arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G. L. Alberghi.
We examine the cosmological solutions of a tachyon field non minimally coupled to gravity through an effective Born-Infeld interacting Lagrangian with a power law potential, in order to investigate its equation of state as related to tracking properties. We find exact solutions in the case of a tachyon dominated Universe and when the dominant component of the stress energy tensor is determined by some other perfect fluid.
We study cosmology in the five-dimensional Randall-Sundrum brane-world with a stabilizing effective potential for the radion and matter localized on the branes. The analysis is performed by employing a perturbative expansion in the ratio rho/V between the matter energy density on the branes and the brane tensions around the static Randall-Sundrum solution (which has rho=0 and brane tensions +-V). This approach ensures that the matter evolves adiabatically and allows us to find approximate solutions to second order in ρ/V. Some particular cases are then analyzed in details.
We describe the quasi-static collapse of a radiating, spherical shell of matter in de Sitter space-time using a thermodynamical formalism. It is found that the specific heat at constant area and other thermodynamical quantities exhibit singularities related to phase transitions during the collapse.
We study particle production in the tachyon condensation process as described by different effective actions for the tachyon. By making use of invariant operators, we are able to obtain exact results for the density of produced particles, which is shown to depend strongly on the specific action. In particular, the rate of particle production remains finite only for one of the actions considered, hence confirming results previously appeared in the literature.
We consider a minimum uncertainty vacuum choice at a fixed energy scale Lambda as an effective description of trans-Planckian physics, and discuss its implications for the linear perturbations of a massless scalar field in power-law inflationary models. We find possible effects with a magnitude of order H/Λin the power spectrum, in analogy with previous results for de-Sitter space-time.
We study the semiclassical evolution of a self-gravitating thick shell in Anti-de Sitter space-time. We treat the matter on the shell as made of quantized bosons and evaluate the back-reaction of the loss of gravitational energy which is radiated away as a non-adiabatic effect. A peculiar feature of anti-de Sitter is that such an emission also occurs for large shell radius, contrary to the asymptotically flat case.
A thermodynamical description for the quasi-static collapse of radiating, self-gravitating spherical shells of matter in anti-de Sitter space-time is obtained. It is shown that the specific heat at constant area and other thermodynamical quantities may diverge before a black hole has eventually formed. This suggests the possibility of a phase transition occurring along the collapse process. The differences with respect to the asymptotically flat case are also highlighted.
We study the collapse of a self-gravitating and radiating shell. Matter constituting the shell is quantized and the construction is viewed as a semiclassical model of possible black hole formation. It is shown that the shell internal degrees of freedom are excited by the quantum non-adiabaticity of the collapse and, consequently, on coupling them to a massless scalar field, the collapsing matter emits a burst of coherent (thermal) radiation.
The equations governing the evolution of non-minimally coupled scalar matter and the scale factor of a Robertson-Walker universe are derived from a minisuperspace action. As for the minimally coupled case, it is shown that the entire semiclassical dynamics can be retrieved from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation via the Born-Oppenheimer reduction, which properly yields the (time-time component of the) covariantly conserved energy-momentum tensor of the scalar field as the source term for gravity. However, for a generic coupling, the expectation value of the operator which evolves the matter state in time is not equal to the source term in the semiclassical Einstein equation for the scale factor of the universe and the difference between these two quantities is related to the squeezing and quantum fluctuations of the matter state. We also argue that matter quantum fluctuations become relevant in an intermediate regime between quantum gravity and semiclassical gravity and study several cases in detail.
An effective action is obtained for the area and mass aspect of a thin shell of radiating self-gravitating matter. On following a mini-superspace approach, the geometry of the embedding space-time is not dynamical but fixed to be either Minkowski or Schwarzschild inside the shell and Vaidya in the external space filled with radiation. The Euler-Lagrange equations of motion are discussed and shown to entail the expected invariance of the effective Lagrangian under time-reparametrization. They are equivalent to the usual junction equations and suggest a macroscopic quasi-static thermodynamic description.
The semi-classical collapse, including lowest order back-reaction, of a thin shell of self-gravitating quantized matter is illustrated. The conditions for which self-gravitating matter forms a thin shell are first discussed and an effective Lagrangian for such matter is obtained. The matter-gravity system is then quantized, the semi-classical limit for gravitation is taken and the method of adiabatic invariants is applied to the resulting time dependent matter Hamiltonian. The governing equations are integrated numerically, for suitable initial conditions, in order to illustrate the effect of back-reaction, due to the creation of matter, in slowing down the collapse near the horizon.