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S. L. Dubovsky

Publications and source records attributed to S. L. Dubovsky.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Constraints on millicharged particles from Planck

We revisit cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on the abundance of millicharged particles based on the Planck data. The stringent limit Omega_{mcp}h^2 < 0.001 (95% CL) may be set using the CMB data alone if millicharged particles participate in the acoustic oscillations of baryon-photon plasma at the recombination epoch. The latter condition is valid for a wide region of charges and masses of the particles. Adding the millicharged component to LCDM shifts prefered scalar spectral index of primordial perturbations to somewhat larger values as compared to minimal model, even approaching Harrison-Zeldovich spectrum under some assumptions.

hep-ph

Spontaneous breaking of Lorentz invariance, black holes and perpetuum mobile of the 2nd kind

We study the effect of spontaneous breaking of Lorentz invariance on black hole thermodynamics. We consider a scenario where Lorentz symmetry breaking manifests itself by the difference of maximal velocities attainable by particles of different species in a preferred reference frame. The Lorentz breaking sector is represented by the ghost condensate. We find that the notions of black hole entropy and temperature loose their universal meaning. In particular, the standard derivation of the Hawking radiation yields that a black hole does emit thermal radiation in any given particle species, but with temperature depending on the maximal attainable velocity of this species. We demonstrate that this property implies violation of the second law of thermodynamics, and hence, allows construction of a perpetuum mobile of the 2nd kind. We discuss possible interpretation of these results.

hep-th

Massive graviton as a testable cold dark matter candidate

We construct a consistent model of gravity where the tensor graviton mode is massive, while linearized equations for scalar and vector metric perturbations are not modified. The Friedmann equation acquires an extra dark-energy component leading to accelerated expansion. The mass of the graviton can be as large as $\sim (10^{15}{cm})^{-1}$, being constrained by the pulsar timing measurements. We argue that non-relativistic gravitational waves can comprise the cold dark matter and may be detected by the future gravitational wave searches.

hep-th

Phases of massive gravity

We systematically study the most general Lorentz-violating graviton mass invariant under three-dimensional Eucledian group using the explicitly covariant language. We find that at general values of mass parameters the massive graviton has six propagating degrees of freedom, and some of them are ghosts or lead to rapid classical instabilities. However, there is a number of different regions in the mass parameter space where massive gravity can be described by a consistent low-energy effective theory with cutoff $\sim\sqrt{mM_{Pl}}$ free of rapid instabilities and vDVZ discontinuity. Each of these regions is characterized by certain fine-tuning relations between mass parameters, generalizing the Fierz--Pauli condition. In some cases the required fine-tunings are consequences of the existence of the subgroups of the diffeomorphism group that are left unbroken by the graviton mass. We found two new cases, when the resulting theories have a property of UV insensitivity, i.e. remain well behaved after inclusion of arbitrary higher dimension operators without assuming any fine-tunings among the coefficients of these operators, besides those enforced by the symmetries. These theories can be thought of as generalizations of the ghost condensate model with a smaller residual symmetry group. We briefly discuss what kind of cosmology can one expect in massive gravity and argue that the allowed values of the graviton mass may be quite large, affecting growth of primordial perturbations, structure formation and, perhaps, enhancing the backreaction of inhomogeneities on the expansion rate of the Universe.

hep-th

Star tracks in the ghost condensate

We consider the infrared modification of gravity by ghost condensate. Naively, in this scenario one expects sizeable modification of gravity at distances of order 1000 km, provided that the characteristic time scale of the theory is of the order of the Hubble time. However, we argue that this is not the case. The main physical reason for the conspiracy is a simple fact that the Earth (and any other object in the Universe) has velocity of at least of order 10^{-3}c with respect to the rest frame of ghost condensate. Combined with strong retardation effects present in the ghost sector, this fact implies that no observable modification of the gravitational field of nearby objects occurs. Instead, the physical manifestation of ghost condensate is the presence of ``star tracks'' -- narrow regions of space with growing gravitational and ghost fields inside -- along the trajectory of any massive object. We briefly discuss the possibilities to observe these tracks.

hep-ph

Domain walls in noncommutative gauge theories, folded D-branes, and communication with mirror world

Noncommutative U(N) gauge theories at different N may be often thought of as different sectors of a single theory. For instance, U(1) theory possesses a sequence of vacua labeled by an integer parameter N, and the theory in the vicinity of the N-th vacuum coincides with the U(N) noncommutative gauge theory. We construct domain walls on noncommutative plane, which separate vacua with different gauge groups in gauge theory with adjoint scalar field. The scalar field has nonminimal coupling to the gauge field, such that the scale of noncommutativity is determined by the vacuum value of the scalar field. The domain walls are solutions of the BPS equations in the theory. It is natural to interprete the domain wall as a stack of D-branes plus a stack of folded D-branes. We support this interpretation by the analysis of small fluctuations around domain walls, and suggest that such configurations of branes emerge as solutions of the Matrix model in large class of pp-wave backgrounds with inhomogeneous field strength. We point out that the folded D-brane per se provides an explicit realization of the "mirror world" idea, and speculate on some phenomenological consequences of this scenario.

