Search results for " relativity"
showing 10 items of 1158 documents
Phenomenological approaches of inflation and their equivalence
2014
In this work, we analyze two possible alternative and model-independent approaches to describe the inflationary period. The first one assumes a general equation of state during inflation due to Mukhanov, while the second one is based on the slow-roll hierarchy suggested by Hoffman and Turner. We find that, remarkably, the two approaches are equivalent from the observational viewpoint, as they single out the same areas in the parameter space, and agree with the inflationary attractors where successful inflation occurs. Rephrased in terms of the familiar picture of a slowly rolling, canonically normalized scalar field, the resulting inflaton excursions in these two approaches are almost ident…
A new stochastic approach to cumulative weak lensing
2009
We study the weak gravitational lensing effects caused by a stochastic distribution of dark matter halos. We develop a simple approach to calculate the magnification probability distribution function which allows us to easily compute the magnitude bias and dispersion for an arbitrary data sample and a given universe model. As an application we consider the effects of single-mass large-scale cosmic inhomogeneities to the SNe magnitude-redshift relation, and conclude that such structures could bias the PDF enough to affect the extraction of cosmological parameters from the limited size of present-day SNe data samples. We also release turboGL, a simple and very fast (<= 1s) Mathematica code…
Intrinsic energy of Lema\^itre-Tolman-Bondi models and cosmological implications
2013
Recently, some Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Tolman-Bondi metrics have been considered as models alternative to the dark energy within the Friedmann-Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Robertson-Walker universes. The vanishing of the intrinsic energy of these metrics is examined since such a vanishing, in the present case and in general, could be interpreted as a necessary condition to consider the possibility of the quantum creation of a metric. More specifically, this vanishing is examined in the particular case where the Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Tolman-Bondi metrics behave asymptotically like a Friedmann-Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Robertson-Walker universe. Finally, we deal with a particular model ruled out after being confronted with cosmi…
Cosmology in a certain vector-tensor theory of gravitation
2014
We study relevant cosmological topics in the framework of a certain vector-tensor theory of gravitation (hereafter VT). This theory is first compared with the so-called extended electromagnetism (EE). These theories have a notable resemblance and both explain the existence of a cosmological constant. It is shown that, in EE, a positive dark energy density requires a Lagrangian leading to quantum ghosts, whereas VT is free from these ghosts. On account of this fact, the remainder of the paper is devoted to study cosmology in the framework of VT. Initial conditions, at high redshift, are used to solve the evolution equations of all the VT scalar modes. In particular, a certain scalar mode cha…
Gravitational waves from first order phase transitions as a probe of an early matter domination era and its inverse problem
2016
We investigate the gravitational wave background from a first order phase transition in a matter-dominated universe, and show that it has a unique feature from which important information about the properties of the phase transition and thermal history of the universe can be easily extracted. Also, we discuss the inverse problem of such a gravitational wave background in view of the degeneracy among macroscopic parameters governing the signal.
Positioning systems in Minkowski space-time: Bifurcation problem and observational data
2012
In the framework of relativistic positioning systems in Minkowski space-time, the determination of the inertial coordinates of a user involves the {\em bifurcation problem} (which is the indeterminate location of a pair of different events receiving the same emission coordinates). To solve it, in addition to the user emission coordinates and the emitter positions in inertial coordinates, it may happen that the user needs to know {\em independently} the orientation of its emission coordinates. Assuming that the user may observe the relative positions of the four emitters on its celestial sphere, an observational rule to determine this orientation is presented. The bifurcation problem is thus…
Weak Lensing Observables in the Halo Model
2011
The halo model (HM) describes the inhomogeneous universe as a collection of halos. The full nonlinear power spectrum of the universe is well approximated by the HM, whose prediction can be easily computed without lengthy numerical simulations. This makes the HM a useful tool in cosmology. Here we explore the lensing properties of the HM by use of the stochastic gravitational lensing (sGL) method. We obtain for the case of point sources exact and simple integral expressions for the expected value and variance of the lensing convergence, which encode detailed information about the internal halo properties. In particular a wide array of observational biases can be easily incorporated and the d…
Final State Interaction Effects in 3He(e ,e'p)
2003
Abstract Asymmetries in quasi-elastic 3 He ( e → , e ′ p ) have been measured at a momentum transfer of 0.67 (GeV/ c ) 2 and are compared to a calculation which takes into account relativistic kinematics in the final state and a relativistic one-body current operator. With an exact solution of the Faddeev equation for the 3 He -ground state and an approximate treatment of final state interactions in the continuum good agreement is found with the experimental data.
Fully covariant and conformal formulation of the Z4 system in a reference-metric approach: Comparison with the BSSN formulation in spherical symmetry
2014
We adopt a reference-metric approach to generalize a covariant and conformal version of the Z4 system of the Einstein equations. We refer to the resulting system as ``fully covariant and conformal", or fCCZ4 for short, since it is well suited for curvilinear as well as Cartesian coordinates. We implement this fCCZ4 formalism in spherical polar coordinates under the assumption of spherical symmetry using a partially-implicit Runge-Kutta (PIRK) method and show that our code can evolve both vacuum and non-vacuum spacetimes without encountering instabilities. Our method does not require regularization of the equations to handle coordinate singularities, nor does it depend on constraint-preservi…
Three-body Coulomb interaction effects in the final state of thePb208(B8,Be7p)Pb208Coulomb breakup reaction
2005
The photodissociation reaction $^{8}\mathrm{B}+\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+p$ is used to provide information on the astrophysical ${S}_{17}$ factor of the inverse radiative capture reaction, knowledge of which is crucial for an estimation of the high-energy neutrino flux from the sun. Since, at present, the Coulomb field of a fully stripped nucleus serves as the source of the photons, an adequate analysis requires a genuine three-body treatment of this reaction. Among the uncertainties still affecting present analyses, the possible modification of the dissociation cross section by the post-decay acceleration of the fragments $^{7}\mathrm{Be}$ and p in the targ…