We revisit nonsingular cosmologies in which the limiting curvature hypothesis is realized. We study the cosmological perturbations of the theory and determine the general criteria for stability. For the simplest model, we find generic Ostrogradski instabilities unless the action contains the Weyl tensor squared with the appropriate coefficient. When considering two specific nonsingular cosmological scenarios (one inflationary and one genesis model), we find ghost and gradient instabilities throughout most of the cosmic evolution. Furthermore, we show that the theory is equivalent to a theory of gravity where the action is a general function of the Ricci and Gauss-Bonnet scalars, and this type of theory is known to suffer from instabilities in anisotropic backgrounds. This leads us to construct a new type of curvature-invariant scalar function. We show that it does not have Ostrogradski instabilities, and it avoids ghost and gradient instabilities for most of the interesting background inflationary and genesis trajectories. We further show that it does not possess additional new degrees of freedom in an anisotropic spacetime. This opens the door for studying stable alternative nonsingular very early Universe cosmologies.

We derive analytic approximations for the neutrino luminosities and the heat capacities of neutron stars with isothermal nucleon cores as functions of the mass and radius of stars. The neutrino luminosities are approximated for the three basic neutrino emission mechanisms, and the heat capacities for the five basic combinations of the partial heat capacities. The approximations are valid for a wide class of equations of state of dense nucleon matter. The results significantly simplify the theoretical interpretation of observations of cooling neutron stars as well as of quasistationary thermal states of neutron stars in x-ray transients. For illustration, we present an analysis of the neutrino cooling functions of nine isolated neutron stars taking into account the effects of their magnetic fields and of the presence of light elements in their heat blanketing envelopes. These results allow one to investigate the superfluid properties of neutron star cores.

Based on the two-particle irreducible (2PI) formalism to next-to-leading order in the $1/N$ expansion, we study the thermalization of overpopulated systems in scalar $O(N)$ theories with moderate coupling. We focus in particular on the growth of soft modes, and examine whether this can lead to the formation of a transient Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) when the initial occupancy is high enough. For the value of the coupling constant used in our simulations, we find that while the system rapidly approaches the condensation threshold, the formation of a BEC is eventually hindered by particle number changing processes.

When the Standard Model is interpreted as the renormalizable sector of a low-energy effective theory, the effects of new physics are encoded into a set of higher-dimensional operators. These operators potentially deform the shapes of Standard Model differential distributions of final states observable at colliders. We describe a simple and systematic method to obtain optimal estimations of these deformations when using numerical tools, like Monte Carlo simulations. A crucial aspect of this method is minimization of the estimation uncertainty: We demonstrate how the operator coefficients have to be set in the simulations in order to get optimal results. The uncertainty on the interference term turns out to be the most difficult to control and grows very quickly when the interference is suppressed. We exemplify our method by computing the deformations induced by the ${\mathcal{O}}_{3W}$ operator in $W^{+}{W}^{-}$ production at the LHC, and by deriving a bound on ${\mathcal{O}}_{3W}$ using 8 TeV CMS data.

We study the global symmetries of naive and staggered lattice Dirac operators in QCD-like theories in any dimension larger than two. In particular we investigate how the chosen number of lattice sites in each direction affects the global symmetries of the Dirac operator. These symmetries are important since they determine not only the infrared spectrum of the Dirac operator but also the symmetry breaking pattern and, thus, the lightest pseudoscalar mesons. We perform the symmetry analysis and discuss the possible zero modes and the degree of degeneracy of the lattice Dirac operators. Moreover we explicitly identify a “reduced” lattice Dirac operator which is the naive Dirac operator apart from the degeneracy. We verify our predictions by comparing Monte Carlo simulations of QCD-like theories in the strong coupling limit with the corresponding random matrix theories.

We calculate the form factors of the $K\to \pi l\nu$ semileptonic decays in three-flavor lattice QCD and study their chiral behavior as a function of the momentum transfer and the Nambu-Goldstone boson masses. Chiral symmetry is exactly preserved by using the overlap quark action, which enables us to directly compare the lattice data with chiral perturbation theory (ChPT). We generate gauge ensembles at a lattice spacing of 0.11 fm with four pion masses covering 290–540 MeV and a strange quark mass $m_s$ close to its physical value. By using the all-to-all quark propagator, we calculate the vector and scalar form factors with high precision. Their dependence on $m_s$ and the momentum transfer is studied by using the reweighting technique and the twisted boundary conditions for the quark fields. We compare the results for the semileptonic form factors with ChPT at next-to-next-to-leading order in detail. While many low-energy constants appear at this order, we make use of our data of the light meson electromagnetic form factors in order to control the chiral extrapolation. We determine the normalization of the form factors as $f_{+}(0)=0.9636(36){(}_{-35}^{+57})$ and observe reasonable agreement of their shape with experiment.

