SEARCH · Searcharxiv

Results for “gr-qc”

Search indexed arXiv papers on artificial intelligence, large language models, computer vision and robotics. Read source abstracts and follow links to arXiv.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 523 records · Page 29Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

Is there Correlation between Fine Structure and Dark Energy Cosmic Dipoles?

We present a detailed analysis (including redshift tomography) of the cosmic dipoles in the Keck+VLT quasar absorber and in the Union2 SnIa samples. We show that the fine structure constant cosmic dipole obtained through the Keck+VLT quasar absorber sample at $4.1σ$ level is anomalously aligned with the corresponding dark energy dipole obtained through the Union2 sample at $2σ$ level. The angular separation between the two dipole directions is $11.3^\circ \pm 11.8^\circ$. We use Monte Carlo simulations to find the probability of obtaining the observed dipole magnitudes with the observed alignment, in the context of an isotropic cosmological model with no correlation between dark energy and fine structure constant $α$. We find that this probability is less than one part in $10^6$. We propose a simple physical model (extended topological quintessence) which naturally predicts a spherical inhomogeneous distribution for both dark energy density and fine structure constant values. The model is based on the existence of a recently formed giant global monopole with Hubble scale core which also couples non-minimally to electromagnetism. Aligned dipole anisotropies would naturally emerge for an off-centre observer for both the fine structure constant and for dark energy density. This model smoothly reduces to \lcdm for proper limits of its parameters. Two predictions of this model are (a) a correlation between the existence of strong cosmic electromagnetic fields and the value of $α$ and (b) the existence of a dark flow on Hubble scales due to the repulsive gravity of the global defect core (`Great Repulser') aligned with the dark energy and $α$ dipoles. The direction of the dark flow is predicted to be towards the spatial region of lower accelerating expansion. Existing data about the dark flow are consistent with this prediction.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Curvature Perturbations from a Massive Vector Curvaton

We study a ghost-free model of massive vector curvaton proposed in the literature, where the quick decrease of the vector background expectation value is avoided by a suitable choice of kinetic and mass functions. The curvaton perturbations of this model have been so far computed assuming that these functions are external classical quantities, and it was found that some special time evolution of these functions leads to scale invariant and statistically isotropic perturbations of the vector curvaton. However, external functions should be understood as originating from the expectation value of some additional field. Since these functions need to present a non-trivial evolution during inflation, the field cannot be trivially integrated out, and, in particular, its perturbations need to be included in the computation. We do so in a minimal implementation of the mechanism, where the additional field is identified with the inflaton. We show that, except for a narrow window of model parameters, the interaction with this field generally causes the curvature perturbations to violate statistical isotropy beyond the observational limit.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Constraints on the Topology of the Universe: Extension to General Geometries

We present an update to the search for a non-trivial topology of the universe by searching for matching circle pairs in the cosmic microwave background using the WMAP 7 year data release. We extend the exisiting bounds to encompass a wider range of possible topologies by searching for matching circle pairs with opening angles 10 degree < α< 90 degree and separation angles 11 degree < θ< 180 degree. The extended search reveal two small anomalous regions in the CMB sky. Numerous pairs of well-matched circles are found where both circles pass through one or the other of those regions. As this is not the signature of any known manifold, but is a likely consequence of contamination in those sky regions, we repeat the search excluding circle pairs where both pass through either of the two regions. We then find no statistically significant pairs of matched circles, and so no hints of a non-trivial topology. The absence of matched circles increases the lower limit on the length of the shortest closed null geodesic that self-intersects at our location in the universe (equivalently the injectivity radius at our location) to 98.5% of the diameter of the last scattering surface or approximately 26 Gpc. It extends the limit to any manifolds in which the intersecting arcs of said geodesic form an angle greater than 10^o.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Scalar perturbations from brane-world inflation with curvature effects

