Energy as a Fifth Dimension

A recent analysis of the experimental data on some physical phenomena ruled by the four fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, weak, strong and gravitational) seems to show the possibility of describing such interactions in terms of a deformation of the usual Minkowski spacetime, with a metric whose coefficients do depend on the energy of the process considered. In this paper, we show that such results can be accounted for in terms of a Kaluza-Klein-like scheme, based on a five-dimensional Riemannian space in which energy plays the role of the fifth dimension. The corresponding five-dimensional Einstein equations in vacuum are solved in some cases of physical relevance and it is shown that all the phenomenological metrics describing the four fundamental forces are recovered as special cases of the classes of solutions found. Possible developments of the formalism are also briefly outlined.     

On a Fermat principle in general relativity. A Morse theory for light rays

In this paper an infinite dimensional Morse theory for lightlike geodesics joining a point with a timelike curve on a class of Lorentzian manifolds is developed under intrinsic assumptions. It yields applications to the gravitational lens effect. In particular we show that the number of images in the gravitational lens effect is infinite or odd.     

Immersions of cohomogeneity one Riemannian manifolds

This work deals with positively curved compact Riemannian manifolds which are acted on by a closed Lie group of isometries whose principal orbits have codimension one and are isotropy irreducible homogeneous spaces. For such manifolds we can show that their universal covering manifold may be isometrically immersed as a hypersurface of revolution in an euclidean space.     

Use and misuse of adiabatic elimination procedures for stochastic processes

The extension of the current adiabatic elimination procedures to stochastic processes in the presence of external noises is criticized. Limitations pointed out in the recent literature are traced back to preparation phase effects that are shown to be unavoidable in the absence of analytical expressions for the stationary distributions.     

3-methylthiophene self-assembled monolayers on planar and nanoparticle Au surfaces

In this article the adsorption of 3-methylthiophene on planar and nanoparticle Au surfaces is investigated. The resulting systems are compared with a benchmark system based on 1-decanethiol. The characterization data collected evidence the formation of a packed 3-methylthiophene SAM on the planar surface. In particular, spectroscopic investigations suggest that 3-methylthiophene aromatic system is not adsorbed on the surface through the pi-electron system but rather through the S atom alone. On the other hand, the behavior of 3-methylthiophene on nanoparticle surfaces is notably different from that of the alkanethiol. Only a limited fraction of the surface of Au nanoparticles results to be actually coated after purification; this notwithstanding, the nanoparticle growth seems to be strongly influenced by the presence of such a labile encapsulating agent.     

Poisson Geometrical Symmetries Associated to Non-Commutative Formal Diffeomorphisms

Let be the group of all formal power series starting with x with coefficients in a field of zero characteristic (with the composition product), and let F [ ] be its function algebra. In [BF] a non-commutative, non-cocommutative graded Hopf algebra was introduced via a direct process of disabelianisation of F [ ], taking the like presentation of the latter as an algebra but dropping the commutativity constraint. In this paper we apply a general method to provide four one-parameter deformations of , which are quantum groups whose semiclassical limits are Poisson geometrical symmetries such as Poisson groups or Lie bialgebras, namely two quantum function algebras and two quantum universal enveloping algebras. In particular the two Poisson groups are extensions of , isomorphic as proalgebraic Poisson varieties but not as proalgebraic groups.Acknowledgements. The author thanks Alessandra Frabetti and Loic Foissy for many helpful discussions.     

de Sitter vacua via consistent terms

We introduce a new mechanism for producing locally stable de Sitter or Minkowski vacua, with spontaneously broken N = 1 supersymmetry and no massless scalars, applicable to superstring and M-theory compactifications with fluxes. We illustrate the mechanism with a simple N = 1 supergravity model that provides parametric control on the sign and the size of the vacuum energy. The crucial ingredient is a gauged U(1) that involves both an axionic shift and an R symmetry, and severely constrains the F- and D-term contributions to the potential.