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At least 145 records · Page 8

Topics in String Theory, Quantum Field Theory And Quantum Gravity

This is the final technical report for DOE Award No. DE-SC0021528 - Topics in string theory, quantum field theory and quantum gravity. The goals of the research program were in three areas - understanding quantum gravity and the internal description of quantum systems using the gauge/gravity correspondence, aspects of entanglement in eld theory, gravity and string theory, and the characterization of the behavior of strongly interacting quantum eld theories. The primary results were on the microscopic understanding of the ER=EPR correspondence as a string duality, and on a matrix model description of the addition of end of the world branes and propagating matter to two dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. The former led to the completion of the work shortly after the end of the reporting period and continuing work investigating the properties of the associated stringy black hole microstates. The latter led to the work, which also appeared shortly after the end of the reporting period, and a continuing project to nd a matrix model formulation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and JT gravity with propagating matter.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Low Particulates Nitrogen Purge and Backfill During pHB650 Cryomodule String Assembly

A low particulate vacuum and purging system was developed to support PIP-II cryomodule string assembly. The overpressure can be controlled at a precision of 1 mbar above the atmospheric pressure regardless of the cavity or string assembly air volume. The system minimized the risk of uncontrolled nitrogen flow during the string assembly. Design features are presented.

Ring, T.↗

Spread Spectrum Time Domain Reflectivity for String Monitoring in PV Power Plants (Final Technical Report)

This final report describes the methods and results of applying Spread Spectrum Time Domain Reflectivity (SSTDR) for String Monitoring in PV Power Plants for DE-EE0008169. The project created a new system for both detecting and locating electrical faults in photovoltaic systems. In this work, we address photovoltaic electric faults that are both common and costly. Based on interviews with photovoltaic power plant owners, operators, and maintainers, three types of faults are common and of significant interest: disconnects, ground faults, and arc faults. Disconnects can originate from many sources. They are often due to everyday events, such as lawnmowing (accidentally running over a cable), animals eating through the cables, or degradation that occurs over time due to corrosion or general degradation. Ground faults occur when the cables (for example, due to frayed insolation) connect to the ground, relaying current into the ground. These faults are particularly problematic since the ground faults are often intermittent. That is, ground faults commonly appear during rain storms due to a change in soil conductivity and then disappear when the rain ends. This makes the ground fault difficult to find because while current systems can detect the overall change in voltage and current associated with a ground fault, technicians are necessary to locate the fault. As a result, ground faults may disappear before the technician arrives at the power plant. Hence, locating and fixing ground faults often require multiple trips. We also study arc faults, which can result when nearby conductors create an arc of electrical current through the air. While less common, arc faults can be extremely dangerous. The energetic electrical arc can cause fires and destroy equipment, costing significant damage. Overall all three types of faults cost owners and operators money, either from the destruction of equipment or from technician time. Furthermore, while devices exist for detecting ground faults (ground fault circuit interrupters) and arc faults (arc fault circuit interrupter), these systems only search patterns of electrical current that correspond to each fault. This information cannot be used to locate the fault. In addition, these protection systems experience nuisance trips due to nearby electromagnetic interference, such as from a lawn mower or other motors that produce significant amounts of electromagnetic radiation. Hence, the overall goal of this project is to create an SSTDR tool that provides photovoltaic power plants with more reliable fault detection in addition to the localization of faults. SSTDR works by transmitting electrical signals into the photovoltaic string. Those signals reflect from impedance discontinuities (i.e., disconnects, ground faults, and arc faults). These faults are then detected by measuring the presence of a reflection at the SSTDR and can be located by identifying the location of that reflection in time. In addition, unlike current protection systems, these systems do not experience nuisance trips since their low amplitude, high frequency, and coded signal can by analyzed without interference from the regular operational voltage on the photovoltaic string.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Holographic Constraints on the String Landscape

We show that holography imposes strong and general constraints on scalar field potentials in the string landscape, determined by the asymptotic structure of the underlying spacetime. Applying these holographic consistency conditions, we identify broad classes of scalar potentials that are incompatible with a well-defined dual description. These include potentials with extended plateaus, excessively steep or shallow asymptotics, certain zero crossings, and specific alignments of stable AdS minima in moduli space. In particular, making the standard assumption that the CFT dual to a stable AdS vacuum must be realized as a worldvolume theory of a brane in string theory, we show that the brane selects an infinite-distance limit in moduli space where parametric scale separation is forbidden. Furthermore, the steepness and positivity of the potential are restricted in that infinite distance direction. We also find that requiring the validity of the effective theory in the future vacuum, a natural holographic criterion, automatically enforces the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) for classical cosmological solutions with positive potentials. Taken together, these constraints exclude the leading proposals to realize scale-separated AdS vacua and metastable de Sitter vacua in the string theory landscape such as DGKT and KKLT.

