What can we learn from the tension between PLANCK and BICEP2 data?

Recently BICEP2 collaboration has announced the detection of the primordial gravitational waves at high confidence level.In light of the results of B-modes power spectrum from BICEP2 and using the basedΛCDM,a constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r=0.20+0.07-0.05(68%C.L.)can be obtained,however,this result is in apparent tension with the limit on standard inflation models from the recent PLANCK measurement,r0.11(95%C.L.).Herein we review the recent progress on the cosmological studies after BICEP2 and discuss on different ways of reconciling the tension between PLANCK and BICEP2 data.We will discuss possible modifications on the standard cosmological model,such as including the running of scalar spectral index or other cosmological parameters correlated with inflationary cosmological parameters,or tilting the primordial power spectrum at large scales by introducing a cut off which can be predicted by bouncing cosmology.We will also comment on another possibility of generating extra B-modes of CMB polarization,namely by a non-zero polarization rotation angle during its transferring from the last scattering surface.     

Anomalies in universal intensity scaling in ultrarelativistic laser-plasma interactions

Laser light incident on targets at intensities such that the electron dynamics is ultrarelativistic gives rise to a harmonic power spectrum extending to high orders and characterized by a relatively slow decay with the harmonic number m that follows a power law dependence, m(-p). Relativistic similarity theory predicts a universal value for p=8/3 up to some cutoff m=m*. The results presented in this Letter suggest that under conditions in which plasma effects contribute to the emission spectrum, the extent of this contribution may invalidate the concept of universal decay. We report a decay with the harmonic number in the ultrarelativistic range characterized by an index 5/3 < or approximately p < or approximately 7/3, significantly weaker than that predicted by the similarity model.     

CMB constraints on non-commutative geometry during inflation

We investigate the primordial power spectrum of the density perturbations based on the assumption that space is non-commutative in the early stage of inflation, and constrain the contribution from non-commutative geometry using CMB data. Due to the non-commutative geometry, the primordial power spectrum can lose rotational invariance. Using the k-inflation model and slow-roll approximation, we show that the deviation from rotational invariance of the primordial power spectrum depends on the size of non-commutative length scale L _s but not on sound speed. We constrain the contributions from the non-commutative geometry to the covariance matrix of the harmonic coefficients of the CMB anisotropies using five-year WMAP CMB maps. We find that the upper bound for L _s depends on the product of sound speed and slow-roll parameter. Estimating this product using cosmological parameters from the five-year WMAP results, the upper bound for L _s is estimated to be less than 10^?27 cm at 99.7% confidence level.     

Primordial seeds of supermassive black holes

Supermassive black holes exist in the centers of galaxies, including Milky Way, but there is no compelling theory of their formation. Furthermore, observations of quasars imply that supermassive black holes have already existed at some very high redshifts, suggesting the possibility of their primordial origin. In a class of well-motivated models, inflationary epoch could include two or more periods of inflation dominated by different scalar fields. The transition between such periods of inflation could enhance the spectrum of density perturbations on some specific scale, which could lead to formation of primordial black holes with a very narrow range of masses of the order of 10⁵ solar masses. These primordial black holes could have provided the requisite seeds for the observed population of supermassive black holes.     

Angular dependent linewidths for a spin probe dissolved in a liquid crystal

A spin probe dissolved in the mesophase of a nematic or smectic liquid crystal behaves, in many ways, as if it were encorporated in a uniaxial single crystal. For example the positions of the lines in the electron resonance spectrum of the probe depend on the orientation of the liquid crystal with respect to the magnetic field. In addition the widths of the spectral lines might also be expected to be angular dependent. The form of this angular dependence is readily calculated provided the dominant spin relaxation process results from molecular reorientation with respect to the director in the mesophase. In this paper we develop a theory for the angular dependence of the linewidths and show how it could be used, with some advantage, to investigate molecular reorientation in a macroscopically anisotropic system. The observed angular dependence of the linewidths for a nitroxide spin probe dissolved in the mesophase of a smectic A liquid crystal confirms certain aspects of the theory.     

