14,244 research outputs found
Black hole Meissner effect and entanglement
Extremal black holes tend to expel magnetic and electric fields. Fields are
unable to reach the horizon because the length of the black hole throat blows
up in the extremal limit. The length of the throat is related to the amount of
entanglement between modes on either side of the horizon. So it is natural to
try to relate the black hole Meissner effect to entanglement. We derive the
black hole Meissner effect directly from the low temperature limit of two-point
functions in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum. Then we discuss several new examples of
the black hole Meissner effect, its applications to astrophysics, and its
relationship to gauge invariance
BMS invariance and the membrane paradigm
The Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) group is the asymptotic symmetry
group of asymptotically flat spacetime. It is infinite dimensional and entails
an infinite number of conservation laws. According to the black hole membrane
paradigm, null infinity (in asymptotically flat spacetime) and black hole event
horizons behave like fluid membranes. The fluid dynamics of the membrane is
governed by an infinite set of symmetries and conservation laws. Our main
result is to point out that the infinite set of symmetries and conserved
charges of the BMS group and the membrane paradigm are the same. This
relationship has several consequences. First, it sheds light on the physical
interpretation of BMS conservation laws. Second, it generalizes the BMS
conservation laws to arbitrary subregions of arbitrary null surfaces. Third, it
clarifies the identification of the superrotation subgroup of the BMS group. We
briefly comment on the black hole information problem.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur
Stromal cell effects on melanoma cell drug response
Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityObjective: Melanoma is currently one of the deadliest forms of skin disease in the United States. However in the past decade there have been significant advances in treatment. Among the most promising recent developments, inhibitors of the serine/threonine-protein kinase B-Raf (BRAF inhibitors) such as vemurafenib show great promise and have been shown to increase the median survival of patients with melanoma cells that harbor a mutation of the BRAF gene. While BRAF inhibitors and other treatment therapies have much potential, more needs to be done to improve treatment.
As with other cancers, a major hurdle in the treatment of melanoma is the eventual tumor resistance to drug therapy. Accessory cells are thought to play a large role in mediating tumor resistance to drug treatment. Stromal cells have been known to release cytokines and growth factors that aid in cancer proliferation. They can also expression adhesion molecules that further help to aid cell growth and tumor development. It has also been demonstrated that these accessory cells can significantly alter cancer cell drug response as a result
of the factors they release or express on their surface. In this study we hypothesize that certain anti-cancer drugs will behave differently against melanoma cell line A375 in the presence versus the absence of stromal cells. Methods: Melanoma cell line A375 was grown on 384 well plates in the presence or absence of different stromal cell lines. A number of different drugs were screened using Compartment-Specific Bioluminescence Imaging to determine if there was a difference in A375 proliferation after drug treatment in the presence versus absence of accessory cells. After an initial screen, a few drugs were chosen to generate dose-response curves to determine if different drugs had different effects at various doses in the presence or absence of stromal cells. [TRUNCATED
Black hole jet power from impedance matching
Black hole jet power depends on the angular velocity of magnetic field lines,
. Force-free black hole magnetospheres typically have
, where is the angular velocity of
the horizon. We give a streamlined proof of this result using an extension of
the classical black hole membrane paradigm. The proof is based on an
impedance-matching argument between membranes at the horizon and infinity. Then
we consider a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulation of an
accreting, spinning black hole and jet. We find that the theory correctly
describes the simulation in the jet region. However, the field lines threading
the horizon near the equator have much smaller because the
force-free approximation breaks down in the accretion flow.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, updated to match Phys. Rev. D versio
Energy extraction from boosted black holes: Penrose process, jets, and the membrane at infinity
Numerical simulations indicate that black holes carrying linear momentum
and/or orbital momentum can power jets. The jets extract the kinetic energy
stored in the black hole's motion. This could provide an important
electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational wave searches. We develop the
theory underlying these jets. In particular, we derive the analogues of the
Penrose process and the Blandford-Znajek jet power prediction for boosted black
holes. The jet power we find is , where is the
hole's velocity, is its mass, and is the magnetic flux. We show that
energy extraction from boosted black holes is conceptually similar to energy
extraction from spinning black holes. However, we highlight two key technical
differences: in the boosted case, jet power is no longer defined with respect
to a Killing vector, and the relevant notion of black hole mass is observer
dependent. We derive a new version of the membrane paradigm in which the
membrane lives at infinity rather than the horizon and we show that this is
useful for interpreting jets from boosted black holes. Our jet power prediction
and the assumptions behind it can be tested with future numerical simulations.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, updated to match Phys. Rev. D versio
Polarization in a three-dimensional Fermi gas with Rabi coupling
We investigate the polarization of a two-component three-dimensional
fermionic gas made of repulsive alkali-metal atoms. The two pseudo-spin
components correspond to two hyperfine states which are Rabi coupled. The
presence of Rabi coupling implies that only the total number of atoms is
conserved and a quantum phase transition between states dominated by
spin-polarization along different axses is possible. By using a variational
Hartree-Fock scheme we calculate analytically the ground-state energy of the
system and determine analytically and numerically the conditions under which
there is this quantum phase transition. This scheme includes the well-known
criterion for the Stoner instability. The obtained phase diagram clearly shows
that the polarized phase crucially depends on the interplay among the Rabi
coupling energy, the interaction energy per particle, and the kinetic energy
per particle.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure
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