We calculate the beam function for longitudinally polarized quarks through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD perturbation theory. This is the last missing ingredient needed to apply the factorization theorem for the $N$-jettiness event-shape variable in a variety of polarized collisions through the NNLO level. We present all technical details of our derivation. As a by-product of our calculation we provide the first independent check of the previously obtained unpolarized quark beam function. We anticipate that our result will have phenomenological applications in describing data from polarized collisions.

We study the dynamical Casimir effect resulting from the oscillatory motion of either one or two flat semitransparent mirrors, coupled to a quantum real and massless scalar field. Our approach is based on a perturbative evaluation, in the coupling between mirrors and field, of the corresponding effective action, which is used to compute the particle creation rate. The amplitude of the oscillation is not necessarily small. We first obtain results for a single mirror, both for nonrelativistic and for relativistic motions, showing that only for the latter may the effects be significant. For two mirrors, on the other hand, we show that there are interesting interference effects, and that in some particular cases the results differ from those obtained assuming small amplitudes, already for nonrelativistic motions.

We initiate the study of intersecting surface operators/defects in 4D quantum field theories (QFTs). We characterize these defects by coupled 4D/2D/0D theories constructed by coupling the degrees of freedom localized at a point and on intersecting surfaces in spacetime to each other and to the 4D QFT. We construct supersymmetric intersecting surface defects preserving just two supercharges in $\mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theories. These defects are amenable to exact analysis by localization of the partition function of the underlying 4D/2D/0D QFT. We identify the 4D/2D/0D QFTs that describe intersecting surface operators in $\mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theories realized by intersecting M2 branes ending on $N$ M5 branes wrapping a Riemann surface. We conjecture and provide evidence for an explicit equivalence between the squashed four-sphere partition function of these intersecting defects and correlation functions in Liouville/Toda CFT with the insertion of arbitrary degenerate vertex operators, which are labeled by two representations of $SU(N)$.

We present a complete analysis for double soft limit of graviton scattering amplitude using the formalism proposed by Cachazo, He, and Yuan. Our results agree with that obtained via Britto–Cachazo–Feng–Witten (BCFW) recursion relations in [T. Klose, T. McLoughlin, D. Nandan, J. Plefka, and G. Travaglini, Double-soft limits of gluons and gravitons, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2015) 135.]. In addition we find precise relations between degenerate and nondegenerate solutions of scattering equations with local and nonlocal terms in the soft factor.

Two quasilocal approaches to black holes are combined: Near horizon geometries (NHG) and stationary black hole holographs (BHH). Necessary and sufficient conditions on BHH data for the emergence of NHGs as resulting vacuum solutions to Einstein’s equations are found.

The gauge dependence of the conformal anomaly for spin-$\frac{3}{2}$ and spin-2 fields in nonconformal supergravities has been a long standing puzzle. In this paper we argue that the “correct” gauge choice is the one that follows from requiring all terms that would imply a violation of the Wess-Zumino consistency condition to be absent in the counterterm, because otherwise the usual link between the anomaly and the one-loop divergence becomes invalid. Remarkably, the “good” choice of gauge is the one that confirms our previous result [K. A. Meissner and H. Nicolai, Phys. Lett. B 772, 169 (2017).] that a complete cancellation of conformal anomalies in $D=4$ can only be achieved for $N$-extended (Poincaré) supergravities with $N\ge 5$.

We investigate the Padé approximation method for the analytic continuation of numerical data and its ability to access, from the Euclidean propagator, both the spectral function and part of the physical information hidden in the second Riemann sheet. We test this method using various benchmarks at zero temperature: a simple perturbative approximation as well as the two-loop $\mathrm{\Phi }$-derivable approximation. The analytic continuation method is then applied to Euclidean data previously obtained in the $O(4)$ symmetric model (within a given renormalization scheme) to assess the difference between zero-momentum and pole masses, which is in general a difficult question to answer within nonperturbative approaches such as the $\mathrm{\Phi }$-derivable expansion scheme.