Constraints on models with a break in the primordial power spectrum

One of the characteristics of the “Matter Bounce” scenario, an alternative to cosmological inflation for producing a scale-invariant spectrum of primordial adiabatic fluctuations on large scales, is a break in the power spectrum at a characteristic scale, below which the spectral index changes from ns=1$n_s=1$ to ns=3$n_s=3$. We study the constraints which current cosmological data place on the location of such a break, and more generally on the position of the break and the slope at length scales smaller than the break. The observational data we use include the WMAP five-year data set (WMAP5), other CMB data from BOOMERanG, CBI, VSA, and ACBAR, large-scale structure data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS, their luminous red galaxies sample), Type Ia Supernovae data (the “Union” compilation), and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Lyman-α forest power spectrum (Lyα) data. We employ the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to constrain the features in the primordial power spectrum which are motivated by the matter bounce model. We give an upper limit on the length scale where the break in the spectrum occurs.     

Visualizing color plasma instabilities

I discuss recent advances in the understanding of non-equilibrium gauge field dynamics in plasmas which have particle distributions which are locally anisotropic in momentum space. In contrast to locally isotropic plasmas such anisotropic plasmas have a spectrum of soft unstable modes which are characterized by exponential growth of transverse (chromo)-magnetic fields at short times. The long-time behavior of such instabilities depends on whether or not the gauge group is Abelian or non-Abelian. I will report on recent numerical simulations which attempt to determine the long-time behavior of an anisotropic non-Abelian plasma within hard-loop effective theory. For novelty I will present an interesting method for visualizing the time dependence of SU(2) gauge field configurations produced during our numerical simulations.     

Matching WMAP 3-year results with the cosmological Slingshot primordial spectrum

We consider a recently proposed scenario for the generation of primordial cosmological perturbations, the so called Cosmological Slingshot scenario. We first obtain a general expression for the Slingshot primordial power spectrum which extends previous results by including a blue pre-bounce residual contribution at large scales. Starting from this expression we numerically compute the CMB temperature and polarization power spectra arising from the Slingshot scenario and show that they excellently match the standard WMAP 3-year best-fit results. In particular, if the residual blue spectrum is far above the largest WMAP observed scale, the Slingshot primordial spectrum fits the data well by only fixing its amplitude and spectral index at the pivot scale k _p = 10⁻³ h Mpc⁻¹. We finally show that all possible distinctive Slingshot signatures in the CMB power spectra are confined to very low multipoles and thus very hard to detect due to large cosmic variance dominated error bars at these scales.     

Fitting cosmic microwave background data with cosmic strings and inflation

We perform a multiparameter likelihood analysis to compare measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectra with predictions from models involving cosmic strings. Adding strings to the standard case of a primordial spectrum with power-law tilt ns, we find a 2sigma detection of strings: f10=0.11+/-0.05, where f10 is the fractional contribution made by strings in the temperature power spectrum (at l=10). CMB data give moderate preference to the model ns=1 with cosmic strings over the standard zero-strings model with variable tilt. When additional non-CMB data are incorporated, the two models become on a par. With variable ns and these extra data, we find that f10<0.11, which corresponds to Gmicro<0.7x10(-6) (where micro is the string tension and G is the gravitational constant).     

Anisotropy of phosphorous electron donor state in strained clusters in silicon at low temperatures

An anisotropic EPR spectrum at T = 4 K was observed in silicon samples irradiated by phosphorus ions and subsequently annealed at 1000°C. Epitaxial silicon layers with a natural isotope composition and enriched by ²⁸Si isotope grown on a natural silicon wafer were investigated. The spectrum consisted of three lines corresponding to different g-factor components: g _x ,g _y , and g _z . The central line was overlapped by the isotropic line coinciding by its g-factor with the line of the conduction electrons in silicon. The shape of the spectral lines indicated that the spectrum was due to the paramagnetic centers which belong to the randomly oriented clusters with the anisotropic g-factor. The nature of the anisotropic EPR spectrum is due to the electrons localized on donors located in the strained phosphorous clusters. The strains were caused by either incompletely annealed defects after the phosphorous implantation (E = 40 keV, D = 2 × 10¹⁴ cm⁻², T _ann = 1000°C, 1 h) or phosphorous atoms in clusters. The distance between the components strongly depended on the temperature and microwave power and decreased as they increased.     

Quantum fluctuations in planar domain wall space–times: A possible origin of primordial preferred direction

We study the gravitational effects of a planar domain wall on quantum fluctuations of a massless scalar field during inflation. By obtaining an exact solution of the scalar field equation in de-Sitter space, we show that the gravitational effects of the domain wall break the rotational invariance of the primordial power spectrum without affecting the translational invariance. The strength of rotational violation is determined by one dimensionless parameter β, which is a function of two physical parameters, the domain wall surface tension σ and cosmological constant Λ. In the limit of small β, the leading effect of rotational violation of the primordial power spectrum is scale-invariant.     

