Matching Items (18)
Description
In this thesis, we present the study of several physical properties of relativistic mat- ters under extreme conditions. We start by deriving the rate of the nonleptonic weak processes and the bulk viscosity in several spin-one color superconducting phases of quark matter. We also calculate the bulk viscosity in the nonlinear and anharmonic regime in the normal phase of strange quark matter. We point out several qualitative effects due to the anharmonicity, although quantitatively they appear to be relatively small. In the corresponding study, we take into account the interplay between the non- leptonic and semileptonic weak processes. The results can be important in order to relate accessible observables of compact stars to their internal composition. We also use quantum field theoretical methods to study the transport properties in monolayer graphene in a strong magnetic field. The corresponding quasi-relativistic system re- veals an anomalous quantum Hall effect, whose features are directly connected with the spontaneous flavor symmetry breaking. We study the microscopic origin of Fara- day rotation and magneto-optical transmission in graphene and show that their main features are in agreement with the experimental data.
ContributorsWang, Xinyang, Ph.D (Author) / Shovkovy, Igor (Thesis advisor) / Belitsky, Andrei (Committee member) / Easson, Damien (Committee member) / Peng, Xihong (Committee member) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This thesis addresses certain quantum aspects of the event horizon using the AdS/CFT correspondence. This correspondence is profound since it describes a quantum theory of gravity in d + 1 dimensions from the perspective of a dual quantum field theory living in d dimensions. We begin by considering Rindler space which is the part of Minkowski space seen by an observer with a constant proper acceleration. Because it has an event horizon, Rindler space has been studied in great detail within the context of quantum field theory. However, a quantum gravitational treatment of Rindler space is handicapped by the fact that quantum gravity in flat space is poorly understood. By contrast, quantum gravity in anti-de Sitter space (AdS), is relatively well understood via the AdS/CFT correspondence. Taking this cue, we construct Rindler coordinates for AdS (Rindler-AdS space) in d + 1 spacetime dimensions. In three spacetime dimensions, we find novel one-parameter families of stationary vacua labeled by a rotation parameter β. The interesting thing about these rotating Rindler-AdS spaces is that they possess an observer-dependent ergoregion in addition to having an event horizon. Turning next to the application of AdS/CFT correspondence to Rindler-AdS space, we posit that the two Rindler wedges in AdSd+1 are dual to an entangled conformal field theory (CFT) that lives on two boundaries with geometry R × Hd-1. Specializing to three spacetime dimensions, we derive the thermodynamics of Rindler-AdS space using the boundary CFT. We then probe the causal structure of the spacetime by sending in a time-like source and observe that the CFT “knows” when the source has fallen past the Rindler horizon. We conclude by proposing an alternate foliation of Rindler-AdS which is dual to a CFT living in de Sitter space. Towards the end, we consider the concept of weak measurements in quantum mechanics, wherein the measuring instrument is weakly coupled to the system being measured. We consider such measurements in the context of two examples, viz. the decay of an excited atom, and the tunneling of a particle trapped in a well, and discuss the salient features of such measurements.
ContributorsSamantray, Prasant (Author) / Parikh, Maulik (Thesis advisor) / Davies, Paul (Committee member) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Easson, Damien (Committee member) / Alarcon, Ricardo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Cosmology, carrying imprints from the entire history of the universe, has emerged as a precise observational science over the past 30 years. It can probe physics beyond the Standard Model at energy scales much higher than the weak scale. This thesis reports on some important probes of beyond standard model physics derived in a cosmological setting - (I) It is shown that primordial gravitational waves left over from inflation carry unique detectable CMB signatures for neutrino masses, axions and any other relativistic species that may have been present. (II) Higgs Inflation, the most popular and compelling inflation model with a higgs boson is studied next and it is shown that quantum effects have so far been incorrectly incorporated. A spurious gauge ambiguity arising from quantum effects enters the canonical prediction for observables in Higgs Inflation that must be addressed. (III) A new novel mechanism for generating the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe via decaying gravitinos is proposed. If the Supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking scale is high, then in the presence of R-parity violation, gravitinos can successfully reproduce the baryon asymmetry and evade all low energy constraints. (IV) The final chapter reports on a new completely general analysis of simplified models used in direct detection of dark matter. This is useful to explore what high energy physics constraints can be obtained from direct detection experiments.