We consider radiative corrections to false vacuum decay within the framework of quantum mechanics for the general potential of the form $\frac{1}{2}M{\varphi }^2(\varphi -A)(\varphi -B)$, where $M$, $A$ and $B$ are arbitrary parameters. For this type of potential we provide analytical results for Green function in the background of a corresponding bounce solution together with a one loop expression for false vacuum decay rate. Next, we discuss the computations of higher order corrections for false vacuum decay rates and provide numerical expressions for two and three loop contributions.

Quantum entanglement of the Minkowski vacuum state between left and right Rindler wedges generates thermal behavior in the right Rindler wedge, which is known as the Unruh effect. In this paper, we show that there is another consequence of this entanglement, namely entanglement-induced quantum radiation emanating from a uniformly accelerated object. We clarify why it is in agreement with our intuition that incoming and outgoing energy fluxes should cancel each other out in a thermalized state.

We examine the flavor evolution of neutrinos emitted from the disklike remnant (hereafter called “neutrino disk”) of a binary neutron star (BNS) merger. We specifically follow the neutrinos emitted from the center of the disk, along the polar axis perpendicular to the equatorial plane. We carried out two-flavor simulations using a variety of different possible initial neutrino luminosities and energy spectra and, for comparison, three-flavor simulations in specific cases. In all simulations, the normal neutrino mass hierarchy was used. The flavor evolution was found to be highly dependent on the initial neutrino luminosities and energy spectra; in particular, we found two broad classes of results depending on the sign of the initial net electron neutrino lepton number (i.e., the number of neutrinos minus the number of antineutrinos). In the antineutrino-dominated case, we found that the matter-neutrino resonance effect dominates, consistent with previous results, whereas in the neutrino-dominated case, a bipolar spectral swap develops. The neutrino-dominated conditions required for this latter result have been realized, e.g., in a BNS merger simulation that employs the “DD2” equation of state for neutron star matter [Phys. Rev. D 93, 044019 (2016)]. For this case, in addition to the swap at low energies, a collective Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein mechanism generates a high-energy electron neutrino tail. The enhanced population of high-energy electron neutrinos in this scenario could have implications for the prospects of $r$-process nucleosynthesis in the material ejected outside the plane of the neutrino disk.

In this paper, we systematically construct simply transitive homogeneous spacetime solutions of the three-dimensional minimal massive gravity (MMG) model. In addition to those that have analogs in topologically massive gravity, such as warped AdS and $pp$ waves, there are several solutions genuine to MMG. Among them, there is a stationary Lifshitz metric with the dynamical exponent $z=-1$ and an anisotropic Lifshitz solution where all coordinates scale differently. Moreover, we identify a homogeneous Kundt-type solution at the chiral point of the theory. We also show that in a particular limit of the physical parameters in which the Cotton tensor drops out from the MMG field equation, homogeneous solutions exist only at the merger point in the parameter space if they are not conformally flat.

We consider the AdS/dS CFT correspondence and use holography to study the thermal nature of field theory in de Sitter space. Unlike the temperature of a thermal field theory in flat spacetime, the temperature of a superconformal field theory on de Sitter space is an integral part of the theory and leaves intact the conformal symmetry and supersymmetry. In the dual AdS side with the de Sitter factor written in planar coordinates, there is neither a black hole nor a cosmological horizon like that in static coordinates. Instead we have cosmological expansion of the de Sitter space. We consider a number of different observables, such as the entanglement entropy and Wilson loops corresponding to static and spinning mesons in the field theory, and study their thermal properties using holography. We show clearly how the field theory observables get their thermal properties from the bulk despite the absence of a black hole or cosmological horizon, with the role of the horizon played by the cosmological expansion of the de Sitter factor of the AdS metric.

We show that the correction to the gravitational binding energy for binary black holes due to the tail effect resembles the Lamb shift in the Hydrogen atom. In both cases a conservative effect arises from interactions with radiation modes, and moreover an explicit cancelation between near and far zone divergences is at work. In addition, regularization scheme-dependence may introduce “ambiguity parameters.” This is remediated—within an effective field theory approach—by the implementation of the zero-bin subtraction. We illustrate the procedure explicitly for the Lamb shift, by performing an ambiguity-free derivation within the framework of nonrelativistic electrodynamics. We also derive the renormalization group equations from which we reproduce Bethe logarithm (at order ${\alpha }_e^5\log {\alpha }_e$), and likewise the contribution to the gravitational potential from the tail effect (proportional to $v^8\log v$).