Mass in anti-de Sitter spaces

The boundary stress tensor approach has proven extremely useful in defining mass and angular momentum in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spaces with CFT duals. An integral part of this method is the use of boundary counterterms to regulate the gravitational action and stress tensor. In addition to the standard gravitational counterterms, in the presence of matter we advocate the use of a finite counterterm proportional to phi^2 (in five dimensions). We demonstrate that this finite shift is necessary to properly reproduce the expected mass/charge relation for R-charged black holes in AdS_5.Comment: 15 pages, late

Four dimensional Lie symmetry algebras and fourth order ordinary differential equations

Realizations of four dimensional Lie algebras as vector fields in the plane are explicitly constructed. Fourth order ordinary differential equations which admit such Lie symmetry algebras are derived. The route to their integration is described.Comment: 12 page

A comment on discrete Kalb-Ramond field on orientifold and rank reduction

We show that the rank reduction of the gauge group on orientifolds in presence of non vanishing discrete Kalb-Ramond field can be explained by the presence of an induced field strength in a non trivial bundle on the branes. This field strength is also necessary for the tadpole cancellation and the number of branes is left unchanged by the presence of the discrete Kalb-Ramond background.Comment: v2: added references, improved introduction and corrected misprints; 15 page

Holographic Currents and Chern-Simons Terms

Holographic currents and their associated Ward identities are derived in the framework of gravity/gauge duality. Holographic improvements of the energy-momentum tensor and R-symmetry current which are consistent with the Ward identities are displayed. The effects of specific string loop corrections to the bulk action are included as four derivative effective lagrangian terms and their contributions to the trace and R-symmetry anomalies of the boundary theory are determined. As an example, the construction is applied to the N=2 conformal supergravity which is taken to be dual to a boundary SU(N)xSU(N), N=1 superconformal field theory.Comment: 25 pages, no figure

A perturbative re-analysis of N=4 supersymmetric Yang--Mills theory

The finiteness properties of the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory are reanalyzed both in the component formulation and using N=1 superfields, in order to discuss some subtleties that emerge in the computation of gauge dependent quantities. The one-loop corrections to various Green functions of elementary fields are calculated. In the component formulation it is shown that the choice of the Wess-Zumino gauge, that is standard in supersymmetric gauge theories, introduces ultraviolet divergences in the propagators at the one-loop level. Such divergences are exactly cancelled when the contributions of the fields that are put to zero in the Wess-Zumino gauge are taken into account. In the description in terms of N=1 superfields infrared divergences are found for every choice of gauge different from the supersymmetric generalization of the Fermi-Feynman gauge. Two-, three- and four-point functions of N=1 superfields are computed and some general features of the infrared problem are discussed. We also examine the effect of the introduction of mass terms for the (anti) chiral superfields in the theory, which break supersymmetry from N=4 to N=1. It is shown that in the mass deformed model no ultraviolet divergences appear in two-point functions. It argued that this result can be generalized to n-point functions, supporting the proposal of a possible of use of this modified model as a supersymmetry-preserving regularization scheme for N=1 theories.Comment: 41 pages, LaTeX2e, uses feynMP package to draw Feynman diagram

A Curious Truncation of N=4 Yang-Mills

The coupling constant dependence of correlation functions of BPS operators in N=4 Yang-Mills can be expressed in terms of integrated correlation functions. We approximate these integrated correlators by using a truncated OPE expansion. This leads to differential equations for the coupling dependence. When applied to a particular sixteen point correlator, the coupling dependence we find agrees with the corresponding amplitude computed via the AdS/CFT correspondence. We conjecture that this truncation becomes exact in the large N and large 't Hooft coupling limit.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX; additional comments, added reference

Regret Bounds for Reinforcement Learning with Policy Advice

In some reinforcement learning problems an agent may be provided with a set of input policies, perhaps learned from prior experience or provided by advisors. We present a reinforcement learning with policy advice (RLPA) algorithm which leverages this input set and learns to use the best policy in the set for the reinforcement learning task at hand. We prove that RLPA has a sub-linear regret of \tilde O(\sqrt{T}) relative to the best input policy, and that both this regret and its computational complexity are independent of the size of the state and action space. Our empirical simulations support our theoretical analysis. This suggests RLPA may offer significant advantages in large domains where some prior good policies are provided

Integrability of anisotropic and homogeneous Universes in scalar-tensor theory of gravitation

In this paper, we develop a method based on the analysis of the Kovalewski exponents to study the integrability of anisotropic and homogeneous Universes. The formalism is developed in scalar-tensor gravity, the general relativistic case appearing as a special case of this larger framework. Then, depending on the rationality of the Kovalewski exponents, the different models, both in the vacuum and in presence of a barotropic matter fluid, are classified, and their integrability is discussed.Comment: 16 pages, no figure, accepted in CQ

Simple model for quantum general relativity from loop quantum gravity

New progress in loop gravity has lead to a simple model of `general-covariant quantum field theory'. I sum up the definition of the model in self-contained form, in terms accessible to those outside the subfield. I emphasize its formulation as a generalized topological quantum field theory with an infinite number of degrees of freedom, and its relation to lattice theory. I list the indications supporting the conjecture that the model is related to general relativity and UV finite.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure