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We investigate the radiation from accelerating electrons with asymptotic constant velocity and their analog signatures as evaporating black holes with left-over remnants. We find high-speed electrons, while having a high temperature, correspond to low-temperature analog remnants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production of massless scalar particles by a relativistic semitransparent mirror of finite transverse size and longitudinal thickness in (1+3)D flat spacetime is studied. The derived particle spectrum formula is applied to two specific trajectories. One is the gravitational collapse trajectory invoked in (1+1)D perfectly reflecting moving mirror literature to mimic Hawking radiation, and the other is the plasma mirror trajectory proposed to be realizable in future experiments. It is found that the finiteness of the transverse size leads to diffraction, while the nontrivial thickness amplifies the production rate. We also estimated the particle yield as ∼ 3000 in a 20-day data acquisition based on the parameters invoked in the proposed AnaBHEL experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quasinormal modes (QNMs) of perturbed black holes have recently gained much interest because of their tight relations with the gravitational wave signals emitted during the post-merger phase of a binary black hole coalescence. One of the intriguing features of these modes is that they respect the no-hair theorem, and hence, they can be used to test black hole spacetimes and the underlying gravitational theory. In this paper, we exhibit three different aspects of how black hole QNMs could be altered in theories beyond Einstein's general relativity (GR). These aspects are (i) the direct alterations of QNM spectra as compared with those in GR, (ii) the violation of the geometric correspondence between the high-frequency QNMs and the photon geodesics around the black hole, and (iii) the breaking of the isospectrality between the axial and polar gravitational perturbations. Several examples will be provided in each individual case. The prospects and possible challenges associated with future observations will be also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One interesting proposal to solve the black hole information loss paradox without modifying either general relativity or quantum field theory, is the soft hair, a diffeomorphism charge that records the anisotropic radiation in the asymptotic region. This proposal, however, has been challenged, given that away from the source the soft hair behaves as a coordinate transformation that forms an Abelian group, thus unable to store any information. To maintain the spirit of the soft hair but circumvent these obstacles, we consider Hawking radiation as a probe sensitive to the entire history of the black hole evaporation, where the soft hairs on the horizon are induced by the absorption of a null anisotropic flow, generalizing the shock wave considered in [1, 2]. To do so we introduce two different time-dependent extensions of the diffeomorphism associated with the soft hair, where one is the backreaction of the anisotropic null flow, and the other is a coordinate transformation that produces the Unruh effect and a Doppler shift to the Hawking spectrum. Together, they form an exact BMS charge generator on the entire manifold that allows the nonperturbative analysis of the black hole horizon, whose surface gravity, i.e. the Hawking temperature, is found to be modified. The modification depends on an exponential average of the anisotropy of the null flow with a decay rate of 4M, suggesting the emergence of a new 2-D degree of freedom on the horizon, which could be a way out of the information loss paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent direct detection of gravitational waves has highlighted the huge importance of the tensorial modes in any extended gravitational theory. One of the most appealing approaches to extend gravity beyond general relativity is the Eddington-inspired-Born–Infeld gravity which is formulated within the Palatini approach. This theory can avoid the Big Bang singularity in the physical metric although a Big Bang intrinsic to the affine connection is still there, which in addition couples to the tensorial sector and might jeopardize the viability of the model. In this paper, we suggest that a quantum treatment of the affine connection, or equivalently of its compatible metric, is able to rescue the model. We carry out such an analysis and conclude that from a quantum point of view such a Big Bang is unharmful. We expect therefore that the induced tensorial instability, caused by the Big Bang intrinsic to the affine connection, can be neutralized at the quantum level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A class of dynamical dark energy models is constructed through an extended version of fermion fields corresponding to phantom dark ghost spinors, which are spin 1/2 with mass dimension 1. We find that if these spinors interact with torsion fields in a homogeneous and isotropic universe, then it does not imply any future dark energy singularity or any abrupt event, though the fermion has a negative kinetic energy. In fact, the equation of state of this dark energy model will asymptotically approach the value $$w=-1$$ from above without crossing the phantom divide and inducing therefore a de Sitter state. Consequently, we expect the model to be stable because no real phantom fields will be created. At late time, the torsion fields will vanish as the corresponding phantom dark ghost spinors dilute. As would be expected, intuitively, this result is unaffected by the presence of cold dark matter although the proof is not as straightforward as in general relativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One longstanding mystery in bio-evolution since Darwin's time is the origin of the Cambrian explosion that happened around 540 million years ago (Mya), where an extremely rapid increase of species occurred. Here we suggest that a nearby GRB event 500 parsecs away, which should occur about once per 5 Gy, might have triggered the Cambrian explosion. Due to a relatively lower cross section and the conservation of photon number in Compton scattering, a substantial fraction of the GRB photons can reach the sea level and would induce DNA mutations in organisms protected by a