arXiv subjects

Marcelo Gleiser

Publications and source records attributed to Marcelo Gleiser.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Transition To Order After Hilltop Inflation

We investigate the rich nonlinear dynamics during the end of hilltop inflation by numerically solving the coupled Klein-Gordon-Friedmann equations in a expanding universe. In particular, we search for coherent, nonperturbative configurations that may emerge due to the combination of nontrivial couplings between the fields and resonant effects from the cosmological expansion. We couple a massless field to the inflaton to investigate its effect on the existence and stability of coherent configurations and the effective equation of state at reheating. For parameters consistent with data from the Planck and WMAP satellites, and for a wide range of couplings between the inflaton and the massless field, we identify a transition from disorder to order characterized by emergent oscillon-like configurations. We verify that these configurations can contribute a maximum of roughly 30% of the energy density in the universe. At late times their contribution to the energy density drops to about 3%, but they remain long-lived on cosmological time-scales, being stable throughout our simulations. Cosmological oscillon emergence is described using a new measure of order in field theory known as relative configurational entropy.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Information-Entropic Stability Bound for Compact Objects: Application to Q-Balls and the Chandrasekhar Limit of Polytropes

Spatially-bound objects across diverse length and energy scales are characterized by a binding energy. We propose that their spatial structure is mathematically encoded as information in their momentum modes and described by a measure known as configurational entropy (CE). Investigating solitonic Q-balls and stars with a polytropic equation of state $P = Kρ^γ$, we show that objects with large binding energy have low CE, whereas those at the brink of instability (zero binding energy) have near maximal CE. In particular, we use the CE to find the critical charge allowing for classically stable Q-balls and the Chandrasekhar limit for white dwarfs $(γ = 4/3)$ with an accuracy of a few percent.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Entropic Measure for Localized Energy Configurations: Kinks, Bounces, and Bubbles

We construct a configurational entropy measure in functional space. We apply it to several nonlinear scalar field models featuring solutions with spatially-localized energy, including solitons and bounces in one spatial dimension, and critical bubbles in three spatial dimensions, typical of first-order phase transitions. Such field models are of widespread interest in many areas of physics, from high energy and cosmology to condensed matter. Using a variational approach, we show that the higher the energy of a trial function that approximates the actual solution, the higher its relative configurational entropy, defined as the absolute difference between the configurational entropy of the actual solution and of the trial function. Furthermore, we show that when different trial functions have degenerate energies, the configurational entropy can be used to select the best fit to the actual solution. The configurational entropy relates the dynamical and informational content of physical models with localized energy configurations.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Information Content of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

We propose a measure of order in the context of nonequilibrium field theory and argue that this measure, which we call relative configurational entropy (RCE), may be used to quantify the emergence of coherent low-entropy configurations, such as time-dependent or time-independent topological and nontopological spatially-extended structures. As an illustration, we investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of spontaneous symmetry-breaking in three spatial dimensions. In particular, we focus on a model where a real scalar field, prepared initially in a symmetric thermal state, is quenched to a broken-symmetric state. For a certain range of initial temperatures, spatially-localized, long-lived structures known as oscillons emerge in synchrony and remain until the field reaches equilibrium again. We show that the RCE correlates with the number-density of oscillons, thus offering a quantitative measure of the emergence of nonperturbative spatiotemporal patterns that can be generalized to a variety of physical systems.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Chiral Polymerization in Open Systems From Chiral-Selective Reaction Rates

We investigate the possibility that prebiotic homochirality can be achieved exclusively through chiral-selective reaction rate parameters without any other explicit mechanism for chiral bias. Specifically, we examine an open network of polymerization reactions, where the reaction rates can have chiral-selective values. The reactions are neither autocatalytic nor do they contain explicit enantiomeric cross-inhibition terms. We are thus investigating how rare a set of chiral-selective reaction rates needs to be in order to generate a reasonable amount of chiral bias. We quantify our results adopting a statistical approach: varying both the mean value and the rms dispersion of the relevant reaction rates, we show that moderate to high levels of chiral excess can be achieved with fairly small chiral bias, below 10%. Considering the various unknowns related to prebiotic chemical networks in early Earth and the dependence of reaction rates to environmental properties such as temperature and pressure variations, we argue that homochirality could have been achieved from moderate amounts of chiral selectivity in the reaction rates.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2012

From Cosmos to Intelligent Life: The Four Ages of Astrobiology

The history of life on Earth and in other potential life-bearing planetary platforms is deeply linked to the history of the universe. Since life as we know it relies on chemical elements forged in dying heavy stars, the universe needs to be old enough for stars to form and evolve. Current cosmological theory indicates that the universe is 13.7$\pm 0.13$ billion years old and that the first stars formed hundreds of millions of years after the big bang. At least some stars formed with stable planetary systems wherein a set of biochemical reactions leading to life could have taken place. In this lecture, I argue that we can divide cosmological history into four ages, from the big bang to intelligent life. The Physical Age describes the origin of the universe, of matter, of cosmic nucleosynthesis, as well as the formation of the first stars and galaxies. The Chemical Age begun when heavy stars provided the raw ingredients for life through stellar nucleosynthesis and describes how heavier chemical elements collected in nascent planets and moons to give rise to prebiotic biomolecules. The Biological Age describes the origin of early life, its evolution through Darwinian natural selection, and the emergence of complex multicellular life forms. Finally, the Cognitive Age describes how complex life evolved into intelligent life capable of self-awareness and of developing technology through the directed manipulation of energy and materials. We conclude discussing whether we are the rule or the exception.