We consider a generalization of the Randall-Sundrum single brane-world scenario (RS2). More precisely, the generalization is described through curvature corrections, corresponding to a Gauss-Bonnet term in the bulk and a Hilbert-Einstein term, as well as the strength of the induced gravity term, on the brane. We are mainly interested in analyzing the early inflationary era of the brane, which we model within the extreme slow-roll limit, i.e., under a de Sitter like brane inflation, where the inflaton field is confined on the brane. We compute the scalar perturbations in this model and compare our results with those previously obtained for the RS2 scenario with and without an induced gravity term on the brane or a Gauss-Bonnet term in the bulk. The amplitude of the scalar perturbations is decreased as compared with a pure RS2 model. In addition, the effect from the Gauss-Bonnet correction in an induced gravity brane-world model is to decrease the amplitude of the scalar perturbations, and a similar result is obtained for the induced gravity effect in a Gauss-Bonnet brane-world. In general, in the high energy limit the amplitude is highly suppressed by the Gauss-Bonnet effect. Finally, we constrain the model using the latest WMAP7 data.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2011

Fluctuating geometries, q-observables, and infrared growth in inflationary spacetimes

Infrared growth of geometrical fluctuations in inflationary spacetimes is investigated. The problem of gauge-invariant characterization of growth of perturbations, which is of interest also in other spacetimes such as black holes, is addressed by studying evolution of the lengths of curves in the geometry. These may either connect freely falling "satellites," or wrap non-trivial cycles of geometries like the torus, and are also used in diffeomorphism- invariant constructions of two-point functions of field operators. For spacelike separations significantly exceeding the Hubble scale, no spacetime geodesic connects two events, but one may find geodesics constrained to lie within constant-time spatial slices. In inflationary geometries, metric perturbations produce significant and growing corrections to the lengths of such geodesics, as we show in both quantization on an inflating torus and in standard slow-roll inflation. These become large, signaling breakdown of a perturbative description of the geometry via such observables, and consistent with perturbative instability of de Sitter space. In particular, we show that the geodesic distance on constant time slices during inflation becomes non-perturbative a few e-folds after a given scale has left the horizon, by distances \sim 1/H^3 \sim RS, obstructing use of such geodesics in constructing IR-safe observables based on the spatial geometry. We briefly discuss other possible measures of such geometrical fluctuations.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Complete Set of Homogeneous Isotropic Analytic Solutions in Scalar-Tensor Cosmology with Radiation and Curvature

We study a model of a scalar field minimally coupled to gravity, with a specific potential energy for the scalar field, and include curvature and radiation as two additional parameters. Our goal is to obtain analytically the complete set of configurations of a homogeneous and isotropic universe as a function of time. This leads to a geodesically complete description of the universe, including the passage through the cosmological singularities, at the classical level. We give all the solutions analytically without any restrictions on the parameter space of the model or initial values of the fields. We find that for generic solutions the universe goes through a singular (zero-size) bounce by entering a period of antigravity at each big crunch and exiting from it at the following big bang. This happens cyclically again and again without violating the null energy condition. There is a special subset of geodesically complete non-generic solutions which perform zero-size bounces without ever entering the antigravity regime in all cycles. For these, initial values of the fields are synchronized and quantized but the parameters of the model are not restricted. There is also a subset of spatial curvature-induced solutions that have finite-size bounces in the gravity regime and never enter the antigravity phase. These exist only within a small continuous domain of parameter space without fine tuning initial conditions. To obtain these results, we identified 25 regions of a 6-parameter space in which the complete set of analytic solutions are explicitly obtained.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

The McVittie solution with a negative cosmological constant

Whereas current cosmological observations suggest that the universe is dominated by a positive cosmological constant ($Λ> 0$), the AdS/CFT correspondence tells us that the case $Λ<0$ is still worthy of consideration. In this paper we study the McVittie solution with $Λ<0$. Following a related study, the solution is understood here by way of a systematic construction of conformal diagrams based on detailed numerical integrations of the null geodesic equations. As in the pure Robertson - Walker case, we find that $Λ<0$ ensures collapse to a Big Crunch, a feature which completely dominates the global structure.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