Is it possible to estimate the Higgs mass from the CMB power spectrum?

General Relativity and Standard Model are considered as a theory of dynamical scale symmetry with definite initial data compatible with the accepted Higgs mechanism. In this theory the Early Universe behaves like a factory of electroweak bosons and Higgs scalars, and it gives a possibility to identify three peaks in the Cosmic Microwave Background power spectrum with the contributions of photonic decays and annihilation processes of primordial Higgs, W and Z bosons in agreement with the QED coupling constant, Weinberg’s angle, and Higgs’ particle mass of about 118 GeV. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Spin and temperature dependence of the magnetic hyperfine field of Cd in the rare earth-aluminum Lavesphase compounds RAl2

Perturbed angular correlation spectroscopy has been used to investigate the combined magnetic and electric hyperfine interaction of the probe nucleus ¹¹¹Cd in ferromagnetically ordered rare earth (R)-dialuminides RAl₂ as a function of temperature for the rare earth constituents R=Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Tb, Dy, Ho and Er. In compounds with two magnetically non-equivalent Al sites (R=Sm, Tb, Ho, Er), the magnetic hyperfine field was found to be strongly anisotropic. This anisotropy is much greater than the anisotropic dipolar fields, suggesting a contribution of the anisotropic 4f-electron density to magnetic hyperfine field at the closed-shell probe nucleus. The spin dependence of the magnetic hyperfine field reflects a decrease of the effective exchange parameter of the indirect coupling with increasing R atomic number. For the compounds with the R constituents R=Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy and Ho the parameters B₄, B₆ of the interaction of the crystal field interaction have been determined from the temperature dependence of the magnetic hyperfine field. The ¹¹¹Cd PAC spectrum of EuAl₂ at 9 K confirms the antiferromagnetic structure of this compound.     

The dearth of halo dwarf galaxies: is there power on short scales?

N-body simulations of structure formation with scale-invariant primordial perturbations show significantly more virialized objects of dwarf-galaxy mass in a typical galactic halo than are observed around the Milky Way. We show that the dearth of observed dwarf galaxies could be explained by a dramatic downturn in the power spectrum at small distance scales. This suppression of small-scale power might also help mitigate the disagreement between cuspy simulated halos and smooth observed halos, while remaining consistent with Lyman-alpha-forest constraints on small-scale power. Such a spectrum could arise in inflationary models with broken-scale invariance.     

Mathematical modeling of random coupling between polarization modes in single-mode optical fibers: VIII. Zero drift in a fiber ring interferometer with a white light source

Different schemes of fiber ring interferometers (FRIs) with a broadband nonmonochromatic radiation source manufactured on the basis of air-silica microstructured single-mode optical fibers (SMOFs) are considered. This source is close in spectral characteristics to a white light source, because the width of its emission spectrum is comparable to the mean wavelength. It is shown that an increase in the width of the spectrum of the radiation source can lead to either a substantial decrease or an increase in the zero drift, depending on the radiation polarization at the FRI entrance. The latter fact has defied explanation within simple phenomenological models of random coupling between polarization modes in SMOFs of an FRI circuit. The observed increase in the zero drift of the FRI can be explained in terms of the dependence of the parameter of polarization conservation (the parameter h) on the light wavelength for highly anisotropic SMOFs. This dependence is weak for nonmonochromatic radiation sources with a relatively small spectral width, for example, superluminescent diodes, which are traditionally used in FRIs. In contrast, for substantially more broadband radiation sources (including air-silica SMOFs), the above dependence is well pronounced and can lead to a number of undesirable effects in FRIs. Different variants of the FRI design are analyzed. It is demonstrated that the zero drift can be noticeably decreased with an increase in the width of the spectrum of the radiation source for an arbitrary radiation polarization at the entrance of an FRI with a depolarizer of nonmonochromatic radiation and a circuit fabricated from a weakly anisotropic SMOF, for which the parameter h does not depend on the light wavelength. The numerical estimates are obtained.     