physics.pop-ph↗

arXiv2012

Life's Chirality From Prebiotic Environments

A key open question in the study of life is the origin of biomolecular homochirality: almost every life-form on Earth has exclusively levorotary amino acids and dextrorotary sugars. Will the same handedness be preferred if life is found elsewhere? We review some of the pertinent literature and discuss recent results suggesting that life's homochirality resulted from sequential chiral symmetry breaking triggered by environmental events. In one scenario, autocatalytic prebiotic reactions undergo stochastic fluctuations due to environmental disturbances. In another, chiral-selective polymerization reaction rates influenced by environmental effects lead to substantial chiral excess even in the absence of autocatalysis. Applying these arguments to other potentially life-bearing platforms has implications to the search for extraterrestrial life: we predict that a statistically representative sampling of extraterrestrial stereochemistry will be racemic (chirally neutral) on average.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2011

Generation of Coherent Structures After Cosmic Inflation

We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of hybrid inflation models, which are characterized by two real scalar fields interacting quadratically. We start by solving numerically the coupled Klein-Gordon equations in static Minkowski spacetime, searching for possible coherent structures. We find long-lived, localized configurations, which we identify as a new kind of oscillon. We demonstrate that these two-field oscillons allow for "excited" states with much longer lifetimes than those found in previous studies of single-field oscillons. We then solve the coupled field equations in an expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime, finding that as the field responsible for inflating the Universe rolls down to oscillate about its minimum, it triggers the formation of long-lived two-field oscillons, which can contribute up to 20% of the total energy density of the Universe. We show that these oscillons emerge for a wide range of parameters consistent with WMAP 7-year data. These objects contain total energy of about 25*10^20 GeV, localized in a region of approximate radius 6*10^-26 cm. We argue that these structures could have played a key role during the reheating of the Universe.

hep-th↗

arXiv2010

Long-Lived Time-Dependent Remnants During Cosmological Symmetry Breaking: From Inflation to the Electroweak Scale

Through a detailed numerical investigation in three spatial dimensions, we demonstrate that long-lived time-dependent field configurations emerge dynamically during symmetry breaking in an expanding de Sitter spacetime. We investigate two situations: a single scalar field with a double-well potential and the bosonic sector of an SU(2) non-Abelian Higgs model. For the single scalar, we show that large-amplitude oscillon configurations emerge spontaneously and persist to contribute about 1.2% of the energy density of the universe. We also show that for a range of parameters, oscillon lifetimes are enhanced by the expansion and that this effect is a result of parametric resonance. For the SU(2) case, we see about 4% of the final energy density in oscillons.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Drake Equation for the Multiverse: From the String Landscape to Complex Life

It is argued that selection criteria usually referred to as "anthropic conditions" for the existence of intelligent (typical) observers widely adopted in cosmology amount only to preconditions for primitive life. The existence of life does not imply in the existence of intelligent life. On the contrary, the transition from single-celled to complex, multi-cellular organisms is far from trivial, requiring stringent additional conditions on planetary platforms. An attempt is made to disentangle the necessary steps leading from a selection of universes out of a hypothetical multiverse to the existence of life and of complex life. It is suggested that what is currently called the "anthropic principle" should instead be named the "prebiotic principle."

hep-th↗

arXiv2009

A General Theory of Oscillon Dynamics

We present a comprehensive, nonperturbative analytical method to investigate the dynamics of time-dependent oscillating scalar field configurations. The method is applied to oscillons in a double well Klein-Gordon model in two and three spatial dimensions, yielding high accuracy results in the characterization of all aspects of the complex oscillon dynamics. In particular, we show how oscillons can be interpreted as long-lived perturbations about an attractor in field configuration space. By investigating their radiation rate as they approach the attractor, we obtain an accurate estimate of their lifetimes in d=3 and explain why they seem to be perturbatively stable in d=2, where d is the number of spatial dimensions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2009

Toward homochiral protocells in noncatalytic peptide systems

The activation-polymerization-epimerization-depolymerization (APED) model of Plasson et al. has recently been proposed as a mechanism for the evolution of homochirality on prebiotic Earth. The dynamics of the APED model in two-dimensional spatially-extended systems is investigated for various realistic reaction parameters. It is found that the APED system allows for the formation of isolated homochiral proto-domains surrounded by a racemate. A diffusive slowdown of the APED network such as induced through tidal motion or evaporating pools and lagoons leads to the stabilization of homochiral bounded structures as expected in the first self-assembled protocells.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2008

