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Lockdowns in urban scale are shown to be a last resort during pandemics. Despite the effectiveness of this strategy in preventing the spread of disease, the economic necessities of citizens and the social and psychological difficulties created during lockdowns are severe challenges to their long-term implementation. Thus, officials pursue versions of lockdown that promote health-livelihoods dichotomy at the same time. This paper proposes a method for clustering cities such that, at the same time, the essential connections among residents and their basic sustenance (grocery and medical services) are maintained, and social bubbling is warranted. Clusters of a network are set of nodes densely connected to each other and sparsely connected to the rest of the network. Because the network is relatively sparse on the borders of clusters, they are cost-effective places for implementing control strategies such as regional lockdowns. As our clustering method is hierarchical, it allows different levels of clustering. As the number of clusters increases, the limitations get stricter, the physical range of trips gets shorter, and more social distancing is applied. The lower number of clusters results in more freedom but may result in higher virus spread risk. We apply our method to a large city (Isfahan, Iran). We assign a daily origin-destination matrix to our real network and use daily traffic flow among pairs of nodes as the proxy for their correlation and interaction. Results show that setting the minimum number of clusters (i.e., four) would ban 25% of daily non-work trips while increasing the number of clusters to 27 would ban 70% of those trips.

The cosmological memory effect is a permanent change in the relative separation of test particles located in a FLRW spacetime due to the passage of gravitational waves. In the case of a spatially flat FLRW spacetime filled with a perfect fluid in general relativity, it is known that only tensor perturbations contribute to the memory effect while scalar and vector perturbations do not. In this paper, we show that in the context of scalar-tensor theories, the scalar perturbations associated to the scalar graviton contribute to the memory effect as well. We find that, depending on the mass and coupling, the influence of cosmic expansion on the memory effect due to the scalar perturbations can be either stronger or weaker than the one induced by the tensor perturbations. As a byproduct, in an appendix, we develop a general framework which can be used to study coupled wave equations in any curved spacetime region which admits a foliation by time slices., Comment: 8+11 pages (two-column), 5 appendices; v2: the differences/similarities between the cosmological scalar and tensor memory effects are clarified in more detail

We investigate a systematic formulation of vector-tensor theories based on the effective field theory (EFT) approach. The input of our EFT is that the spacetime symmetry is spontaneously broken by the existence of a preferred timelike direction in accordance with the cosmological principle. After clarifying the difference of the symmetry breaking pattern from the conventional EFT of inflation/dark energy, we find an EFT description of vector-tensor theories around the cosmological background. This approach not only serves as a unified description of vector-tensor theories but also highlights universal differences between the scalar-tensor theories and the vector-tensor theories. The theories having different symmetry breaking patterns are distinguished by a phenomenological function and consistency relations between the EFT coefficients. We study the linear cosmological perturbations within our EFT framework and discuss the characteristic properties of the vector-tensor theories in the context of dark energy. In particular, we compute the effective gravitational coupling and the slip parameter for the matter density contrast in terms of the EFT coefficients., Comment: 39 pages + appendices, 1 figure, published version

The influential role of health protocols in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 disease has led governments to seek effective methods for implementing these protocols in the society. Considering the importance of public transportation system in spread of viruses, this paper introduces and analyzes some methods of inspecting urban public transportation companies using system dynamics approach. First, the base model, which represents the status of a public transportation terminal, was created and validated using a system dynamics simulation approach. Then the impact of two penalty policies, including fixed penalty policy (FPP) and variable penalty policy (VPP) on the violations within the terminal was investigated. The simulation results show that the variable penalty policy significantly reduces the violations of passenger terminal drivers. Next, the extended model was developed which considered several terminals. Finally, by presenting two policies of fixed inspector assignment (FIA) and variable inspector assignment (VIA), the effect of four scenarios of combining inspection and penalties policies was investigated. The simulation results showed that combining the variable penalty and variable inspector assignment policies could significantly reduce terminal violations. Also, the implementation of this policy does not require an additional inspector. The results can help city managers to adopt appropriate inspection policies.

