Black hole mass threshold from nonsingular quantum gravitational collapse

Quantum gravity is expected to remove the classical singularity that arises as the end state of gravitational collapse. To investigate this, we work with a toy model of a collapsing homogeneous scalar field. We show that nonperturbative semiclassical effects of loop quantum gravity cause a bounce and remove the black hole singularity. Furthermore, we find a critical threshold scale below which no horizon forms: quantum gravity may exclude very small astrophysical black holes.     

Experimental studies on the microstructure and hardness of laser-treated steel specimens

An experimental investigation with 5 kW CW CO₂ laser system was carried out to study the effects of different laser and process parameters on the microstructure and hardness of carbon steel specimen with varying carbon percentage. The laser beam is allowed to scan on the surface of the work piece varying the power (1.1–2.5 kW) and traverse speed (6–15 mm/s) at two different spot sizes using TEM_01* mode laser beam. The most hardenable microstructure achieved in case of three grades of carbon steel and the most influencing parameter on the value of hardness are reported. Besides the above study, some multipass operations are also carried out to recommend an appropriate gap between consecutive passes.     

Magnetic field effect on indole exciplexes: an anomalous dielectric dependence

Individual exciplex formation between various aromatic hydrocarbons, anthracene, pyrene, all-s-trans-1,4-diphenylbuta-1,3-diene and a heteroaromatic amine, 1,2-dimethylindole, was investigated by steady-state fluorescence and magnetic field effect (MFE). A comparative study was carried out with two other exciplex systems 9-cyanophenanthrene-1,2-dimethylindole and 9-cyanophenanthrene-N-methylindole. The extent of charge transfer and dielectric dependence of MFE reveals the potential role of specific interactions related to exciplex geometry.     

Water-induced stabilization of ZnS nanoparticles

Surface states become important in particles with reduced size as the surface to volume ratio increases. Here we provide direct evidence of water-induced structure buildup and stabilization of nanocrystalline ZnS. The ZnS nanoparticles, prepared employing a non-equilibrium route, provide an ideal platform to investigate microscopic details of water induced structural transformation and thus demonstrate the role of S-H interactions in the time-evolution of crystalline behaviour in these particles. The colossal changes observed make these materials ideal for water sensing.     

Structured Surfaces for Generation of Negative Index of Refraction

Materials with negative index of refraction have properties that are not naturally available. Such properties can be used to develop novel devices like the superlens which can surpass the diffraction limit. Optical cloaking can be achieved through this negative refractive index method. This article reviews the progress made in the area of negative refractive index materials from the first generation of negative electrical permittivity to the demonstration of negative index of refraction at optical frequency, with the relevant discussion on the physics of these materials. The prime focus of this article is on experimental demonstrations and fabrication related issues of negative refractive index materials which makes use of structured surfaces.     

Faithful actions of locally compact quantum groups on classical spaces

We construct examples of locally compact quantum groups coming from bicrossed product construction, including non-Kac ones, which can faithfully and ergodically act on connected classical (noncompact) smooth manifolds. However, none of these actions can be isometric in the sense of Goswami (Commun Math Phys 285(1):141–160, 2009), leading to the conjecture that the result obtained by Goswami and Joardar (Rigidity of action of compact quantum groups on compact, connected manifolds, 2013. arXiv:1309.1294) about nonexistence of genuine quantum isometry of classical compact connected Riemannian manifolds may hold in the noncompact case as well.     

Theory of sheath in a collisional multi-component plasma

The aim of this brief report is to study the behaviour of sheath structure in a multi-component plasma with dust-neutral collisions. The plasma consists of electrons, ions, micron size negatively charged dust particles and neutrals. The sheath-edge potential and sheath width are calculated for collisionally dominated sheath. Comparison of collisionless and collisionally dominated sheath are made.     

2540 km: bimagic baseline for neutrino oscillation parameters

We show that a source-to-detector distance of 2540 km, motivated recently [S. K. Raut, R. S. Singh, and S. U. Sankar, arXiv:0908.3741] for a narrow band superbeam, offers multiple advantages for a low energy neutrino factory with a detector that can identify muon charge. At this baseline, for any neutrino hierarchy, the wrong-sign muon signal is almost independent of CP violation and θ(13) in certain energy ranges. This allows the identification of the hierarchy in a clean way. In addition, part of the muon spectrum is also sensitive to the CP violating phase and θ(13), so that the same setup can be used to probe these parameters as well.     

Upper Bounds on Liouville First-Passage Percolation and Watabiki's Prediction

Given a planar continuum Gaussian free field h^𝒰 in a domain 𝒰 with Dirichlet boundary condition and any δ > 0, we let be a real-valued smooth Gaussian process where is the average of h^𝒰 along a circle of radius δ with center v. For γ > 0, we study the Liouville first-passage percolation (in scale δ), i.e., the shortest path distance in 𝒰 where the weight of each path P is given by . We show that the distance between two typical points is for all sufficiently small but fixed γ > 0 and some constant c^* > 0. In addition, we obtain similar upper bounds on the Liouville first-passage percolation for discrete Gaussian free fields, as well as the Liouville graph distance, which roughly speaking is the minimal number of euclidean balls with comparable Liouville quantum gravity measure whose union contains a continuous path between two endpoints. Our results contradict some reasonable interpretations of Watabiki's prediction (1993) on the random distance of Liouville quantum gravity at high temperatures.© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.