hep-th

Narrowing the window for millicharged particles by CMB anisotropy

We calculate the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectrum in models with millicharged particles of electric charge q\sim 10^{-6}-10^{-1} in units of electron charge. We find that a large region of the parameter space for the millicharged particles exists where their effect on the CMB spectrum is similar to the effect of baryons. Using WMAP data on the CMB anisotropy and assuming Big Bang nucleosynthesis value for the baryon abundance we find that only a small fraction of cold dark matter, Omega_{mcp}h_0^2 < 0.007 (at 95% CL), may consists of millicharged particles with the parameters (charge and mass) from this region. This bound significantly narrows the allowed range of the parameters of millicharged particles. In models without paraphoton millicharged particles are now excluded as a dark matter candidate. We also speculate that recent observation of 511 keV gamma-rays from the Galactic bulge may be an indication that a (small) fraction of CDM is comprised of the millicharged particles.

hep-ph

On brane-induced gravity in warped backgrounds

We study whether modification of gravity at large distances is possible in warped backgrounds with two branes and a brane-induced term localized on one of the branes. We find that there are three large regions in the parameter space where the theory is weakly coupled up to high energies. In one of these regions gravity on the brane is four-dimensional at arbitrarily large distances, and the induced Einstein term results merely in the renormalization of the 4d Planck mass. In the other two regions the behavior of gravity changes at ultra-large distances; however, radion becomes a ghost. In parts of these regions, both branes have positive tensions, so the only reason for the appearance of the ghost field is the brane-induced term. In between these three regions, there are domains in the parameter space where gravity is strongly coupled at phenomenologically unacceptable low energy scale.

hep-th

Domain walls between gauge theories

Noncommutative U(N) gauge theories at different N may be often thought of as different sectors of a single theory: the U(1) theory possesses a sequence of vacua labeled by an integer parameter N, and the theory in the vicinity of the N-th vacuum coincides with the U(N) noncommutative gauge theory. We construct noncommutative domain walls on fuzzy cylinder, separating vacua with different gauge theories. These domain walls are solutions of BPS equations in gauge theory with an extra term stabilizing the radius of the cylinder. We study properties of the domain walls using adjoint scalar and fundamental fermion fields as probes. We show that the regions on different sides of the wall are not disjoint even in the low energy regime -- there are modes penetrating from one region to the other. We find that the wall supports a chiral fermion zero mode. Also, we study non-BPS solution representing a wall and an antiwall, and show that this solution is unstable. We suggest that the domain walls emerge as solutions of matrix model in large class of pp-wave backgrounds with inhomogeneous field strength. In the M-theory language, the domain walls have an interpretation of a stack of branes of fingerstall shape inserted into a stack of cylindrical branes.

hep-th

Gauge theory solitons on noncommutative cylinder

We generalize to noncommutative cylinder the solution generation technique, originally suggested for gauge theories on noncommutative plane. For this purpose we construct partial isometry operators and complete set of orthogonal projectors in the algebra of the cylinder, and an isomorphism between the free module and its direct sum with the Fock module on the cylinder. We construct explicitly the gauge theory soliton and evaluate the spectrum of perturbations about this soliton.

hep-th

Brane-induced gravity in more than one extra dimensions: violation of equivalence principle and ghost

We consider brane-induced gravity model in more than one extra dimensions, regularized by assuming that the bulk gravity is soft in ultraviolet. We study linear theory about flat multi-dimensional space-time and flat brane. We first find that this model allows for violation of equivalence between gravitational and inertial masses of brane matter. We then observe that the model has a scalar ghost field localized near the brane, as well as quasi-localized massive graviton. Pure tensor structure of four-dimensional gravity on the brane at intermediate distances is due to the cancellation between the extra polarization of the massive graviton, and the ghost. This is completely analogous to the situation in the GRS model.

hep-th

On electric charge non-conservation in brane world

In some models with infinite extra dimensions, gauge fields are localized on a brane by gravity. A generic property of these models is the existence of arbitrarily light bulk modes of charged fields. This property may lead to interesting low-energy effects such as electric charge non-conservation on the brane (decay of electron to nothing). One may worry that light charged Kaluza--Klein modes would lead to unacceptable phenomenology due to their copious production in, e.g., electron-positron annihilation and/or their contribution to QED observables like anomalous magnetic moments. We argue, however, that both loop effects and production of light charged Kaluza--Klein modes are suppressed due to screening effect of gapless spectrum of bulk photons.