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.C↗

History of the Apollo 17 deep drill string during the past few million years

Measurements of the cosmogenic radionuclides 22-Na, 26-Al and 53-Mn in the Apollo 17 deep drill string 70002-70009 have shown that this core sample was taken in an area of considerable recent surface activity. Measurements of 22-Na indicate that the core had not been significantly altered during its collection and subsequent handling, while measurements of the 26-Al and 53-Mn showed a very substantial excess in these isotopes in the top 25 cm and a depletion below about 50 cm. The analysis of the data indicates that a crater excavation occurred to a depth of 50 to 60 cm at the site of the deep drill string no longer that 0.5 m.y. ago, and probably 0.3 m.y. ago. Since that time, the crater has filled to a depth of about 25 cm with near-surface material which contains high concentrations of 26-Al and 53-Mn. This recent activity at the site of the Apollo 17 drill string places firm time constraints on the models developed by other investigators which describe the history of this site.

Fruchter, J. S.↗

Transfer of Strings to the Module Fixture

Work station for transferring entire strings of solar cells places successive strings alined, with offset, or reversed end for end. Thus, various solar module formats can be accommodated. Two vacuum cups hold each solar cell in string being transferred.

Frasch, W.↗

Quantum fluctuations of the superconducting cosmic string

Quantum fluctuations of the proposed superconducting string with Bose charge carriers are studied in terms of the vortices on the string world sheet. In the thermodynamical limit, it is found that they appear in the form of free vortices rather than as bound pairs. This fluctuation mode violates the topological conservation law on which superconductivity is based. However, this limit may not be reached. The critical size of the superconducting string is estimated as a function of the coupling constants involved.

Zhang, Shoucheng↗

Evidence for a scaling solution in cosmic-string evolution

Numerical simulations are used to study the most fundamental issue of cosmic-string evolution: the existence of a scaling solution. Strong evidence is found that a scaling solution does indeed exist. This justifies the main assumption on which the cosmic-string theories of galaxy formation is based. The main conclusion coincides with that of Albrecht and Turok (1985) but the results are not consistent with theirs. In fact, the results indicate that the details of string evolution are very different from the standard dogma.

Bennett, David P.↗

Cosmological cosmic strings

The effect of an infinite cosmic string on a cosmological background is investigated. It is found that the metric is approximately a scaled version of the empty space string metric, i.e., conical in nature. Results are used to place bounds on the amount of cylindrical gravitational radiation currently emitted by such a string. The gravitational radiation equations are then analyzed explicitly and it is shown that even initially large disturbances are rapidly damped as the expansion proceeds. The implications of the gravitational radiation background and the limitations of the quadrupole formula are discussed.

Gregory, Ruth↗

Efficient parallel algorithms for string editing and related problems

The string editing problem for input strings x and y consists of transforming x into y by performing a series of weighted edit operations on x of overall minimum cost. An edit operation on x can be the deletion of a symbol from x, the insertion of a symbol in x or the substitution of a symbol x with another symbol. This problem has a well known O((absolute value of x)(absolute value of y)) time sequential solution (25). The efficient Program Requirements Analysis Methods (PRAM) parallel algorithms for the string editing problem are given. If m = ((absolute value of x),(absolute value of y)) and n = max((absolute value of x),(absolute value of y)), then the CREW bound is O (log m log n) time with O (mn/log m) processors. In all algorithms, space is O (mn).

Apostolico, Alberto↗

Patterns of the cosmic microwave background from evolving string networks

A network of cosmic strings generated in the early universe may still exist today. As the strings move across the sky, they produce, by gravitational lensing, a characteristic pattern of anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background. The observed absence of such anisotropies places constraints on theories in which galaxy formation is seeded by strings, but it is anticipated that the next generation of experiments will detect them.