The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed new dimensions of urban resilience to communities. Failure to implement health protocols in public buildings has had a significant impact on the spread of the disease, and inspection has become necessary to enforce the rules. This study presents different inspection policies of public buildings to reduce disease prevalence. It evaluates and compares the implementation of these policies in the long run based on the systems dynamics approach. First, baseline modeling was performed without inspection to analyze the proposed policies, and disease prevalence was investigated. Then various proposed inspection and fines policies, including fixed inspection and fines rate (FIFF), fixed inspection rate with the variable fine rate (FIVF), and variable inspection and fines rate (VIVF), are introduced, and their system dynamics models are presented. The impact of each inspection policy on the violations rate and disease prevalence in public buildings has been investigated using long-term simulation. Based on the results, regulatory agencies can significantly reduce the rate of violations in public buildings and improve urban resilience to the epidemic by adopting proper inspection policies. The results can help city managers to adopt appropriate inspection policies.

We investigate the relativistic effective field theory (EFT) describing a non-dissipative gravitating continuum. In addition to ordinary continua, namely solids and fluids, we find an extraordinary more symmetric continuum, aether. In particular, the symmetry of the aether concludes that a homogeneous and isotropic state behaves like a cosmological constant. We formulate the EFT in the unitary/comoving gauge in which the dynamical degrees of freedom of the continuum (phonons) are eaten by the spacetime metric. This gauge choice, which is interpreted as the Lagrangian description in hydrodynamics, offers a neat geometrical understanding of continua. We examine a thread-based spacetime decomposition with respect to the four-velocity of the continuum which is different from the foliation-based Arnowitt-Deser-Misner one. Our thread-based decomposition respects the symmetries of the continua and, therefore, makes it possible to systematically find invariant building blocks of the EFT for each continuum even at higher orders in the derivative expansion. We also discuss the linear dynamics of the system and show that both gravitons and phonons acquire "masses" in a gravitating background., 41 pages + appendices, 1 figure, 3 tables, added explanations, published version

Due to the growth of community awareness, the popularity of green products has increased. In addition, with increasing Internet usage, companies use the Internet as a direct channel along with the traditional way to sell and distribute their products through retailers. This paper investigates pricing in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer with two distribution channels, direct (Internet) and indirect (retailer). The decision variables of the manufacturer are wholesale price and greening level of the product, while the retail price is the decision variable of the retailer. Due to the existence of uncertain conditions in the real world, this problem has been modeled by fuzzy parameters. A game theory approach is employed to provide equilibrium solutions for cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios. Finally, a numerical analysis is presented, and a sensitivity analysis is investigated. For example, it is concluded that vertical cooperation in the supply chain, in addition to increasing the entire supply chain profit, increases the product greenness level and thus improves the environment.

The accumulated energy density of the excited entropy modes in multiple field inflationary scenarios can play the role of dark matter. In the usual case of a flat field space without any turning trajectory, only light superhorizon entropy modes can be excited through the gravitational instability. In the case of a negatively curved field space, we show that subhorizon entropy modes can be excited as well through the tachyonic instability induced by the negative curvature of the field space. The latter allows for production of entropy modes with masses larger than or at the order of the Hubble expansion rate during inflation, leading to a new dark matter scenario. Due to the contribution of subhorizon modes, the corresponding spectral density has a peak at a scale smaller than its counterpart in the models based on a flat field space. This difference makes our model observationally distinguishable., Comment: 26+7 pages, 8 figures, 2 appendices, matches published version

Disformal transformation provides a map relating different scalar-tensor and vector-tensor theories and gives access to a powerful solution-generating method in modified gravity. In view of the vast family of new solutions one can achieve, it is crucial to design suitable tools to guide their construction. In this work, we address this question by revisiting the Petrov classification of disformally constructed solutions in modified gravity theories. We provide close formulas which relate the principal nulls directions as well as the Weyl scalars before and after the disformal transformation. These formulas allow one to capture if and how the Petrov type of a given seed geometry changes under a disformal transformation. Finally, we apply our general setup to three relevant disformally constructed solutions for which the seeds are respectively homogeneous and isotropic, static spherically symmetric and stationary axisymmetric. For the first two cases, we show that the Petrov type O and Petrov type D remain unchanged after a disformal transformation while we show that disformed Kerr black hole is no longer of type D but of general Petrov type I. The results presented in this work should serve as a new toolkit when constructing and comparing new disformal solutions in modified gravity., Comment: 26+11 pages, 2 tables, matches the published version