ContributorsSabharwal, Subir (Author) / Krauss, Lawrence M (Thesis advisor) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Thesis advisor) / Mauskopf, Philip D (Committee member) / Lunardini, Cecilia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has provided precise information on the evolution of the Universe and the current cosmological paradigm. The CMB has not yet provided definitive information on the origin and strength of any primordial magnetic fields or how they affect the presence of magnetic fields observed throughout the cosmos. This work outlines an alternative method to investigating and identifying the presence of cosmic magnetic fields. This method searches for Faraday Rotation (FR) and specifically uses polarized CMB photons as back-light. I find that current generation CMB experiments may be not sensitive enough to detect FR but next generation experiments should be able to make highly significant detections. Identifying FR with the CMB will provide information on the component of magnetic fields along the line of sight of observation.
The 21cm emission from the hyperfine splitting of neutral Hydrogen in the early universe is predicted to provide precise information about the formation and evolution of cosmic structure, complementing the wealth of knowledge gained from the CMB.
21cm cosmology is a relatively new field, and precise measurements of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) have not yet been achieved. In this work I present 2σ upper limits on the power spectrum of 21cm fluctuations (Δ²(k)) probed at the cosmological wave number k from the Donald C. Backer Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) 64 element deployment. I find upper limits on Δ²(k) in the range 0.3 < k < 0.6 h/Mpc to be (650 mK)², (450 mK)², (390 mK)², (250 mK)², (280mK)², (250 mK)² at redshifts z = 10.87, 9.93, 8.91, 8.37, 8.13 and 7.48 respectively
Building on the power spectrum analysis, I identify a major limiting factor in detecting the 21cm power spectrum.
This work is concluded by outlining a metric to evaluate the predisposition of redshifted 21cm interferometers to foreground contamination in power spectrum estimation. This will help inform the construction of future arrays and enable high fidelity imaging and
cross-correlation analysis with other high redshift cosmic probes like the CMB and other upcoming all sky surveys. I find future
arrays with uniform (u,v) coverage and small spectral evolution of their response in the (u,v,f) cube can minimize foreground leakage while pursuing 21cm imaging.
The 21cm emission from the hyperfine splitting of neutral Hydrogen in the early universe is predicted to provide precise information about the formation and evolution of cosmic structure, complementing the wealth of knowledge gained from the CMB.
21cm cosmology is a relatively new field, and precise measurements of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) have not yet been achieved. In this work I present 2σ upper limits on the power spectrum of 21cm fluctuations (Δ²(k)) probed at the cosmological wave number k from the Donald C. Backer Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) 64 element deployment. I find upper limits on Δ²(k) in the range 0.3 < k < 0.6 h/Mpc to be (650 mK)², (450 mK)², (390 mK)², (250 mK)², (280mK)², (250 mK)² at redshifts z = 10.87, 9.93, 8.91, 8.37, 8.13 and 7.48 respectively
Building on the power spectrum analysis, I identify a major limiting factor in detecting the 21cm power spectrum.
This work is concluded by outlining a metric to evaluate the predisposition of redshifted 21cm interferometers to foreground contamination in power spectrum estimation. This will help inform the construction of future arrays and enable high fidelity imaging and
cross-correlation analysis with other high redshift cosmic probes like the CMB and other upcoming all sky surveys. I find future
arrays with uniform (u,v) coverage and small spectral evolution of their response in the (u,v,f) cube can minimize foreground leakage while pursuing 21cm imaging.
ContributorsKolopanis, Matthew John (Author) / Bowman, Judd (Thesis advisor) / Mauskopf, Philip (Thesis advisor) / Lunardini, Cecilia (Committee member) / Chamberlin, Ralph (Committee member) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Chiral symmetry and its anomalous and spontaneous breaking play an important role
in particle physics, where it explains the origin of pion and hadron mass hierarchy
among other things.
Despite its microscopic origin chirality may also lead to observable effects
in macroscopic physical systems -- relativistic plasmas made of chiral
(spin-$\frac{1}{2}$) particles.
Such plasmas are called \textit{chiral}.
The effects include non-dissipative currents in external fields that could be present
even in quasi-equilibrium, such as the chiral magnetic (CME) and separation (CSE)
effects, as well as a number of inherently chiral collective modes
called the chiral magnetic (CMW) and vortical (CVW) waves.
Applications of chiral plasmas are truly interdisciplinary, ranging from
hot plasma filling the early Universe, to dense matter in neutron stars,
to electronic band structures in Dirac and Weyl semimetals, to quark-gluon plasma
produced in heavy-ion collisions.
The main focus of this dissertation is a search for traces of chiral physics
in the spectrum of collective modes in chiral plasmas.
I start from relativistic chiral kinetic theory and derive
first- and second-order chiral hydrodynamics.
Then I establish key features of an equilibrium state that describes many
physical chiral systems and use it to find the full spectrum of collective modes
in high-temperature and high-density cases.
Finally, I consider in detail the fate of the two inherently chiral waves, namely
the CMW and the CVW, and determine their detection prospects.
