We study the effect of topology for a random matrix model of QCD at nonzero imaginary chemical potential or nonzero temperature. Nonuniversal fluctuations of Dirac eigenvalues lead to normalization factors that contribute to the $\theta$ dependence of the partition function. These normalization factors have to be canceled in order to reproduce the $\theta$ dependence of the QCD partition function. The reason for this behavior is that the topological domain of the Dirac spectrum (the region of the Dirac spectrum that is sensitive to the topological charge) extends beyond the microscopic domain at nonzero imaginary chemical potential or temperature. Such behavior could persist in certain lattice formulations of QCD.

We have constrained unparticle interactions with neutrinos and electrons using available data on neutrino-electron elastic scattering and the four CERN LEP experiments data on mono photon production. We have found that, for neutrino-electron elastic scattering, the MUNU experiment gives better constraints than previous reported limits in the region $d>1.5$. The results are compared with the current astrophysical limits, pointing out the cases where these limits may or may not apply. We also discuss the sensitivity of future experiments to unparticle physics. In particular, we show that the measurement of coherent reactor neutrino scattering off nuclei could provide a good sensitivity to the couplings of unparticle interaction with neutrinos and quarks. We also discuss the case of future neutrino-electron experiments as well as the International Linear Collider.

We study the properties of two-dimensional dilatonic black holes from the viewpoint of geometrothermodynamics. We show that the thermodynamic curvature of the equilibrium space vanishes only in the case of a flat spacetime, and it reproduces correctly the behavior of the thermodynamic interaction and phase transition structure of the corresponding black hole configurations.

We show that an explicit counting of Gribov copies can shed light on the infrared behavior of non-Abelian gauge theories. A power-law growth of the number of copies suppresses gluon propagation while the distribution of copies along a gauge orbit implies an enhanced density of small eigenvalues of the Fadeev-Popov operator. Both of these phenomena are related to confinement. The discreteness in the number of copies and the associated nonlocality also has implications for vacuum energy.

In this paper we consider a magnetic analog of the double-Reissner-Nordström solution and construct the corresponding magnetic potential $A_{\phi }$ in the explicit form. The behavior of the resulting solution under the Harrison transformation then naturally singles out the asymmetric black diholes—configurations composed of two nonextreme black holes possessing unequal masses, and charges equal in magnitude but opposite in sign—as its most general subclass for which equilibrium of the black-hole constituents can be achieved with the aid of the external magnetic (or electric) field. We also generalize the double-Reissner-Nordström solution to dilaton gravity with arbitrary dilaton coupling, yielding the four-dimensional double-Gibbons-Maeda spacetime. The study of some physical properties of the solutions obtained leads, in particular, to very simple formulas for the areas of the horizons and surface gravities.

Using the improved quantization technique to the minisuperspace approximation of loop quantum gravity, we study the evolution of black holes supported by a cosmological constant. The addition of a cosmological constant allows for classical solutions with planar, cylindrical, toroidal, and higher-genus black holes. Here we study the quantum analog of these space-times. In all scenarios studied, the singularity present in the classical counterpart is avoided in the quantized version and is replaced by a bounce, and in the late evolution, a series of less severe bounces. Interestingly, although there are differences during the evolution between the various symmetries and topologies, the evolution on the other side of the bounce asymptotes to space-times of Nariai-type, with the exception of the planar black hole analyzed here, whose $T\mathrm{\text{−}}R=\mathrm{\text{constant}}$ subspaces seem to continue expanding in the long-term evolution. For the other cases, Nariai-type universes are attractors in the quantum evolution, albeit with different parameters. We study here the quantum evolution of each symmetry in detail.

We study the method of calculating Hawking radiation via gravitational anomalies in gravitational backgrounds of constant negative curvature. We apply the method to topological black holes and also to topological black holes conformally coupled to a scalar field.