Simulations of non-equal mass black hole binaries with spectral methods

This paper presents techniques and results for simulations of unequal mass, non-spinning black hole binaries with pseudo-spectral methods. Specifically, we develop an efficient root-finding procedure to ensure the black hole initial data have the desired masses and spins, we extend the dual coordinate frame method and eccentricity removal to asymmetric binaries. Furthermore, we describe techniques to simulate mergers of unequal mass black holes. The second part of the paper presents numerical simulations of non-spinning black hole binaries with mass ratios 2, 3, 4 and 6, covering between 15 and 22 orbits, merger and ringdown. We discuss the accuracy of these simulations, the evolution of the (initially zero) black hole spins, and the remnant black hole properties.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

Stability analysis of the Witten black hole (cigar soliton) under world-sheet RG flow

We analyze the stability of the Euclidean Witten black hole (the cigar soliton in mathematics literature) under first-order RG (Ricci) flow of the world-sheet sigma model. This analysis is from the target space point of view. We find that the Witten black hole has no unstable normalizable perturbative modes in a linearized mode analysis in which we consider circularly symmetric perturbations. Finally, we discuss a result from mathematics that implies the existence of a non-normalizable mode of the Witten black hole under which the geometry flows to the sausage solution studied by Fateev, Onofri and Zamolodchikov.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Interpreting the conformal cousin of the Husain-Martinez-Nunez solution

A 2-parameter inhomogeneous cosmology in Brans-Dicke theory, obtained by conformally transforming the Husain-Martinez-Nunez (HMN) scalar field solution of the Einstein equations is studied and interpreted physically. According to the values of the parameters it describes a wormhole, a naked singularity, or else a spacetime containing apparent black hole horizons which appear/disappear in pairs (as well as a cosmological horizon) as in the original HMN metric. The reasons why there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between conformal copies of this metric are discussed.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

Towards beating the curse of dimensionality for gravitational waves using Reduced Basis

Using the Reduced Basis approach, we efficiently compress and accurately represent the space of waveforms for non-precessing binary black hole inspirals, which constitutes a four dimensional parameter space (two masses, two spin magnitudes). Compared to the non-spinning case, we find that only a {\it marginal} increase in the (already relatively small) number of reduced basis elements is required to represent any non-precessing waveform to nearly numerical round-off precision. Most parameters selected by the algorithm are near the boundary of the parameter space, leaving the bulk of its volume sparse. Our results suggest that the full eight dimensional space (two masses, two spin magnitudes, four spin orientation angles on the unit sphere) may be highly compressible and represented with very high accuracy by a remarkably small number of waveforms, thus providing some hope that the number of numerical relativity simulations of binary black hole coalescences needed to represent the entire space of configurations is not intractable. Finally, we find that the {\it distribution} of selected parameters is robust to different choices of seed values starting the algorithm, a property which should be useful for indicating parameters for numerical relativity simulations of binary black holes. In particular, we find that the mass ratios $m_1/m_2$ of non-spinning binaries selected by the algorithm are mostly in the interval $[1,3]$ and that the median of the distribution follows a power-law behavior $\sim (m_1/m_2)^{-5.25}$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

When is Multimetric Gravity Ghost-free?

We study ghosts in multimetric gravity by combining the mini-superspace and the Hamiltonian constraint analysis. We first revisit bimetric gravity and explain why it is ghost-free. Then, we apply our method to trimetric gravity and clarify when the model contains a ghost. More precisely, we prove trimetric gravity generically contains a ghost. However, if we cut the interaction of a pair of metrics, trimetric gravity becomes ghost-free. We further extend the Hamiltonian analysis to general multimetric gravity and calculate the number of ghosts in various models. Thus, we find multimetric gravity with loop type interactions never becomes ghost-free.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Semi-realistic Bouncing Domain Wall Cosmology

In this paper we constructed a semi-realistic cosmological model in a dynamic domain wall framework. Our universe is considered to be a (3+1) dimensional dynamic domain wall in a higher dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Born-Infeld background. One of our interesting outcomes from the effective Hubble equation for the domain wall dynamics is that it contains an additional component of "dark matter" which is induced from the charge of the bulk Born-Infeld gauge field. In this background spacetime we have studied the cosmological dynamics of the domain wall. In addition to the Born-Infield gauge field if we consider additional pure gauge field, a non-singular bounce happens at the early stage with a smooth transition between contracting and expanding phase.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

