17729023
String-mediated electroweak baryogenesis: A critical analysis
We study the scenario of electroweak baryogenesis mediated by nonsuperconducting cosmic strings. This idea relies upon electroweak symmetry being restored in a region around the core of the topological defect so that, within this region, the rate of baryon number violation is enhanced. We compute numerically how effectively baryon number is violated along a cosmic string, at an epoch when the baryon number violation rate elsewhere is negligible. We show that $B$ violation along nonsuperconducting strings is quite inefficient. When proper accounting is taken of the velocity dependence of the baryon number production by strings, it proves too small to explain the observed abundance by at least ten orders of magnitude, whether the strings are in the friction dominated or the scaling regime.
18843095
Classical sphaleron rate on fine lattices
We measure the sphaleron rate for hot, classical Yang-Mills theory on the lattice, in order to study its dependence on lattice spacing. By using a topological definition of Chern-Simons number and going to extremely fine lattices [up to $\ensuremath{\beta}=32,$ or lattice spacing ${a=1/(8g}^{2}T)]$ we demonstrate nontrivial scaling. The topological susceptibility, converted to physical units, falls with lattice spacing on fine lattices in a way which is consistent with linear dependence on a (the Arnold-Son-Yaffe scaling relation) and is difficult to reconcile with a nonzero continuum limit. We also explain some unusual behavior of the rate in small volumes, reported by Ambj\o{}rn and Krasnitz.
10799212
Classical field dynamics of the electroweak phase transition
We investigate the thermodynamics and dynamics of the electroweak phase transition by modeling the infrared physics with classical Yang-Mills Higgs theory. We discuss the accuracy of this approach and conclude that, for quantities whose determination is dominated by the infrared, the classical method should be correct up to parametrically suppressed [i.e., O({alpha})] corrections. For a Higgs self-coupling which at the tree level corresponds to m{sub H}{approx_equal}50 GeV, we determine the jump in the order parameter to be {delta}{phi}=1.5gT, the surface tension to be {sigma}=0.07g{sup 4}T{sup 3}, and the friction coefficient on the moving bubble wall due to infrared bosons to be {eta}{equivalent_to}P/v{sub w}=0.03{plus_minus}0.004g{sup 6}T{sup 4}. We also investigate the response of the Chern-Simons number to a spatially uniform chemical potential and find that it falls off a short distance inside the bubble wall, both in equilibrium and below the equilibrium temperature. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}
118416779
Next-to-leading order thermal photon production in a weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma
A bstractWe compute the next-to-leading order O(g) correction to the thermal photon production rate in a QCD plasma. The NLO contributions can be expressed in terms of gauge invariant condensates on the light cone, which are amenable to novel sum rules and Euclidean techniques. We expect these technologies to be generalizable to other NLO calculations. For the phenomenologically interesting value of αs = 0.3, the NLO correction represents a 20% increase and has a functional form similar to the LO result.
119023526
The phantom menaced: Constraints on low-energy effective ghosts
It has been suggested that a scalar field with negative kinetic energy, or ``ghost,'' could be the source of the observed late-time cosmological acceleration. Naively, such theories should be ruled out by the catastrophic quantum instability of the vacuum. We derive phenomenological bounds on the Lorentz-violating ultraviolet cutoff $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ which must apply to low-energy effective theories of ghosts, in order to keep the instability at unobservable levels. Assuming only that ghosts interact at least gravitationally, we show that $\ensuremath{\Lambda}\ensuremath{\lesssim}3\mathrm{MeV}$ for consistency with the cosmic gamma ray background. We also show that theories of ghosts with a Lorentz-conserving cutoff are completely excluded.
119279378
Bjorken flow, plasma instabilities, and thermalization
A bstractAt asymptotically high energies, thermalization in heavy ion collisions can be described via weak-coupling QCD. We present a complete treatment of how thermalization proceeds, at the parametric weak-coupling level. We show that plasma instabilities dominate the dynamics, from immediately after the collision until well after the plasma becomes nearly in equilibrium. Initially they drive the system close to isotropy, but Bjorken expansion and increasing diluteness makes the system again become more anisotropic. At time $ \tau \sim {\alpha^{{\frac{{ - 12}}{5}}}}Q_s^{{ - 1}} $ the dynamics become dominated by a nearly-thermal bath; and at time $ \tau \sim {\alpha^{{\frac{{ - 5}}{2}}}}Q_s^{{ - 1}} $ the bath comes to dominate the energy density, completing thermalization. After this time there is a nearly isotropic and thermal Quark-Gluon Plasma.
14205277
Melvin Models and Diophantine Approximation
Melvin models with irrational twist parameter provide an interesting example of conformal field theories with non-compact target space, and localized states which are arbitrarily close to being delocalized. We study the torus partition sum of these models, focusing on the properties of the regularized dimension of the space of localized states. We show that its behavior is related to interesting arithmetic properties of the twist parameter γ, such as the Lyapunov exponent. Moreover, for γ in a set of measure one the regularized dimension is in fact not a well-defined number but must be considered as a random variable in a probability distribution.
18801563
Superpotentials and membrane instantons
We investigate nonperturbative effects in M-theory compactifications arising from wrapped membranes. In particular, we show that in $d=4, \CN=1$ compactifications along manifolds of $G_2$ holonomy, membranes wrapped on rigid supersymmetric 3-cycles induce nonzero corrections to the superpotential. Thus, membrane instantons destabilize many M-theory compactifications. Our computation shows that the low energy description of membrane physics is usefully described in terms of three-dimensional topological field theories, and the superpotential is expressed in terms of topological invariants of the 3-cycle. We discuss briefly some applications of these results. For example, using mirror symmetry we derive a counting formula for supersymmetric three-cycles in certain Calabi-Yau manifolds.
121357398
Bosonization on higher genus Riemann surfaces
We prove the equivalence between certain fermionic and bosonic theories in two spacetime dimensions. The theories have fields of arbitrary spin on compact surfaces with any number of handles. Global considerations require that we add new topological terms to the bosonic action. The proof that our prescription is correct relies on methods of complex algebraic geometry.
120311007
Anomalous Inequivalence of Phenomenological Theories
Abstract When the transformation between bases in a phenomenological theory is anomalous, the theories are not equivalent, but can be made so by the addition of an appropriate anomaly functional. This functional can be given a simple form which allows the derivation of a sufficient condition for the impossibility of anomaly cancellation.
125232166
Matrix Models of 2D Gravity and Isomonodromic Deformation
One of the principal goals of the theory of 2D gravity is making sense of the formal expression 
 
$$Z\left( {\mu ,\kappa ;{t_i}} \right) = \sum\limits_h {{{\int_{ME{T_h}} {dge} }^{\mu \int {\sqrt g + k\int {\sqrt g } + k} }}} {Z_{QFT\left( {{t_i}} \right)}}\left[ g \right]$$ 
 
(1.1) 
 
where we integrate over metrics g on surfaces with h handles with a weight defined by the Einstein-Hilbert action (μ is the cosmological constant and κ is Newton’s constant, or, equivalently, the string coupling) together with the partition function of some 2D quantum field theory, QFT(t i ). The parameters t i are coordinates on a subspace of the space of 2D field theories, or, equivalently, coordinates for a space of string backgrounds.