A stealth de Sitter solution in scalar-tensor theories has an exact de Sitter background metric and a nontrivial scalar field profile. Recently, in the context of Degenerate Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor (DHOST) theories it was shown that stealth de Sitter solutions suffer from either infinite strong coupling or gradient instability for scalar field perturbations. The sound speed squared is either vanishing or negative. In the first case, the strong coupling scale is zero and thus lower than the energy scale of any physical phenomena. From the viewpoint of effective field theory, this issue is naturally resolved by introducing a controlled detuning of the degeneracy condition dubbed scordatura, recovering a version of ghost condensation. In this paper we construct a viable dark energy model in the scordatura DHOST theory based on a stealth cosmological solution, in which the metric is the same as in the standard $\Lambda$CDM model and the scalar field profile is linearly time-dependent. We show that the scordatura mechanism resolves the strong coupling and gradient instability. Further, we find that the scordatura is also necessary to make the quasi-static limit well-defined, which implies that the subhorizon observables are inevitably affected by the scordatura. We derive the effective gravitational coupling and the correction to the friction term for the subhorizon evolution of the linear dark matter energy density contrast as well as the Weyl potential and the gravitational slip parameter. In the absence of the scordatura, the quasi-static approximation would break down at all scales around stealth cosmological solutions even if the issue of the infinite strong coupling is unjustly disregarded. Therefore previous estimations of the subhorizon evolution of matter density contrast in modified gravity in the literature need to be revisited by taking into account the scordatura effect., Comment: 33 pages, typos corrected, published version

The presence of end-of-life vehicles (ELV) in the cities creates irreparable damage in environmental and economic terms. Thus, governments have been searching for ways to collect ELVs. An effective way to address ELVs is subsidies' policy. In this study, a supply chain including an ELV take-back center, an inspection center, and a repair center are considered. The decision variables are the purchase price of the ELVs, the sale price of the repaired vehicle, and the level of vehicle repair. In this supply chain, the government pays a subsidy to take-back centers that deliver their used vehicles. A Stackelberg game structure is considered with the government as the leader, the inspection center as the primary follower, and the collection and repair centers as the second followers. Using the game theory approach, the effects of government subsidies on equilibrium values of the decision-making variables of the centers in the ELV supply chain have been investigated in three scenarios. The scenarios comprise profit sharing, revenue sharing, and a centralized (cooperative) scenario. The results indicate that the centralized scenario has the most significant advantage compared to the two contracts of profit sharing and cost sharing. For example, the repair level of the ELVs, the amount of repaired vehicles demand, consumer surplus, and the whole supply chain's profit are at their maximum. The most significant impact of subsidy payment is related to the take-back center's profit and the ELV supply. On the other hand, the subsidy does not affect the profit of the repair center.

The Horndeski gauge-gravity coupling is the leading non-minimal interaction between gravity and gauge bosons, and it preserves all the symmetries and the number of physical degrees of freedom of the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. In this paper we study the effects of the non-minimal interaction in astronomy and cosmology, and obtain upper bounds on the associated dimensionless coupling constant $\lambda$. From the modification of equations of motion of gauge bosons applied to compact astronomical objects, we find upper bounds $|\lambda| \lesssim 10^{88}$, $|\lambda| \lesssim 10^{75}$ and $|\lambda| \lesssim 10^{84}$ from a black hole shadow, neutron stars and white dwarfs, respectively. The bound $|\lambda| \lesssim 10^{75}$ that is deduced from neutron stars is the strongest and provides twenty orders of magnitude improvement of the previously known best bound on this parameter. On the other hand, the effects of this term on modification of the gravitational Poisson equation lead to a weaker bound $|\lambda| \lesssim 10^{98}$. From the propagation of gravitational waves we also find $|\lambda| \lesssim 10^{119}$, which is even weaker., Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, The correct value for the solar radius is used and the strongest bound, which comes from the neutron stars, is weakened by almost five orders of magnitude. The conclusion did not change

