Particle theory

Abstract:

We calculate bulk thermodynamic properties, such as the pressure, energy density, and entropy, in SU(4) and SU(8) lattice gauge theories, for the range of temperatures T≤2.0Tc and T≤1.6Tc, respectively. We find that the N=4,8 results are very close to each other, and to what one finds in SU(3), and are far from the asymptotic free-gas value. We conclude that any explanation of the high-T pressure (or entropy) deficit must be such as to survive the N→∞ limit. We give some examples of this constraint in action and comment on what this implies for the relevance of gravity duals. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

Precision measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and of the clustering of largescale structure have supposedly confirmed that the primordial density perturbation has a (nearly) scale-invariant spectrum. However this conclusion is based on assumptions about the world model and the nature of the dark matter. Physical models of inflation suggest that the spectrum may not in fact be scale-free, which would imply rather different cosmological parameters on the basis of the same observational data.

Abstract:

We study the effective D=4, N=1 supergravity description of five-dimensional heterotic M theory in the presence of an M5 brane, and derive the Killing vectors and isometry group for the Kähler moduli-space metric. The group is found to be a non-semi-simple maximal parabolic subgroup of Sp(4,R), containing a nontrivial SL(2,R) factor. The underlying moduli space is then naturally realized as the group space Sp(4,R)/U(2), but equipped with a nonhomogeneous metric that is invariant only under that maximal parabolic group. This nonhomogeneous metric space can also be derived via field truncations and identifications performed on Sp(8,R)/U(4) with its standard homogeneous metric. In a companion paper we use these symmetries to derive new cosmological solutions from known ones. © 2005 The American Physical Society.