From Fixed Points to the Fifth Dimension

4D Lorentzian conformal field theory (CFT) is mapped into 5D anti-de Sitter spacetime (AdS), from the viewpoint of "geometrizing" conformal current algebra. A large-N expansion of the CFT is shown to lead to (infinitely many) weakly coupled AdS particles, in one-to-one correspondence with minimal-color-singlet CFT primary operators. If all but a finite number of "protected" primary operators have very large scaling dimensions, it is shown that there exists a low-AdS-curvature effective field theory regime for the corresponding finite set of AdS particles. Effective 5D gauge theory and General Relativity on AdS are derived in this way from the most robust examples of protected CFT primaries, Noether currents of global symmetries and the energy-momentum tensor. Witten's prescription for computing CFT local operator correlators within the AdS dual is derived. The main new contribution is the derivation of 5D locality of AdS couplings. This is accomplished by studying a confining IR-deformation of the CFT in the large-N "planar" approximation, where the discrete spectrum and existence of an S-matrix allow the constraints of unitarity and crossing symmetry to be solved (in standard fashion) by a tree-level expansion in terms of 4D local "glueball" couplings. When the deformation is carefully removed, this 4D locality (with plausible technical assumptions specifying its precise nature) combines with the restored conformal symmetry to yield 5D AdS locality. The sense in which AdS/CFT duality illustrates the possibility of emergent relativity, and the special role of strong coupling, are briefly discussed. Care is taken to conclude each step with well-defined mathematical expressions and convergent integrals.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Holographic Confinement/Deconfinement Transitions in Asymptotically Lifshitz Spacetimes

Under a Scherk-Schwarz compactification, the AdS soliton and black brane provide a dual description to a confinement/deconfinement phase transition. We extend this construction to asymptotically Lifshitz spacetimes. In particular, we show that there must be a phase transition between the soliton and black hole if the solutions exist. We also construct these solutions numerically and compute the phase diagram.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Relativistic virialization in the Spherical Collapse model for Einstein-de Sitter and ΛCDM cosmologies

Spherical collapse has turned out to be a successful semi-analytic model to study structure formation in different DE models and theories of gravity. Nevertheless, the process of virialization is commonly studied on the basis of the virial theorem of classical mechanics. In the present paper, a fully generally-relativistic virial theorem based on the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) solution for homogeneous, perfect-fluid spheres is constructed for the Einstein-de Sitter and ΛCDM cosmologies. We investigate the accuracy of classical virialization studies on cosmological scales and consider virialization from a more fundamental point of view. Throughout, we remain within general relativity and the class of FLRW models. The virialization equation is set up and solved numerically for the virial radius, y_{vir}, from which the virial overdensity Δ_{V} is directly obtained. Leading order corrections in the post-Newtonian framework are derived and quantified. In addition, problems in the application of this formalism to dynamical DE models are pointed out and discussed explicitly. We show that, in the weak field limit, the relative contribution of the leading order terms of the post-Newtonian expansion are of the order of 10^{-3}% and the solution of Wang & Steinhardt (1998) is precisely reproduced. Apart from the small corrections, the method could provide insight into the process of virialization from a more fundamental point of view.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Real-time Quantum evolution in the Classical approximation and beyond

With the goal in mind of deriving a method to compute quantum corrections for the real-time evolution in quantum field theory, we analyze the problem from the perspective of the Wigner function. We argue that this provides the most natural way to justify and extend the classical approximation. A simple proposal is presented that can allow to give systematic quantum corrections to the evolution of expectation values and/or an estimate of the errors committed when using the classical approximation. The method is applied to the case of a few degrees of freedom and compared with other methods and with the exact quantum results. An analysis of the dependence of the numerical effort involved as a function of the number of variables is given, which allow us to be optimistic about its applicability in a quantum field theoretical context.

math-ph↗

arXiv2012

Damping of tensor modes in inflation

We discuss the damping of tensor modes due to anisotropic stress in inflation. The effect is negligible in standard inflation and may be significantly large in inflation models that involve drastic production of free-streaming particles.

astro-ph.CO↗