We consider a model of inflation consisting a triplet of $U(1)$ vector fields with the parity violating interaction which is non-minimally coupled to inflaton. The vector field sector enjoys global $O(3)$ symmetry which admits isotropic configuration and provides not only vector modes but also scalar and tensor modes. We decompose the scalar perturbations into the adiabatic, entropy and isocurvature perturbations and compute all power spectra and cross correlations of the scalar and the tensor sectors. The tensor modes associated with the vector fields contribute to the power spectrum of gravitational waves while the parity violating term generates chirality in gravitational power spectra and bispectra. We study nonlinear scalar and tensor perturbations and compute all bispectra and three-point cross-correlations. In particular, it is shown that the non-Gaussianity of curvature perturbations and gravitational waves are enhanced by the vector field perturbations. We show that non-Gaussianities put strong constraints on the model parameters such as the parity violating coupling and the fractional energy of the vector fields., Comment: 30+20 pages, 15 figures, 5 appendices, matches published version

We present a scenario of vector dark matter production during inflation containing a complex inflaton field which is charged under a dark gauge field and which has a symmetry breaking potential. As the inflaton field rolls towards the global minimum of the potential the dark photons become massive with a mass which can be larger than the Hubble scale during inflation. The accumulated energy of the quantum fluctuations of the produced dark photons gives the observed relic density of the dark matter for a wide range of parameters. Depending on the parameters, either the transverse modes or the longitudinal mode or their combination can generate the observed dark matter relic energy density., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 1 appendix

We present a scenario of vector dark matter production from symmetry breaking at the end of inflation. In this model, the accumulated energy density associated with the quantum fluctuations of the dark photon accounts for the present energy density of dark matter. The inflaton is a real scalar field while a heavy complex scalar field, such as the waterfall of hybrid inflation, is charged under the dark gauge field. After the heavy field becomes tachyonic at the end of inflation, rolling rapidly towards its global minimum, the dark photon acquires mass via the Higgs mechanism. To prevent the decay of the vector field energy density during inflation, we introduce couplings between the inflaton and the gauge field such that the energy is pumped to the dark sector. The setup can generate the observed dark matter abundance for a wide range of the dark photon's mass and with the reheat temperature around $10^{12}$ GeV. The model predicts the formation of cosmic strings at the end of inflation with the tensions which are consistent with the CMB upper bounds., Comment: 35 pages, 8 Figures, discussion is improved, matches with the published version

We investigate a novel single field inflationary scenario which allows a transition between a slow-roll k-inflation with c s of order unity and a ghost inflation with c s ≃ 0, where c s is the sound speed for the curvature perturbations. We unify the two phases smoothly by appropriately taking into account a higher derivative scordatura term, which is always there from the effective field theory point of view but which becomes important only in the c s ≃ 0 regime. The model achieves the whole range of 0 ≤ c s ≤ 1 avoiding strong coupling and gradient instability, and allows us to access the c s ≃ 0 regime in a self-consistent manner. We also discuss implications to the formation of primordial black holes.

In this paper, we look for the vacuum static spherically symmetric solution in the mimetic gravity scenario based on the conformal invariance principle. The trivial solution is a stealth Schwarzschild black hole with scalar hair where the mimetic field does not contribute to the background. However, a solution with two naked singularities shows up when the mimetic scalar field contributes to the background. We show that one of these singularities is the same as the singularity at the center of standard Schwarzschild black hole while the other appears due to caustics formation. However, we construct the mimetic black hole solution by gluing the exterior static spherically symmetric solution to a time-dependent anisotropic spacetime describing the interior of the black hole. It is shown that these two solutions match continuously on the surface of the apparent horizon. Some physical properties of the corresponding mimetic black holes are discussed., 26 pages, 4 figures, matches published version

The doubly special relativity (DSR) theories are investigated in order to take into account an observer-independent length scale in special relativity framework. It is widely believed that any quantum theory of gravity would reduce to a DSR model at the flat limit when purely gravitational and quantum mechanical effects are negligible. Gravity's rainbow is a simple generalization of DSR theories to incorporate gravity. In this paper, we show that the effective Friedmann equations that are suggested by loop quantum cosmology (LQC) can be exactly reobtained in rainbow cosmology setup. The deformed geometry of LQC then completely fixes the modified dispersion relation and results in unique DSR model. In comparison with standard LQC scenario where only the geometry is modified, both of the geometry and matter parts get modifications in our setup. In this respect, we find that the total number of microstates for the universe is finite which suggests the statistical origin for the energy and entropy density bounds. These results explicitly show that the DSR theories are appropriate candidates for the flat limit of loop quantum gravity., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Refs. added