The main results of this dissertation are the formulation of a fully covariant
dissipative chiral hydrodynamics and the calculation of the spectrum of collective
modes in chiral plasmas.
It is found that the dissipative effects and dynamical electromagnetism play
an important role in most cases.
In particular, it is found that both the CMW and the CVW are heavily damped by the usual
Ohmic dissipation in charged plasmas and the diffusion effects in neutral plasmas.
These findings prompt a search for new physical observables in heavy-ion collisions,
as well as a revision of potential applications of chiral theories in
cosmology and solid-state physics.
in particle physics, where it explains the origin of pion and hadron mass hierarchy
among other things.
Despite its microscopic origin chirality may also lead to observable effects
in macroscopic physical systems -- relativistic plasmas made of chiral
(spin-$\frac{1}{2}$) particles.
Such plasmas are called \textit{chiral}.
The effects include non-dissipative currents in external fields that could be present
even in quasi-equilibrium, such as the chiral magnetic (CME) and separation (CSE)
effects, as well as a number of inherently chiral collective modes
called the chiral magnetic (CMW) and vortical (CVW) waves.
Applications of chiral plasmas are truly interdisciplinary, ranging from
hot plasma filling the early Universe, to dense matter in neutron stars,
to electronic band structures in Dirac and Weyl semimetals, to quark-gluon plasma
produced in heavy-ion collisions.
The main focus of this dissertation is a search for traces of chiral physics
in the spectrum of collective modes in chiral plasmas.
I start from relativistic chiral kinetic theory and derive
first- and second-order chiral hydrodynamics.
Then I establish key features of an equilibrium state that describes many
physical chiral systems and use it to find the full spectrum of collective modes
in high-temperature and high-density cases.
Finally, I consider in detail the fate of the two inherently chiral waves, namely
the CMW and the CVW, and determine their detection prospects.
The main results of this dissertation are the formulation of a fully covariant
dissipative chiral hydrodynamics and the calculation of the spectrum of collective
modes in chiral plasmas.
It is found that the dissipative effects and dynamical electromagnetism play
an important role in most cases.
In particular, it is found that both the CMW and the CVW are heavily damped by the usual
Ohmic dissipation in charged plasmas and the diffusion effects in neutral plasmas.
These findings prompt a search for new physical observables in heavy-ion collisions,
as well as a revision of potential applications of chiral theories in
cosmology and solid-state physics.
ContributorsRybalka, Denys (Author) / Shovkovy, Igor (Thesis advisor) / Lunardini, Cecilia (Committee member) / Timmes, Francis (Committee member) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
In this thesis, I present the study of nucleon structure from distinct perspectives. I start by elaborating the motivations behind the endeavors and then introducing the key concept, namely the generalized parton distribution functions (GPDs), which serves as the frame- work describing hadronic particles in terms of their fundamental constituents. The second chapter is then devoted to a detailed phenomenological study of the Virtual Compton Scattering (VCS) process, where a more comprehensive parametrization is suggested. In the third chapter, the renormalization kernels that enters the QCD evolution equations at twist- 4 accuracy are computed in terms of Feynman diagrams in momentum space, which can be viewed as an extension of the work by Bukhvostov, Frolov, Lipatov, and Kuraev (BKLK). The results can be used for determining the QCD background interaction for future precision measurements.
ContributorsJi, Yao, Ph. D (Author) / Belitsky, Andrei (Thesis advisor) / Lebed, Richard (Committee member) / Schmidt, Kevin E (Committee member) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The work presented in this dissertation examines three different nonequilibrium particle physics processes that could play a role in answering the question “how was the particle content of today’s universe produced after the big bang?” Cosmic strings produced from spontaneous breaking of a hidden sector $U(1)_{\rm X}$ symmetry could couple to Standard Model fields through Higgs Portal or Kinetic Mixing operators and radiate particles that contribute to the diffuse gamma ray background. In this work we calculate the properties of these strings, including finding effective couplings between the strings and Standard Model fields. Explosive particle production after inflation, known as preheating, would have produced a stochastic background of gravitational waves (GW). This work shows how the presence of realistic additional fields and interactions can affect this prediction dramatically. Specifically, it considers the inflaton to be coupled to a light scalar field, and shows that even a very small quartic self-interaction term will reduce the amplitude of the gravitational wave spectrum. For self-coupling $\lambda_{\chi} \gtrsim g^2$, where $g^2$ is the inflaton-scalar coupling, the peak energy density goes as $\Omega_{\rm GW}^{(\lambda_{\chi})} / \Omega_{\rm GW}^{(\lambda_{\chi}=0)} \sim (g^2/\lambda_{\chi})^{2}$. Finally, leptonic charge-parity (CP) violation could be an important clue to understanding the origin of our universe's matter-antimatter asymmetry, and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments in the coming decade may uncover this. The CP violating effects of a possible fourth ``sterile" neutrino can interfere with the usual three neutrinos; this work shows how combinations of various measurements can help break those degeneracies.