Signatures of the neutrino thermal history in the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves

In this paper we study the effect of the anisotropic stress generated by neutrinos on the propagation of primordial cosmological gravitational waves. The presence of anisotropic stress, like the one generated by free-streaming neutrinos, partially absorbs the gravitational waves (GWs) propagating across the Universe. We find that in the standard case of three neutrino families, 22% of the intensity of the wave is absorbed, in fair agreement with previous studies. We have also calculated the maximum possible amount of damping, corresponding to the case of a flat Universe completely dominated by ultrarelativistic collisionless particles. In this case 43% of the intensity of the wave is absorbed. Finally, we have taken into account the effect of collisions, using a simple form for the collision term parameterized by the mean time between interactions, that allows to go smoothly from the case of a tightly coupled fluid to that of a collisionless gas. The dependence of the absorption on the neutrino energy density and on the effectiveness of the interactions opens the interesting possibility of observing spectral features related to particular events in the thermal history of the Universe, like neutrino decoupling and electron–positron annihilation, both occurring at T ~ 1  MeV. GWS entering the horizon at that time will have today a frequency ν ~ 10⁻⁹ Hz, a region that is going to be probed by Pulsar Timing Arrays.     

Boundary susceptibility in the spin-1/2 chain: Curie-like behavior without magnetic impurities

We investigate the low-temperature thermodynamics of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with open ends. On the basis of boundary conformal field theory arguments and numerical density matrix renormalization group calculations, it is established that in the isotropic case the impurity susceptibility exhibits a Curie-like divergent behavior as the temperature decreases, even in the absence of magnetic impurities. A similar singular temperature dependence is also found in the boundary contributions of the specific heat coefficient. In the anisotropic case, for 1/2相似文献   

Irradiance scintillation index for Gaussian beam based on the generalized anisotropic von Karman spectrum

Experiments and theoretical investigations have shown that the atmosphere turbulence exhibits both anisotropic and non-Kolmogorov properties. In this paper, based on the anisotropic generalized von Karman spectrum and the Rytov approximation theory, new expression for the irradiance scintillation index of optical waves is derived for Gaussian beam propagating through weak anisotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulence. Compared with previously published results, it considers simultaneously the asymmetry property of turbulence cells or eddies in the orthogonal xy-plane, the general spectral power law in the range 3–4 instead of constant value of 11/3 for the Kolmogorov turbulence, and the finite turbulence inner and outer scales. Two anisotropic factors are introduced to parameterize the anisotropy of turbulence cells or eddies in horizontal and vertical directions. In the special cases of these two anisotropic factors equaling one and the finite turbulence inner and outer scales equaling separately zero and infinite, the derived expression can reduce correctly to the previously published results. Calculations are performed to analyze the derived results.     

Giant muon knight shifts in antimony and antimony alloys

The Knight shift K_μ at the positive muon has been measured as a function of magnetic field, temperature, crystal orientation and alloyed impurity (bismuth or tin) in antimony. The anomalously large and anisotropic K_μ in pure Sb at low temperature has been confirmed and shown to be independent of magnetic field up to 9 kG; its anisotropic part is found to have the same strong temperature dependence as its isotropic component. The addition of 6.3 at.% Bi significantly reduces both K_μ and its anisotropy, but enhances their temperature dependence. The addition of 12.5 at.% Bi, or, more dramatically, as little as 0.3 at.% Sn to antimony is sufficient to reduce K_μ to a small value, effectively eliminating the anomalous behaviour.     

Magnetohydrodynamics turbulence: An astronomical perspective

Early work on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in the 1960s due, independently, to Iroshnikov and Kraichnan (IK) considered isotropic inertial-range spectra. Whereas laboratory experiments were not in a position to measure the spectral index, they showed that the turbulence was strongly anisotropic. Theoretical horizons correspondingly expanded in the 1980s, to accommodate both the isotropy of the IK theory and the anisotropy suggested by the experiments. Since the discovery of pulsars in 1967, many years of work on interstellar scintillation suggested that small-scale interstellar turbulence must have a hydromagnetic origin; but the IK spectrum was too flat and the ideas on anisotropic spectra too qualitative to explain the observations. In response, new theories of balanced MHD turbulence were proposed in the 1990s, which argued that the IK theory was incorrect, and made quantitative predictions of anisotropic inertial-range spectra; these theories have since found applications in many areas of astrophysics. Spacecraft measurements of solar-wind turbulence show that there is more power in Alfvén waves that travel away from the Sun than towards it. Theories of imbalanced MHD turbulence have now been proposed to address interplanetary turbulence. This very active area of research continues to be driven by astronomy.