We present a model of inflation in which the inflaton field is charged under a triplet of $U(1)$ gauge fields. The model enjoys an internal $O(3)$ symmetry supporting the isotropic FRW solution. With an appropriate coupling between the gauge fields and the inflaton field, the system reaches an attractor regime in which the gauge fields furnish a small constant fraction of the total energy density. We decompose the scalar perturbations into the adiabatic and entropy modes and calculate the contributions of the gauge fields into the curvature perturbations power spectrum. We also calculate the entropy power spectrum and the adiabatic-entropy cross correlation. In addition to the metric tensor perturbations, there are tensor perturbations associated with the gauge field perturbations which are coupled to metric tensor perturbations. We show that the correction in primordial gravitational tensor power spectrum induced from the matter tensor perturbation is a sensitive function of the gauge coupling., Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, V2: presentations improved, matching published journal version

We revisit the efficiency of Schwinger mechanism in creating charged pairs during inflation. We consider a minimal setup of inflation in which the inflaton field is a complex scalar field charged under a $U(1)$ gauge field. There is a time dependent conformal coupling which pumps energy from the inflaton field to the gauge field to furnish a nearly constant background electric field energy density to drive the Schwinger mechanism. The coupling between the gauge field and the scalar field induces a time dependent effective mass for the inflaton field. The requirement of a long period of slow-roll inflation causes the Schwinger mechanism to be highly inefficient during inflation. The non-perturbative Schwinger mechanism can be relevant only towards the end of inflation and only on very small scales. This is in contrast to hypothetical models studied in literature in which the complex scalar field is a test field and a constant electric field is imposed on the dS background by hand. We calculate the number of pairs of charged particles created perturbatively during inflation. We show that it is proportional to the amplitude of the quadrupolar statistical anisotropy and it is very small. Consequently, the back-reactions of created particles on magnetogenesis on large scales are negligible., Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, matches published version in PRD

We study the slow-roll single field inflation in the context of the consistent $D\to4$ Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity that was recently proposed in \cite{Aoki:2020lig}. In addition to the standard attractor regime, we find a new attractor regime which we call the Gauss-Bonnet attractor as the dominant contribution comes from the Gauss-Bonnet term. Around this attractor solution, we find power spectra and spectral tilts for the curvature perturbations and gravitational waves (GWs) and also a model-independent consistency relation among observable quantities. The Gauss-Bonnet term provides a nonlinear $k^4$ term to the GWs dispersion relation which has the same order as the standard linear $k^2$ term at the time of horizon crossing around the Gauss-Bonnet attractor. The Gauss-Bonnet attractor regime thus provides a new scenario for the primordial GWs which can be tested by observations. Finally, we study non-Gaussianity of GWs in this model and estimate the nonlinear parameters $f^{s_1s_2s_3}_{\rm NL,\;sq}$ and $f^{s_1s_2s_3}_{\rm NL,\;eq}$ by fitting the computed GWs bispectra with the local-type and equilateral-type templates respectively at the squeezed limit and at the equilateral shape. For helicities $(+++)$ and $( -- )$, $f^{s_1s_2s_3}_{\rm NL,\;sq}$ is larger while $f^{s_1s_2s_3}_{\rm NL,\;eq}$ is larger for helicities $(++-)$ and $(--+)$., 30 pages, 4 figures, observational bound is corrected

In a very recent paper [1], we have proposed a novel 4-dimensional gravitational theory with two dynamical degrees of freedom, which serves as a consistent realization of D→4 Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with the rescaled Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant α. This has been made possible by breaking a part of diffeomorphism invariance, and thus is consistent with the Lovelock theorem. In the present paper, we study cosmological implications of the theory in the presence of a perfect fluid and clarify the similarities and differences between the results obtained from the consistent 4-dimensional theory and those from the previously considered, naive (and inconsistent) D→ 4 limit. Studying the linear perturbations, we explicitly show that the theory only has tensorial gravitational degrees of freedom (besides the matter degree) and that for α> and 0