shallow layer of water or soil, thus expediting the bio-diversification. This possibility of inducing genetic mutations is unique among all candidate sources for major incidents in the history of bio-evolution. A possible evidence would be the anomalous abundance of certain nuclear isotopes with long half-lives transmuted by the GRB photons in geological records from the Cambrian period. Our notion also imposes constraints on the evolution of exoplanet organisms and the migration of panspermia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati brane-world model provides a possible approach to address the late-time cosmic acceleration. However, it has subsequently been pointed out that a ghost instability will arise on the self-accelerating branch. Here, we carefully investigate whether this ghost problem could be possibly cured by introducing the Gauss-Bonnet term in the five-dimensional bulk action, a natural generalization to the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model. Our analysis is carried out for a background where a de Sitter brane is embedded in an anti-de Sitter bulk. Our result shows that the ghost excitations cannot be avoided even in this modified model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We calculate the low-redshift Taylor expansion for the luminosity distance for an observer at the center of a spherically symmetric matter inhomogeneity with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. We then test the accuracy of the formulas comparing them to the numerical calculation for different cases for both the luminosity distance and the radial coordinate. The formulas can be used as a starting point to understand the general non-linear effects of a local inhomogeneity in the presence of a cosmological constant, without making any special assumption as regards the inhomogeneity profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eddington-inspired-Born-Infeld (EiBI) theory has recently been resurrected. Such a theory is characterized by being equivalent to Einstein theory in vacuum but differing from it in the presence of matter. One of the virtues of the theory is that it avoids the Big Bang singularity for a radiation-filled universe. In this paper, we analyze singularity avoidance in this kind of model. More precisely, we analyze the behavior of a homogeneous and isotropic universe filled with phantom energy in addition to the dark and baryonic matter. Unlike the Big Bang singularity that can be avoided in this kind of model through a bounce or a loitering effect on the physical metric, we find that the Big Rip singularity is unavoidable in the EiBI phantom model even though it can be postponed towards a slightly further future cosmic time as compared with the same singularity in other models based on the standard general relativity and with the same matter content as described above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exist dark-energy models that predict the occurrence of a 'little rip'. At the point of a little rip the Hubble rate and its cosmic time derivative approach infinity, which is quite similar to the big rip singularity except that the former happens at infinite future and the latter at a finite cosmic time; both events happen in the future and at high energies. In the case of the big rip, a combination of ultra-violet and infra-red effects can smooth its doomsday. We therefore wonder if the little rip can also be smoothed in a similar way. We address the ultra-violet and infra-red effects in general relativity through a brane-world model with a Gauss-Bonnet term in the bulk and an induced gravity term on the brane. We find that the little rip is transformed in this case into a sudden singularity, or a 'big brake'. Even though the big brake is smoother than the little rip in that the Hubble rate is finite at the event, the trade-off is that it takes place sooner, at a finite cosmic time. In our estimate, the big brake would happen at roughly 1300 Gyr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrically charged black holes with flat event horizon in anti-de Sitter space have received much attention due to various applications in Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, from modeling the behavior of quark-gluon plasma to superconductor. Crucial to the physics on the dual field theory is the fact that when embedded in string theory, black holes in the bulk may become vulnerable to instability caused by brane pair-production. Since dilaton arises naturally in the context of string theory, we study the effect of coupling dilaton to Maxwell field on the stability of flat charged AdS black holes. In particular, we study the stability of Gao-Zhang black holes, which are locally asymptotically anti-de Sitter. We find that for dilaton coupling parameter α > 1, flat black holes are stable against brane pair production, however for 0 ≤ α < 1, the black holes eventually become unstable as the amount of electrical charges is increased. Such instability however, behaves somewhat differently from that of flat Reissner-Nordström black holes. In addition, we prove that the Seiberg-Witten action of charged dilaton AdS black hole of Gao-Zhang type with flat event horizon (at least in 5-dimension) is always logarithmically divergent at infinity for finite values of α, and is finite and positive in the case α → ∞. We also comment on the robustness of our result for other charged dilaton black holes that are not of Gao-Zhang type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current standard viewpoint small black holes are believed to emit black body radiation at the Hawking temperature, at least until they approach Planck size, after which their fate is open to conjecture. A cogent argument against the existence of remnants is that, since no evident quantum number prevents it, black holes should radiate completely away to photons and other ordinary stable particles and vacuum, like any unstable quantum system. Here we argue the contrary, that the generalized uncertainty principle may prevent their total evaporation in exactly the same way that the uncertainty principle prevents the hydrogen atom from total collapse: the collapse is prevented, not by symmetry, but by dynamics, as a minimum size and mass are approached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand the nature of the accelerating expansion of the late-time universe, it is important