ContributorsHyde, Jeffrey Morgan (Author) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Thesis advisor) / Easson, Damien (Committee member) / Belitsky, Andrei (Committee member) / Comfort, Joseph (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Two ideas that extends on the theory of General Relativity are introduced and then the phenomenology they can offer is explored. The first idea shows how certain types of $f(R)$ gravity allows for traversable wormholes among its vacuum solutions. This is surprising to find in such simple setting as these type of solutions usually requires fairly complex constructions to satisfy the equations of motion of a gravitational theory. The second idea is the matter bounce description of the early universe where a fairly unique feature of the model is identified. Consequences of this feature could allow the paradigm to distinguish itself from other alternative descriptions, such as inflation, through late time observations. An explicit example of this claim is worked out by studying a model involving an interaction in the dark sector. Results of a more astrophysical nature, where a careful analysis of the morphology of blazar halos is performed, are also presented in the Appendix. The analysis determined that the $Q$-statistic is an appropriate tool to probe the properties of the intergalactic magnetic fields responsible for the halos formation.
ContributorsDuplessis, Francis (Author) / Easson, Damien (Thesis advisor) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Mauskopf, Philip (Committee member) / Parikh, Maulik (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
As a demonstration study of low-resolution spectrophotometry, the photometric redshift estimation with narrow-band optical photometry of nine galaxy clusters is presented in this thesis. A complete data reduction process of the photometryusing up to 16 10nm wide narrow-band optical filters from 490nm − 660nm are provided. Narrow-band photometry data are combined with broad-band photometry (SDSS/Pan-STARRS) for photometric redshift fitting. With available spectroscopic
redshift data from eight of the fields, I evaluated the fitted photometric redshift results and showed that combining broad-band photometric data with narrow-band data result in improvements of factor 2-3, compared to redshift estimations from
broad-band photometry alone. With 15 or 16 narrow-band data combined with SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) or Pan-STARRS1 (The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) data, a Normalized Median Absolute Deviation of σNMAD ∼ 0.01−0.016 can be achieved.
The multiband images of galaxy cluster ABELL 611 have been used to further study intracluster light around its brightest cluster galaxy (BCG). It can be shown here that fitting of BCG+ICL stellar properties using the averaged 1-dimensional
radial profile is possible up to ∼ 100kpc within this cluster. The decreasing in age of the stellar population as a function of radius from the BCG+ICL profile, though not entirely conclusive, demonstrates possible future application of low-resolution
spectrophotometry on the ICL studies.
Finally, Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission planning study are covered, and a methodology of visualization tool for target availability is described.
ContributorsWang, Pao-Yu (Author) / Mauskopf, Philip (Thesis advisor) / Butler, Nathaniel (Committee member) / Jansen, Rolf (Committee member) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Proton radiotherapy has recently become a popular form of cancer treatment. For maximum effectiveness, accurate models are needed to calculate proton angular scattering and energy loss. Scattering events are statistically independent and may be calculated from the effective number of events per reciprocal multiple scattering angle or energy loss. It is shown that multiple scattering distributions from Molière’s scattering law can be convolved by depth for accurate numerical calculation of angular distributions in several example materials. This obviates the need for correction factors to the analytic solution and its approximations. It is also shown that numerically solving Molière’s scattering law in terms of the complete (non-small angle) differential cross section and large angle approximations extends the validity of Molière theory to large angles. To calculate probability energy loss distributions, Landau-Vavilov theory is adapted to Fourier transforms and extended to very thick targets through convolution over the probability energy loss distributions in each depth interval. When the depth is expressed in terms of the continuous slowing down approximation (CSDA) the resulting probability energy loss distributions rely on the mean excitation energy as the sole material dependent parameter. Through numerical calculation of the CSDA over the desired energy loss, this allows the energy loss cross section to vary across the distribution and accurately accounts for broadening and skewness for thick targets in a compact manner. An analytic, Fourier transform solution to Vavilov’s integral is shown. A single scattering nuclear model that calculates large angle dose distributions that have a similar functional form to FLUKA (FLUktuierende KAskade) Monte Carlo, is also introduced. For incorporation into Monte Carlo or a treatment planning system, lookup tables of the number of scattering events or cross sections for different clinical energies may be used to determine angular or energy loss distributions.
ContributorsBrosch, Ryan Michael (Author) / Rez, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Alarcon, Ricardo O (Thesis advisor) / Vachaspati, Tanmay (Committee member) / Treacy, Michael M.J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022