We extend the mimetic cosmology to models containing gauge invariant $p$-forms. The $0$-form case reproduces the well-known results of the mimetic dark matter, the $1$-form corresponds to the gauge field mimetic model while the $2$-form model is the Hodge dual of the $0$-form model in $4$ spacetime dimensions. We study the cosmological applications of the new gauge field mimetic model and show that it generates an energy density component which mimics the roles of spatial curvature. In the presence of the Maxwell term, the model also supports the flat, open and closed de Sitter-like cosmological backgrounds while the spatial geometry is flat for all three cases. We perform the cosmological perturbations analysis and show that the model is stable in the case of open de Sitter-like solution while it suffers from ghost instabilities in the case of the closed de Sitter-like solution., 21 pages, references added, matchs published version

We extend the disformal transformation to models with two scalar fields and look at its singular limit. Solving the eigentensor equation for the Jacobian of the transformation of the metrics we find the two-field extension of the mimetic scenario in the singular conformal limit. At the background level the setup mimics the roles of dark matter cosmology. We decompose the perturbations into the adiabatic and entropy modes in which the adiabatic perturbation is tangential to the classical trajectory while the entropy mode is perpendicular to it. We show that the adiabatic mode is frozen while the entropy mode propagates with the sound speed equal to unity with no instabilities., Comment: 21 pages, accepted for publication in JCAP

In this paper, we formulate the statistical mechanics in Snyder space that supports the existence of a minimal length scale. We obtain the corresponding invariant Liouville volume which properly determines the number of microstates in the semiclassical regime. The results show that the number of accessible microstates drastically reduces at the high energy regime such that there is only one degree of freedom for a particle. Using the Liouville volume, we obtain the deformed partition function and we then study the thermodynamical properties of the ideal gas in this setup. Invoking the equipartition theorem, we show that $2/3$ of the degrees of freedom freeze at the high temperature regime when the thermal de Broglie wavelength becomes of the order of the Planck length. This reduction of the number of degrees of freedom suggests an effective dimensional reduction of the space from $3$ to $1$ at the Planck scale., 13 pages, 6 figures

Sweet sorghum juice and traditional ethanol substrate i.e. sugarcane molasses were used for ethanol production in this work. At the end of the fermentation process, the sweet sorghum juice yielded more ethanol with higher ethanol concentration compared to sugarcane molasses in all experiments. The sweet sorghum juice had higher cell viability at high ethanol concentrations and minimum sugar concentration at the end of the fermentation process. The ethanol concentration and yield were 8.9% w/v and 0.45 g/g for sweet sorghum in 80 h and 6.5% w/v and 0.37 g/g for sugarcane molasses in 60 h, respectively. The findings on the physical properties of sweet sorghum juice revealed that it has better physical properties compared to sugarcane molasses, resulting to enhanced performance of sweet sorghum juice for ethanol production

We study cosmological perturbations in mimetic gravity in the presence of classified higher derivative terms which can make the mimetic perturbations stable. We show that the quadratic higher derivative terms which are independent of curvature and the cubic higher derivative terms which come from curvature corrections are sufficient to remove instabilities in mimetic perturbations. The advantage of working with the classified higher derivative terms is that we can control both the background and the perturbation equations allowing us to construct the higher derivative extension of mimetic dark matter and the mimetic nonsingular bouncing scenarios. The latter can be thought as a new higher derivative effective action for the loop quantum cosmology scenario in which the equations of motion coincide with those suggested by loop quantum cosmology. We investigate a possible connection between the mimetic cosmology and the Randall-Sundrum cosmology., 33 pages, references added, JCAP published version

We study cosmological perturbations in mimetic matter scenario with a general higher derivative function. We calculate the quadratic action and show that both the kinetic term and the gradient term have the wrong sings. We perform the analysis in both comoving and Newtonian gauges and confirm that the Hamiltonians and the associated instabilities are consistent with each other in both gauges. The existence of instabilities is independent of the specific form of higher derivative function which generates gradients for mimetic field perturbations. It is verified that the ghost instability in mimetic perturbations is not associated with the higher derivative instabilities such as the Ostrogradsky ghost., v2: Discussions improved, references added, JCAP published version