We present an improved numerical kludge waveform model for circular, equatorial extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). The model is based on true Kerr geodesics, augmented by radiative self-force corrections derived from perturbative calculations, and in this paper for the first time we include conservative self-force corrections that we derive by comparison to post-Newtonian results. We present results of a Monte Carlo simulation of parameter estimation errors computed using the Fisher matrix and also assess the theoretical errors that would arise from omitting the conservative correction terms we include here. We present results for three different types of system, namely, the inspirals of black holes, neutron stars, or white dwarfs into a supermassive black hole (SMBH). The analysis shows that for a typical source (a $10M_{\odot }$ compact object captured by a ${10}^6{M}_{\odot }$ SMBH at a signal to noise ratio of 30) we expect to determine the two masses to within a fractional error of $\sim {10}^{-4}$, measure the spin parameter $q$ to $\sim {10}^{-4.5}$, and determine the location of the source on the sky and the spin orientation to within ${10}^{-3}$ steradians. We show that, for this kludge model, omitting the conservative corrections leads to a small error over much of the parameter space, i.e., the ratio $\mathcal{R}$ of the theoretical model error to the Fisher matrix error is $\mathcal{R}<1$ for all ten parameters in the model. For the few systems with larger errors typically $\mathcal{R}<3$ and hence the conservative corrections can be marginally ignored. In addition, we use our model and first-order self-force results for Schwarzschild black holes to estimate the error that arises from omitting the second-order radiative piece of the self-force. This indicates that it may not be necessary to go beyond first order to recover accurate parameter estimates.

We analyze the effects of the capture of dark matter (DM) particles, with successive annihilations, predicted in the minimal walking technicolor model (MWT) by the Sun and the Earth. We show that the Super-Kamiokande upper limit on excessive muon flux disfavors the mass interval between 100 and 200 GeV for MWT DM with a suppressed standard model interaction (due to a mixing angle), and the mass interval between 0 and 1500 GeV for MWT DM without such suppression, upon making the standard assumption about the value of the local DM distribution. In the first case, the exclusion interval is found to be very sensitive to the DM distribution parameters and can vanish at the extreme of the acceptable values.

In this paper we discuss some general aspects of the gravitational wave background arising from postinflationary short-lasting cosmological events such as phase transitions. We concentrate on the physics which determines the shape and the peak frequency of the gravitational wave spectrum. We then apply our general findings to the case of bubble collisions during a first order phase transition and compare different results in the recent literature.

The statistical properties of dark matter halos, the building blocks of cosmological observables associated with structure in the Universe, offer many opportunities to test models for cosmic acceleration, especially those that seek to modify gravitational forces. We study the abundance, bias, and profiles of halos in cosmological simulations for one such model: the modified action $f(R)$ theory. The effects of $f(R)$ modified gravity can be separated into a large- and small-field limit. In the large-field limit, which is accessible to current observations, enhanced gravitational forces raise the abundance of rare massive halos and decrease their bias but leave their (lensing) mass profiles largely unchanged. This regime is well described by scaling relations based on a modification of spherical collapse calculations. In the small-field limit, the enhancement of the gravitational force is suppressed inside halos and the effects on halo properties are substantially reduced for the most massive halos. Nonetheless, the scaling relations still retain limited applicability for the purpose of establishing conservative upper limits on the modification to gravity.

We derive slow-roll conditions for thawing quintessence. We solve the equation of motion of $\varphi$ for a Taylor expanded potential (up to the quadratic order) in the limit where the equation of state $w$ is close to $-1$ to derive the equation of state as a function of the scale factor. We find that the evolution of $\varphi$ and hence $w$ are described by only two parameters. The expression for $w(a)$, which can be applied to general thawing models, coincides precisely with that derived recently by Dutta and Scherrer for hilltop quintessence. The consistency conditions of $|w+1|\ll 1$ are derived. The slow-roll conditions for freezing quintessence are also derived.

In this paper we study the impact of the fractional matter density uncertainty in the reconstruction of the equation of state of dark energy. We consider both standard reconstruction methods, based on the dynamical effect that dark energy has on the expansion of the Universe, as well as nonstandard methods, in which the evolution of the dark energy equation of state with redshift is inferred through the variation of fundamental couplings such as the fine-structure constant, $\alpha$, or the proton-to-electron mass ratio, $\mu$. We show that the negative impact of the matter density uncertainty in the dark energy reconstruction using varying couplings may be very small compared to standard reconstruction methods. We also briefly discuss other fundamental questions which need to be answered before varying couplings can be successfully used to probe the nature of the dark energy.

