that the enhancement, with respect to the standard paradigm, of
the cold dark matter abundance can be expressed as a function of the
quintessential density parameter at the onset of nucleosynthesis. We find that
values of the latter quantity close to its upper bound require the
thermal-averaged cross section times the velocity of the cold relic to be
almost three orders of magnitude larger than this needed in the standard
scenario so as compatibility with the cold dark matter constraint is achieved.Comment: Published versio
K\"ahler-driven Tribrid Inflation
We discuss a new class of tribrid inflation models in supergravity, where the
shape of the inflaton potential is dominated by effects from the K\"ahler
potential. Tribrid inflation is a variant of hybrid inflation which is
particularly suited for connecting inflation with particle physics, since the
inflaton can be a D-flat combination of charged fields from the matter sector.
In models of tribrid inflation studied so far, the inflaton potential was
dominated by either loop corrections or by mixing effects with the waterfall
field (as in "pseudosmooth" tribrid inflation). Here we investigate the third
possibility, namely that tribrid inflation is dominantly driven by effects from
higher-dimensional operators of the K\"ahler potential. We specify for which
superpotential parameters the new regime is realized and show how it can be
experimentally distinguished from the other two (loop-driven and
"pseudosmooth") regimes.Comment: 28 pages, v2: added some references, this version matches the
publication in JCA
Comments on SUSY inflation models on the brane
In this paper we consider a class of inflation models on the brane where the
dominant part of the inflaton scalar potential does not depend on the inflaton
field value during inflation. In particular, we consider supernatural
inflation, its hilltop version, A-term inflation, and supersymmetric (SUSY) D-
and F-term hybrid inflation on the brane. We show that the parameter space can
be broadened, the inflation scale generally can be lowered, and still possible
to have the spectral index .Comment: 7 page
Kaehler Potentials for Hilltop F-term Hybrid Inflation
We consider the basic supersymmetric (SUSY) models of F-term hybrid inflation
(FHI). We show that a simple class of Kaehler potentials ensures a resolution
to the \eta problem and allows for inflation of hilltop type. As a consequence,
observationally acceptable values for the spectral index, ns, can be achieved
constraining the coefficient c4k of the quartic supergravity correction to the
inflationary potential. For about the central value of ns, in the case of
standard FHI, the grand unification (GUT) scale turns out to be well below its
SUSY value with the relevant coupling constant \kappa in the range
(0.0006-0.15) and c4k=-(1100-0.05). In the case of shifted [smooth] FHI, the
GUT scale can be identified with its SUSY value for c4k=-16 [c4k=-1/16].Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures; Several amends have been realize
Bi-large Neutrino Mixing and Mass of the Lightest Neutrino from Third Generation Dominance in a Democratic Approach
We show that both small mixing in the quark sector and large mixing in the
lepton sector can be obtained from a simple assumption of universality of
Yukawa couplings and the right-handed neutrino Majorana mass matrix in leading
order. We discuss conditions under which bi-large mixing in the lepton sector
is achieved with a minimal amount of fine-tuning requirements for possible
models. From knowledge of the solar and atmospheric mixing angles we determine
the allowed values of sin \theta_{13}. If embedded into grand unified theories,
the third generation Yukawa coupling unification is a generic feature while
masses of the first two generations of charged fermions depend on small
perturbations. In the neutrino sector, the heavier two neutrinos are model
dependent, while the mass of the lightest neutrino in this approach does not
depend on perturbations in the leading order. The right-handed neutrino mass
scale can be identified with the GUT scale in which case the mass of the
lightest neutrino is given as (m_{top}^2/M_{GUT}) sin^2 \theta_{23} sin^2
\theta_{12} in the limit sin \theta_{13} = 0. Discussing symmetries we make a
connection with hierarchical models and show that the basis independent
characteristic of this scenario is a strong dominance of the third generation
right-handed neutrino, M_1, M_2 < 10^{-4} M_3, M_3 = M_{GUT}.Comment: typos correcte
- …