In this paper, we study thermostatistical properties of a photon gas in the framework of two deformed special relativity models defined by the cosmological coordinatizations of the de Sitter (dS) and anti-de Sitter (AdS) momentum spaces. The dS model is a doubly special relativity theory in which an ultraviolet length scale is invariant under the deformed Lorentz transformations. For the case of AdS model, however, the Lorentz symmetry breaks at the high energy regime. We show that the existence of a maximal momentum in dS momentum space leads to maximal pressure and temperature at the thermodynamical level while maximal internal energy and entropy arise for the case of the AdS momentum space due to the existence of a maximal kinematical energy. These results show the thermodynamical duality of these models much similar to their well-known kinematical duality., 10 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected, final version

The theories known as doubly special relativity are introduced in order to take into account an observer-independent length scale and the speed of light in the framework of special relativity. These theories can be generally formulated on the de Sitter and also recently proposed anti-de Sitter momentum spaces. In the context of these theories, we study the statistical mechanics and to do this, we consider the natural measure on the corresponding extended phase space. The invariant measure on the space of distinct microstates is obtained by restriction of the natural measure of the extended phase space to the physical phase space through the disintegration theorem. Having the invariant measure, one can study the statistical mechanics in an arbitrary ensemble for any doubly special relativity theory. We use the constructed setup to study the statistical properties of four doubly special relativity models. Applying the results to the case of early universe thermodynamics, we show that one of these models that is defined by the cosmological coordinatization of anti-de Sitter momentum space, implies a finite total number of microstates. Therefore, without attribution to any ensemble density and quite generally, we obtain entropy and internal energy bounds for the early radiation dominated universe. We find that while these results cannot be supported by the standard Friedmann equations, they indeed are in complete agreement with the nonsingular effective Friedmann equations that arise in the context of loop quantum cosmology., 10 two column pages, no figures, typos corrected

We study a noncanonical Hilbert space representation of the polymer quantum mechanics. It is shown that Heisenberg algebra get some modifications in the constructed setup from which a generalized uncertainty principle will naturally come out. Although the extracted physical results are the same as those obtained from the standard canonical representation, the noncanonical representation may be notable in view of its possible connection with the generalized uncertainty theories suggested by string theory. In this regard, by considering an Snyder-deformed Heisenberg algebra we show that since the translation group is not deformed it can be identified with a polymer-modified Heisenberg algebra. In classical level, it is shown the noncanonical Poisson brackets are related to their canonical counterparts by means of a Darboux transformation on the corresponding phase space., 14 pages, 1 figure, to appear in CQG

Existence of a minimal measurable length, as an effective cutoff in the ultraviolet regime, is a common feature of all approaches to the quantum gravity proposal. It is widely believed that this length scale will be of the order of the Planck length $\lambda=\lambda_0\,l_{_{\rm Pl}}$, where $\lambda_0\sim{\mathcal O}(1)$ is a dimensionless parameter that should be fixed only by the experiments. This issue can be taken into account through the deformed momentum spaces with compact topologies. In this paper, we consider minimum length effects on the physical quantities related to three parameters of the $SU(2)$ Nambu-Jona-Lasinio effective model of QCD by means of the deformed measure which is defined on compact momentum space with ${\mathbf S}^3$ topology. This measure is suggested by the doubly special relativity theories, Snyder deformed spaces, and the deformed algebra that is obtained in the light of the stability theory of Lie algebras. Using the current experimental data of the particle physics collaboration, we constraint quantum gravity parameter $\lambda_0$ and we compare our results with bounds that are arisen from the other experimental setups., Comment: 10 pages, no figure, accepted for publication in Europhysics Letters

Motivated by the doubly special relativity theories and noncommutative spacetime structures, thermodynamical properties of the photon gas in a phase space with compact spatial momentum space is studied. At the high temperature limit, the upper bounds for the internal energy and entropy are obtained which are determined by the size of the compact spatial momentum space. The maximum internal energy turns out to be of the order of the Planck energy and the entropy bound is then determined by the factor $\big(V/l_{_{\rm Pl}}^3\big)$ through the relevant identification of the size of the momentum space with Planck scale. The entropy bound is very similar to the case of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes and suggests that thermodynamics of black holes may be deduced from a saturated state in the framework of a full quantum gravitational statistical mechanics., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures

We study the statistical mechanics of a general Hamiltonian system in the context of symplectic structure of the corresponding phase space. This covariant formalism reveals some interesting correspondences between properties of the phase space and the associated statistical physics. While topology, as a global property, turns out to be related to the total number of microstates, the invariant measure which assigns {\it a priori} probability distribution over the microstates, is determined by the local form of the symplectic structure. As an example of a model for which the phase space has a nontrivial topology, we apply our formulation on the Snyder noncommutative space-time with de Sitter four-momentum space and analyze the results. Finally, in the framework of such a setup, we examine our formalism by studying the thermodynamical properties of a harmonic oscillator system., Comment: 12 two column pages, 2 figures, Final version

Inspired by quantum gravity proposal, we construct a deformed phase space which supports the UV and IR cutoffs. We show that the Liouville theorem is satisfied in the deformed phase space which allows us to formulate the thermodynamics of the early Universe in the semiclassical regime. Applying the proposed method to the Snyder noncommutative space, we find a temperature dependent equation of state which opens a new window for natural realization of inflation as a phase transition from quantum gravity regime to the standard radiation dominated era. Also we obtain finite energy and entropy densities for the Universe, when at least the Weak Energy Condition is satisfied. We show that there is a minimum size for the Universe which is proportional to the Planck length and consequently the Big Bang singularity is removed., 11 pages, 4 figures, Revised for PRD, title changed

In this paper, we formulate statistical mechanics of the polymerized systems in the semiclassical regime. On the corresponding polymeric symplectic manifold, we set up a noncanonical coordinate system in which all of the polymeric effects are summarized in the density of states. Since we show that the polymeric effects only change the number of microstates of a statistical system, working in this coordinate is quite reasonable from the statistical point of view. The results show that the number of microstates decreases due to existence of an upper bound for the momentum of the test particles in the polymer framework. We obtain a corresponding canonical partition function by means of the deformed density of states. By using the partition function, we study thermodynamics of the ideal gas in the polymer framework and show that our results are in good agreement with those that arise from the full quantum consideration at high temperature, and they coincide with their usual counterpart in the limit of low temperature., Comment: 10 two-column pages, 3 figures, typos corrected

In the context of phenomenological models of quantum gravity, it is claimed that the ultraviolet and infrared natural cutoffs can be realized from local deformations of the Hamiltonian systems. In this paper, we scrutinize this hypothesis and formulate a cutoff-regularized Hamiltonian system. The results show that while local deformations are necessary to have cutoffs, they are not sufficient. In fact, the cutoffs can be realized from globally-deformed Hamiltonian systems that are defined on compact symplectic manifolds. By taking the universality of quantum gravity effects into account, we then conclude that quantum gravity cutoffs are global (topological) properties of the symplectic manifolds. We justify our results by considering three well-known examples: The Moyal, Snyder and polymer deformed Hamiltonian systems., Comment: 17 pages, Revised Version

Quantum fluctuations of a real massless scalar field are studied in the context of the Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP). The dynamical finite vacuum energy is found in spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson- Walker (FRW) spacetime which can be identified as dark energy to explain late time cosmic speed-up. The results show that a tiny deviation from the standard uncertainty principle is necessary on cosmological ground. By using the observational data we have constraint the GUP parameter even more stronger than ever., Comment: 9 pages, no figures, to appear in Gen. Rel. Grav

We study a cosmological setup consisting of a FRW metric as the background geometry with a massless scalar field in the framework of classical polymerization of a given dynamical system. To do this, we first introduce the polymeric representation of the quantum operators. We then extend the corresponding process to reach a transformation which maps any classical variable to its polymeric counterpart. It is shown that such a formalism has also an analogue in terms of the symplectic structure, i.e., instead of applying polymerization to the classical Hamiltonian to arrive its polymeric form, one can use a new set of variables in terms of which Hamiltonian retains its form but now the corresponding symplectic structure gets a new deformed functional form. We show that these two methods are equivalent and by applying of them to the scalar field FRW cosmology see that the resulting scale factor exhibits a bouncing behavior from a contraction phase to an expanding era. Since the replacing of the big bang singularity by a bouncing behavior is one of the most important predictions of the quantum cosmological theories, we may claim that our polymerized classical model brings with itself some signals from quantum theory., 11 pages, 2 figures, to appear in MPLA. (Although the main results in this paper may be considered as a reproduction of the results of reference 16, we would like to draw the reader's attention to the method of "Polymeric symplectic structure" from which the results are obtained.)