We investigate models where structure formation is initiated by scaling seeds: We consider rapidly expanding relativistic shells of energy and show that they can fit current CMB and large scale structure data if they expand with superluminal velocities. These acausally expanding shells provide a viable alternative to inflation for cosmological structure formation with the same minimal number of parameters to characterize the initial fluctuations. Causally expanding shells alone cannot fit present data. Hybrid models where causal shells and inflation are mixed also provide good fits.

It is generally believed that one cannot obtain a large universe from quantum cosmological models without an inflationary phase in the classical expanding era because the typical size of the universe after leaving the quantum regime should be around the Planck length, and the standard decelerated classical expansion after that is not sufficient to enlarge the universe in the time available. For instance, in many quantum minisuperspace bouncing models studied in the literature, solutions where the universe leaves the quantum regime in the expanding phase with appropriate size have negligible probability amplitude with respect to solutions leaving this regime around the Planck length. In this paper, I present a general class of moving Gaussian solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation where the velocity of the wave in minisuperspace along the scale factor axis, which is the new large parameter introduced in order to circumvent the above-mentioned problem, induces a large acceleration around the quantum bounce, forcing the universe to leave the quantum regime sufficiently big to increase afterwards to the present size, without needing any classical inflationary phase in between, and with reasonable relative probability amplitudes with respect to models leaving the quantum regime around the Planck scale. Furthermore, linear perturbations around this background model are free of any trans-Planckian problem.

In a general metric theory of gravitation in four dimensions, six polarizations of a gravitational wave are allowed: two scalar and two vector modes, in addition to two tensor modes in general relativity. Such additional polarization modes appear due to additional degrees of freedom in modified theories of gravitation or theories with extra dimensions. Thus, observations of gravitational waves can be utilized to constrain the extended models of gravitation. In this paper, we investigate detectability of additional polarization modes of gravitational waves, particularly focusing on a stochastic gravitational-wave background, with laser-interferometric detectors on the Earth. We found that more than three detectors can separate the mixture of polarization modes in detector outputs, and that they have almost the same sensitivity to each polarization mode of stochastic gravitational-wave background.

We present an analytical formalism, within the effective-one-body framework, which predicts gravitational-wave signals from inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries that agree, within numerical errors, with the results of the currently most accurate numerical-relativity simulations for several different mass ratios. In the equal-mass case, the gravitational-wave energy flux predicted by our formalism agrees, within numerical errors, with the most accurate numerical-relativity energy flux. We think that our formalism opens a realistic possibility of constructing a sufficiently accurate, large bank of gravitational-wave templates, as needed both for detection and data analysis of (nonspinning) coalescing binary black holes.

We determine the electromagnetic properties of decuplet resonances using chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. Utilizing a partially quenched charge matrix, we isolate and remove the quark disconnected contractions. This allows us to compare the physical meson loop contributions to the connected contributions, of which the latter are currently calculated using lattice QCD. Finally we determine linear combinations of decuplet resonance and hyperon electromagnetic properties that are exactly independent of disconnected contractions in the isospin limit.

Renormalization group (RG) evolution of the neutrino mass matrix may take the value of the mixing angle ${\theta }_{13}$ very close to zero, or make it vanish. On the other hand, starting from ${\theta }_{13}=0$ at the high scale it may be possible to generate a nonzero ${\theta }_{13}$, radiatively. In the most general scenario with nonvanishing $CP$ violating Dirac and Majorana phases, we explore the evolution in the vicinity of ${\theta }_{13}=0$, in terms of its structure in the complex ${\mathcal{U}}_{e3}$ plane. This allows us to explain the apparent singularity in the evolution of the Dirac $CP$ phase $\delta$ at ${\theta }_{13}=0$. We also introduce a formalism for calculating the RG evolution of neutrino parameters that uses the Jarlskog invariant and naturally avoids this singular behavior. We find that the parameters need to be extremely fine-tuned in order to get exactly vanishing ${\theta }_{13}$ during evolution. For the class of neutrino mass models with ${\theta }_{13}=0$ at the high scale, we calculate the extent to which RG evolution can generate a nonzero ${\theta }_{13}$, when the low energy effective theory is the standard model or its minimal supersymmetric extension. We find correlated constraints on ${\theta }_{13}$, the lightest neutrino mass $m_0$, the effective Majorana mass $m_{ee}$ measured in the neutrinoless double beta decay, and the supersymmetric parameter $\tan \beta$.