Search results for "QB"
showing 10 items of 522 documents
Recent GRBs observed with the 1.23m CAHA telescope and the status of its upgrade
2010
We report on optical observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) followed up by our collaboration with the 1.23m telescope located at the Calar Alto observatory. The 1.23m telescope is an old facility, currently undergoing upgrades to enable fully autonomous response to GRB alerts. We discuss the current status of the control system upgrade of the 1.23m telescope. The upgrade is being done by our group based on the Remote Telescope System, 2nd Version (RTS2), which controls the available instruments and interacts with the EPICS database of Calar Alto. (Our group is called ARAE (Robotic Astronomy & High-Energy Astrophysics) and is based on members of IAA (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía). …
Four Years of Real-Time GRB Followup by BOOTES-1B (2005–2008)
2010
Four years of BOOTES-1B GRB follow-up history are summarised for the first time in the form of a table. The successfully followed events are described case by case. Further, the data are used to show the GRB trigger rate in Spain on a per-year basis, resulting in an estimate of 18 triggers and about 51 hours of telescope time per year for real-time triggers. These numbers grow to about 22 triggers and 77 hours per year if we include also the GRBs observable within 2 hours after the trigger. Copyright © 2010 Martin Jelínek et al.
Looking at the axionic dark sector with ANITA
2020
The ANITA experiment has recently observed two anomalous events emerging from well below the horizon. Even though they are consistent with tau cascades, a high energy Standard Model or Beyond the Standard Model explanation is challenging and in tension with other experiments. We study under which conditions the reflection of generic radio pulses can reproduce these signals. We propose that these pulses can be resonantly produced in the ionosphere via axion-photon conversion. This naturally explains the direction and polarization of the events and avoids other experimental bounds.
Entropy Production during Asymptotically Safe Inflation
2011
The Asymptotic Safety scenario predicts that the deep ultraviolet of Quantum Einstein Gravity is governed by a nontrivial renormalization group fixed point. Analyzing its implications for cosmology using renormalization group improved Einstein equations we find that it can give rise to a phase of inflationary expansion in the early Universe. Inflation is a pure quantum effect here and requires no inflaton field. It is driven by the cosmological constant and ends automatically when the renormalization group evolution has reduced the vacuum energy to the level of the matter energy density. The quantum gravity effects also provide a natural mechanism for the generation of entropy. It could eas…
f(R) constant-roll inflation
2017
The previously introduced class of two-parametric phenomenological inflationary models in General Relativity in which the slow-roll assumption is replaced by the more general, constant-roll condition is generalized to the case of $f(R)$ gravity. A simple constant-roll condition is defined in the original Jordan frame, and exact expressions for a scalaron potential in the Einstein frame, for a function $f(R)$ (in the parametric form) and for inflationary dynamics are obtained. The region of the model parameters permitted by the latest observational constraints on the scalar spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio of primordial metric perturbations generated during inflation is determin…
Constraints on Cosmic Strings Using Data from the Third Advanced LIGO–Virgo Observing Run
2021
We search for gravitational-wave signals produced by cosmic strings in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo full O3 data set. Search results are presented for gravitational waves produced by cosmic string loop features such as cusps, kinks and, for the first time, kink-kink collisions.cA template-based search for short-duration transient signals does not yield a detection. We also use the stochastic gravitational-wave background energy density upper limits derived from the O3 data to constrain the cosmic string tension, $G\mu$, as a function of the number of kinks, or the number of cusps, for two cosmic string loop distribution models.cAdditionally, we develop and test a third model which interpolat…
Effective interactions in Ricci-Based Gravity below the non-metricity scale
2020
We show how minimally-coupled matter fields of arbitrary spin, when coupled to Ricci-Based Gravity theories, develop non-trivial effective interactions that can be treated perturbatively only below a characteristic high-energy scale $\Lambda_Q$. Our results generalize to arbitrary matter fields those recently obtained for spin 1/2 fields in \cite{Latorre:2017uve}. We then use this interactions to set bounds on the high-energy scale $\Lambda_Q$ that controls departures of Ricci-Based Gravity theories from General Relativity. Particularly, for Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity we obtain the strong bound $ |\kappa|<3.5 \times 10^{-14} \text{ m}^5 \text{kg}^{-1}\text{s}^{-2} $.
DsixTools 2.0: The Effective Field Theory Toolkit
2021
$\tt DsixTools$ is a Mathematica package for the handling of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) and the Low-energy Effective Field Theory (LEFT) with operators up to dimension six, both at the algebraic and numerical level. $\tt DsixTools$ contains a visually accessible and operationally convenient repository of all operators and parameters of the SMEFT and the LEFT. This repository also provides information concerning symmetry categories and number of degrees of freedom, and routines that allow to implement this information on global expressions (such as decay amplitudes and cross-sections). $\tt DsixTools$ also performs weak basis transformations, and implements the full on…
Neutrino pair annihilation ( $$\nu {\bar{\nu }}\rightarrow e^-e^+$$ ν ν ¯ → e - e + ) in the presence of quintessence surrounding a black hole
2021
Quintessence fields, introduced to explain the speed-up of the Universe, might affect the geometry of spacetime surrounding black holes, as compared to the standard Schwarzschild and Kerr geometries. In this framework, we study the neutrino pairs annihilation into electron-positron pairs ($\nu{\bar \nu}\to e^-e^+$) near the surface of a neutron star, focusing, in particular, on the Schwarzschild-like geometry in presence of quintessence fields. The effect of the latter is to increase the minimum photon-sphere radius ($R_{ph}$), increasing in such a way the maximum energy deposition rate near to $R_{ph}$. The rate turns out to be several orders of magnitude greater than the rate computed in …
Sterile Neutrinos, Black Hole Vacuum and Holographic Principle
2021
We construct an effective field theory (EFT) model that describes matter field interactions with Schwarzschild mini-black-holes (SBH's), treated as a scalar field, $B_0(x)$. Fermion interactions with SBH's require a random complex spurion field, $\theta_{ij}$, which we interpret as the EFT description of "holographic information," which is correlated with the SBH as a composite system. We consider Hawking's virtual black hole vacuum (VBH) as a Higgs phase, $\langle B_0 \rangle =V$. Integrating sterile neutrino loops, the field $\theta_{ij}$ is promoted to a dynamical field, necessarily developing a tachyonic instability and acquiring a VEV of order the Planck scale. For $N$ sterile neutrino…