to experimentally determine whether dark energy is a cosmological constant or dynamical in nature. If dark energy already exists prior to inflation, which is a reasonable assumption, then one expects that a dynamical dark energy would leave some footprint in the anisotropy of the late-time accelerated expansion. To demonstrate the viability of this notion, we invoke the quintessence field with the exponential potential as one of the simplest dynamical dark energy models allowed by observations. We investigate the effects of its quantum fluctuations (the physical origin of the perturbation being isocurvature) generated during inflation and having fully positive correlation with the primordial curvature perturbations, and estimate the anisotropy of the cosmic expansion so induced. We show that the primordial amplitude of quantum fluctuations of quintessence field δ ϕ P can be related to the tensor-to-scalar ratio r, and we calculate the perturbed luminosity distance to first order and the associated luminosity distance power spectrum, which is an estimator of anisotropy of late-time accelerated expansion. We find that the gravitational potential at large scales and late times is less decayed in QCDM compared to that in Λ CDM so that the smaller the redshift and multipole, the more relative deficit of power in QCDM. Our results of luminosity distance power spectrum also show the similar conclusions of suppression as that of the previous investigation regarding the effect of quantum fluctuations of quintessence field on the CMB temperature anisotropies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been various interpretations of Hawking radiation proposed based on the perturbative approach, and all have confirmed Hawking's original finding. One major conceptual challenge of Hawking evaporation is the associated black hole information loss paradox, which remains unresolved. A key factor to the issue is the end-stage of the black hole evaporation. Unfortunately by then the evaporation process becomes non-perturbative. Aspired to provide a tool for the eventual solution to this problem, here we introduce a new interpretation of Hawking radiation as the tunneling of instantons. We study instantons of a massless scalar field in Einstein gravity. We consider a complex-valued instanton that connects an initial pure black hole state to a black hole with a scalar field that represents the Hawking radiation at future null infinity, where its action depends only on the areal entropy difference. By comparing it with several independent approaches to Hawking radiation in the perturbative limit, we conclude that Hawking radiation may indeed be described by a family of instantons. Since the instanton approach can describe non-perturbative processes, we hope that our new interpretation and holistic method may shed lights on the information loss problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss how inflation can emerge from a four-fermion interaction induced by torsion. Inflation can arise from coupling torsion to Standard Model fermions, without any need of introducing new scalar particles beyond the Standard Model. Within this picture, the inflaton field can be a composite field of the SM-particles and arises from a Nambu–Jona-Lasinio mechanism in curved space-time, non-minimally coupled with the Ricci scalar. The model we specify predicts small value of the r-parameter, namely r ∼ 10 - 4 ÷ 10 - 2 , which nonetheless would be detectable by the next generation of experiments, including BICEP 3 and the AliCPT projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possibility of testing gravity theories with the help of gravitational wave detections has become an interesting arena of recent research. In this paper, we follow this direction by investigating the quasinormal modes (QNMs) of the axial perturbations for charged black holes in the Palatini-type theories of gravity, specifically (1) the Palatini f(R) gravity coupled with Born-Infeld nonlinear electrodynamics and (2) the Eddington-inspired-Born-Infeld gravity (EiBI) coupled with Maxwell electromagnetic fields. The coupled master equations describing perturbations of charged black holes in these theories are obtained with the tetrad formalism. By using the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) method up to 6th order, we calculate the QNM frequencies of the EiBI charged black holes, the Einstein-Born-Infeld black holes, and the Born-Infeld charged black holes within the Palatini R+αR2 gravity. The QNM spectra of these black holes would deviate from those of the Reissner-Nordström black hole. In addition, we study the QNMs in the eikonal limit and find that for the axial perturbations of the EiBI charged black holes, the link between the eikonal QNMs and the unstable null circular orbit around the black hole is violated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of correlations at the long-wavelength scales of the cosmic microwave background spectrum is a long-standing puzzle and it persists in the latest Planck data. By considering the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary wave function as the initial condition of the inflationary universe, we propose that the power suppression can be the consequence of a massive inflaton, whose initial vacuum is the Euclidean instanton in a compact manifold. We calculate the primordial power spectrum of the perturbations, and find that as long as the scalar field is moderately massive, the power spectrum is suppressed at the long-wavelength scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Planck data on cosmic microwave background indicates that the Starobinsky-type model with concave inflation potential is favored over the convex-type chaotic inflation. Is there any reason for that? Here we argue that if our universe began with a Euclidean wormhole, then the Starobinsky-type inflation is probabilistically favored. It is known that for a more generic choice of parameters than that originally assumed by Hartle and Hawking, the Hartle-Hawking wave function is dominated by Euclidean wormholes, which can be interpreted as the creation of two classical universes from nothing. We show that only one end of the wormhole can be classicalized for a convex potential, while both ends can be classicalized for a concave potential. The latter is therefore more probable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]