Bouchet, Francois R.↗

Cosmic strings and ultra-high energy cosmic rays

The flux is calculated of ultrahigh energy protons due to the process of cusp evaporation from cosmic string loops. For the standard value of the dimensionless cosmic string parameter epsilon is identical to G(sub mu) approx. = 10(exp -6), the flux is several orders of magnitude below the observed cosmic ray flux of ultrahigh energy protons. However, the flux at any energy initially increases as the value of epsilon is decreased. This at first suggests that there may be a lower limit on the value of epsilon, which would imply a lower limit on the temperature of a cosmic string forming phase transition in the early universe. However, the calculation shows that this is not the case -- the particle flux at any energy reaches its highest value at epsilon approx. = 10(exp -15) and it then decreases for further decrease of the value of epsilon. This is due to the fact that for too small values of epsilon (less than 10(exp -15)), the energy loss of the loops through the cusp evaporation process itself (rather than gravitational energy loss of the loops) becomes the dominant factor that controls the behavior of the number density of the loops at the relevant times of emission of the particles. The highest flux at any energy remains at least four orders of magnitude below the observed flux. There is thus no lower limit on epsilon.

Bhattacharjee, Pijushpani↗

Small scale structure on cosmic strings

The current understanding of cosmic string evolution is discussed, and the focus placed on the question of small scale structure on strings, where most of the disagreements lie. A physical picture designed to put the role of the small scale structure into more intuitive terms is presented. In this picture it can be seen how the small scale structure can feed back in a major way on the overall scaling solution. It is also argued that it is easy for small scale numerical errors to feed back in just such a way. The intuitive discussion presented here may form the basis for an analytic treatment of the small scale structure, which argued in any case would be extremely valuable in filling the gaps in the present understanding of cosmic string evolution.

Albrecht, Andreas↗

Classical theory of radiating strings

The divergent part of the self force of a radiating string coupled to gravity, an antisymmetric tensor and a dilaton in four dimensions are calculated to first order in classical perturbation theory. While this divergence can be absorbed into a renormalization of the string tension, demanding that both it and the divergence in the energy momentum tensor vanish forces the string to have the couplings of compactified N = 1 D = 10 supergravity. In effect, supersymmetry cures the classical infinities.

Copeland, Edmund J.↗

Two-point correlation function of cosmic-string loops

The two-point correlations of cosmic-string loops are studied with numerical simulations of the evolution of a cosmic-string network in an expanding universe. It is found that the initial positions of loops that are chopped off the network have a correlation function that is quite similar to the highest estimates of the Abell-cluster correlation function, but these correlations are rapidly washed out by the motion of the loops. The implications for the cosmic-string galaxy-formation scenario are briefly discussed.

Bennett, David P.↗

Cosmic-string-induced hot dark matter perturbations

This paper investigates the evolution of initially relativistic matter, radiation, and baryons around cosmic string seed perturbations. A detailed analysis of the linear evolution of spherical perturbations in a universe is carried out, and this formalism is used to study the evolution of perturbations around a sphere of uniform density and fixed radius, approximating a loop of cosmic string. It was found that, on scales less than a few megaparsec, the results agree with the nonrelativistic calculation of previous authors. On greater scales, there is a deviation approaching a factor of 2-3 in the perturbation mass. It is shown that a scenario with cosmic strings, hot dark matter, and a Hubble constant greater than 75 km/sec per Mpc can generally produce structure on the observed mass scales and at the appropriate time: 1 + z = about 4 for galaxies and 1 + z = about 1.5 for Abell clusters.

Van Dalen, Anthony↗

Perturbations from cosmic strings in cold dark matter

A systematic linear analysis of the perturbations induced by cosmic strings in cold dark matter is presented. The power spectrum is calculated and it is found that the strings produce a great deal of power on small scales. It is shown that the perturbations on interesting scales are the result of many uncorrelated string motions, which indicates a much more Gaussian distribution than was previously supposed.

Albrecht, Andreas↗

Perturbations from cosmic strings in cold dark matter

A systematic linear analysis of the perturbations induced by cosmic strings in cold dark matter is presented. The power spectrum is calculated and it is found that the strings produce a great deal of power on small scales. It is shown that the perturbations on interesting scales are the result of many uncorrelated string motions, which indicates a much more Gaussian distribution than was previously supposed.

Albrecht, Andreas↗