hep-th

Quasi-localized states on noncommutative solitons

We consider noncommutative gauge theories which have zero mass states propagating along both commutative and noncommutative dimensions. Solitons in these theories generically carry U(m) gauge group on their world-volume. From the point of view of string theory, these solitons correspond to ``branes within branes''. We show that once the world-volume U(m) gauge theory is in the Higgs phase, light states become quasi-localized, rather than strictly localized on the soliton, i.e. they mix with light bulk modes and have finite widths to escape into the noncommutative dimensions. At small values of U(m) symmetry breaking parameters, these widths are small compared to the corresponding masses. Explicit examples considered are adjoint scalar field in the background of a noncommutative vortex in U(1)-Higgs theory, and gauge fields in instanton backgrounds in pure gauge noncommutative theories.

hep-th

Tunneling into Extra Dimension and High-Energy Violation of Lorentz Invariance

We consider a class of models with infinite extra dimension, where bulk space does not possess SO(1,3) invariance, but Lorentz invariance emerges as an approximate symmetry of the low-energy effective theory. In these models, the maximum attainable speeds of the graviton, gauge bosons and scalar particles are automatically equal to each other and smaller than the maximum speed in the bulk. Additional fine-tuning is needed in order to assure that the maximum attainable speed of fermions takes the same value. A peculiar feature of our scenario is that there are no truly localized modes. All four-dimensional particles are resonances with finite widths. The latter depends on the energy of the particle and is naturally small at low energies.

hep-th

Violation of Lorentz Invariance and neutral component of UHECR

The observed clustering of ultra-high energy cosmic rays suggests the existence of a neutral component. The models with violation of Lorentz invariance may explain this component by neutrons becoming stable above some threshold energy E_0. The protons, in turn, may become unstable above some energy E_1>E_0. We calculate the dependence of the threshold energies E_0 and E_1 on the parameters of the model and find E_1/E_0\gsim 1.5. We argue that the characteristic threshold behavior of charged and neutral components may be used as the specific signature of models with violation of Lorentz invariance. The existence of the neutron stability threshold E_0 can be investigated with already existing data.

astro-ph

On models of gauge field localization on a brane

We argue that any viable mechanism of gauge field localization should automatically imply charge universality on the brane. We study whether this condition is satisfied in the two known proposals aimed to localize vector field in flat bulk space. We construct a simple calculable model with confinement in the bulk and deconfinement on the brane, as in the Shifman--Dvali set up. We find that in our model the 4-dimensional Coulomb law is indeed reproduced on the brane due to the massless localized photon mode. The charge universality is enforced by the presence of ``confining strings''. On the other hand, charge universality condition is not satisfied in another, brane-induced localization mechanism when the number of extra dimensions d is larger than two. We demonstrate that in the non-Abelian case the gauge fields inside the brane are never four-dimensional and their self-interaction is strong at all distances of interest. Hence this mechanism does not work for d>2. At d=2 the charge universality is still a problem, but it holds automatically at d=1. At d=1, however, the bulk gauge fields are strongly coupled in the non-Abelian case.

hep-th

Small Second Acoustic Peak from Interacting Cold Dark Matter?

We consider a possibility to explain the observed suppression of the second acoustic peak in the anisotropy spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by interaction between a fraction of non-baryonic Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and normal baryonic matter. This scenario does not require any modifications in the standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). We estimate the required values of the cross-section-to-mass ratio for elastic scattering of CDM particles off baryons. In case of velocity-independent elastic scattering (in the velocity interval 10^{-5}--10^{-3}) we find that such particles do not contradict observational limits if they are heavier than \sim 10^5 GeV or lighter than \sim 0.5 GeV. Another candidate, which may appear in the models with infinite extra dimensions, is a quasistable charged particle decaying through tunneling into extra dimensions. Finally a millicharged particle with the electric charge ranging from \sim 10^{-4} to \sim 10^{-1} and with mass M\sim 0.1 GeV--1 TeV also may be responsible for the suppression of the second acoustic peak. As a byproduct we point out that CMB measurements set new limits on the allowed parameter space for the millicharged particles.

astro-ph

Is the electric charge conserved in brane world?

We discuss whether electric charge conservation may not hold in four-dimensional world in models with infinite extra dimensions, i.e., whether escape of charged particles from our brane is consistent with effectively four-dimensional electrodynamics on the brane. We introduce a setup with photon localized on the brane and show that charge leakage into extra dimension is allowed within this setup. The electric field induced on the brane by escaping charge does not obey four-dimensional Maxwell's equations; this field gradually disappears in a causal way. We also speculate on the possibility of the escape of colored particles and formation of colorless free quark states on the brane.

hep-ph