Tuesdays 10:30 - 11:30 | Fridays 11:30 - 12:30
Showing votes from 2016-11-08 11:30 to 2016-11-11 12:30 | Next meeting is Tuesday May 26th, 10:30 am.
We revisit the integer lattice (IL) method to numerically solve the Vlasov-Poisson equations, and show that a slight variant of the method is a very easy, viable, and efficient numerical approach to study the dynamics of self-gravitating, collisionless systems. The distribution function lives in a discretized lattice phase-space, and each time-step in the simulation corresponds to a simple permutation of the lattice sites. Hence, the method is Lagrangian, conservative, and fully time-reversible. IL complements other existing methods, such as N-body/particle mesh (computationally efficient, but affected by Monte-Carlo sampling noise and two-body relaxation) and finite volume (FV) direct integration schemes (expensive, accurate but diffusive). We also present improvements to the FV scheme, using a moving mesh approach inspired by IL, to reduce numerical diffusion and the time-step criterion. Being a direct integration scheme like FV, IL is memory limited (memory requirement for a full 3D problem scales as N^6, where N is the resolution per linear phase-space dimension). However, we describe a new technique for achieving N^4 scaling. The method offers promise for investigating the full 6D phase-space of collisionless systems of stars and dark matter.
We continue our study on corrections from canonical quantum gravity to the power spectra of gauge-invariant inflationary scalar and tensor perturbations. A direct canonical quantization of a perturbed inflationary universe model is implemented, which leads to a Wheeler-DeWitt equation. For this equation, a semiclassical approximation is applied in order to obtain a Schroedinger equation with quantum-gravitational correction terms, from which we calculate the corrections to the power spectra. We go beyond the de Sitter case discussed earlier and analyze our model in the first slow-roll approximation, considering terms linear in the slow-roll parameters. We find that the dominant correction term from the de Sitter case, which leads to an enhancement of power on the largest scales, gets modified by terms proportional to the slow-roll parameters. A correction to the tensor-to-scalar ratio is also found at second order in the slow-roll parameters. Making use of the available experimental data, the magnitude of these quantum-gravitational corrections is estimated. Finally, the effects for the temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background are qualitatively obtained.
We study the effects of heavy fields on 4D spacetimes with flat, de Sitter and anti-de Sitter asymptotics. At low energies, matter generates specific, calculable higher derivative corrections to the GR action which perturbatively alter the Schwarzschild-$(A)dS$ family of solutions. The effects of massive scalars, Dirac spinors and gauge fields are each considered. The six-derivative operators they produce, such as $\sim R^{3}$ terms, generate the leading corrections. The induced changes to horizon radii, Hawking temperatures and entropies are found. Modifications to the energy of large $AdS$ black holes are derived by imposing the first law. An explicit demonstration of the replica trick is provided, as it is used to derive black hole and cosmological horizon entropies. Considering entropy bounds, it's found that scalars and fermions increase the entropy one can store inside a region bounded by a sphere of fixed size, but vectors lead to a decrease, oddly. We also demonstrate, however, that many of the corrections fall below the resolving power of the effective field theory and are therefore untrustworthy. Defining properties of black holes, such as the horizon area and Hawking temperature, prove to be remarkably robust against higher derivative gravitational corrections.