14264323
A nonperturbative measurement of the broken phase sphaleron rate
Abstract We develop a method to compute the sphaleron rate in the electroweak broken phase nonperturbatively. The rate is somewhat slower than a perturbative estimate. In SU(2)×U(1) Higgs theory at the physical value of Θ W , and assuming that the latent heat of the phase transition reheats the universe to the equilibrium temperature, baryon number erasure after the phase transition is prevented only when ( λ / g 2 )≤0.036.
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.
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.
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}
55883682
Crossing the wall: branes versus bundles
We test a recently proposed wall-crossing formula for the change of the Hilbert space of Bogomol’nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield (BPS) states in d = 4, N = 2 theories. We study decays of D4D2D0 systems into pairs of D4D2D0 systems and we show how the wall-crossing formula reproduces results of Göttsche and Yoshioka on wall-crossing behavior of the moduli of slope-stable holomorphic bundles over holomorphic surfaces. Our comparison shows very clearly that the moduli space of the D4D2D0 system on a rigid surface in a Calabi–Yau is not the same as the moduli space of torsion-free sheaves, even when worldhseet instantons are neglected. Moreover, we argue that the physical formula should make some new mathematical predictions for a future theory of the moduli of stable objects in the derived category.
120657889
Some remarks on two-loop superstring calculations
Abstract Recent advances in the calculation of higher loop superstring amplitudes have made possible explicit calculations at two-loops. The results exhibit some disturbing features that we address. One partial resolution leads to a modular invariant combination of Riemann identities.
122151675
Anomalies and odd dimensions
The parity-violating effective action for theories of fermions coupled to external gauge and gravitational fields in odd dimensions is computed exactly. This action is then used to compute gauge and gravitational anomalies in even dimensions. This derivation of the anomalies elucidates the relation of covariant to consistent anomalies as well as the relation between the Abelian anomaly and the non-Abelian anomaly in two lower dimensions.
9605613
Integrating over the Coulomb branch in N = 2 gauge theory
Abstract We review the relation of certain integrals over the Coulomb phase of d = 4, N = 2 SO (3) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with Donaldson-Witten theory. We describe a new way to write an important contact term in the theory and show how the integrals generalize to higher rank gauge groups.
121092059
An Off-Shell Propagator for String Theory
Abstract The Polyakov integral with boundaries can be used to provide a propagator for the second-quantized bosonic string. This propagator makes sense off-shell. For special initial and final states we compute it explicitly in the tree approximation, where it reduces to the correct sum of field theoretic particle propagators.