The Chirality Of Life: From Phase Transitions To Astrobiology

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is a pivotal question in modern science. However, to address whether life is common in the universe we must first understand the likelihood of abiogenesis by studying the origin of life on Earth. A key missing piece is the origin of biomolecular homochirality: permeating almost every life-form on Earth is the presence of exclusively levorotary amino acids and dextrorotary sugars. In this work we discuss recent results suggesting that life's homochirality resulted from sequential chiral symmetry breaking triggered by environmental events in a mechanism referred to as punctuated chirality. Applying these arguments to other potentially life-bearing platforms has significant implications for the search for extraterrestrial life: we predict that a statistically representative sampling of extraterrestrial stereochemistry will be racemic on average.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2008

Punctuated Chirality

Most biomolecules occur in mirror, or chiral, images of each other. However, life is homochiral: proteins contain almost exclusively levorotatory (L) amino acids, while only dextrorotatory (R) sugars appear in RNA and DNA. The mechanism behind this fundamental asymmetry of life remains an open problem. Coupling the spatiotemporal evolution of a general autocatalytic polymerization reaction network to external environmental effects, we show through a detailed statistical analysis that high intensity and long duration events may drive achiral initial conditions towards chirality. We argue that life's homochirality resulted from sequential chiral symmetry breaking triggered by environmental events, thus extending the theory of punctuated equilibrium to the prebiotic realm. Applying our arguments to other potentially life-bearing planetary platforms, we predict that a statistically representative sampling will be racemic on average.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2008

A Class of Nonperturbative Configurations in Abelian-Higgs Models: Complexity from Dynamical Symmetry Breaking

We present a numerical investigation of the dynamics of symmetry breaking in both Abelian and non-Abelian $[S U (2)]$ Higgs models in three spatial dimensions. We find a class of time-dependent, long-lived nonperturbative field configurations within the range of parameters corresponding to type-1 superconductors, that is, with vector masses ($m_v$) larger than scalar masses ($m_s$). We argue that these emergent nontopological configurations are related to oscillons found previously in other contexts. For the Abelian-Higgs model, our lattice implementation allows us to map the range of parameter space -- the values of $β= (m_s /m_v)^2$ -- where such configurations exist and to follow them for times $t \sim Ø(10^5) m^{-1}$. An investigation of their properties for $\hat z$-symmetric models reveals an enormously rich structure of resonances and mode-mode oscillations reminiscent of excited atomic states. For the SU(2) case, we present preliminary results indicating the presence of similar oscillonic configurations.

hep-th↗

arXiv2008

Analytical Characterization of Oscillon Energy and Lifetime

We develop an analytical procedure to compute all relevant physical properties of scalar field oscillons in models with quartic polynomial potentials: energy, radius, frequency, core-amplitude, and lifetime. We compare our predictions to numerical simulations of models with symmetric and asymmetric double well potentials in three spatial dimensions, obtaining excellent agreement. We also explain why oscillons have not been seen to decay in two spatial dimensions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2008

An Extended Model for the Evolution of Prebiotic Homochirality: A Bottom-Up Approach to the Origin of Life

A generalized autocatalytic model for chiral polymerization is investigated in detail. Apart from enantiomeric cross-inhibition, the model allows for the autogenic (non-catalytic) formation of left and right-handed monomers from a substrate with reaction rates $ε_L$ and $ε_R$, respectively. The spatiotemporal evolution of the net chiral asymmetry is studied for models with several values of the maximum polymer length, N. For N=2, we study the validity of the adiabatic approximation often cited in the literature. We show that the approximation obtains the correct equilibrium values of the net chirality, but fails to reproduce the short time behavior. We show also that the autogenic term in the full N=2 model behaves as a control parameter in a chiral symmetry- breaking phase transition leading to full homochirality from racemic initial conditions. We study the dynamics of the N -> infinity model with symmetric ($ε_L = ε_R$) autogenic formation, showing that it only achieves homochirality for $ε< ε_c$, where $ε_c$ is an N-dependent critical value. For $ε\leq ε_c$ we investigate the behavior of models with several values of N, showing that the net chiral asymmetry grows as tanh(N). We show that for a given symmetric autogenic reaction rate, the net chirality and the concentrations of chirally pure polymers increase with the maximum polymer length in the model. We briefly discuss the consequences of our results for the development of homochirality in prebiotic Earth and possible experimental verification of our findings.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2008

Running-mode resonance in A.C.-biased periodic potential

We investigate the stochastic dynamics of a particle in the presence of a modulated sinusoidal potential. Using the time derivative of the winding number, we quantify the particle's motion according to its running time, the time it runs monotonically to the left or right. For a range of model parameters, we show that, in the overdamped regime, the particle's motion in this modulated washboard potential exhibits stochastic resonance. We briefly suggest possible applications of our results, including the amplification of signals for measurement devices and in stimulated tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