Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-114). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The equivalence principle has proven to be central to theories of gravity, with General Relativity being the simplest and most elegant theory to embody the principle. Most alternative theories of gravity struggle to satisfy the principle and still be distinct from GR. Extensions of cosmological and quantum theories question the irrefutably of the equivalence at every scale. The possibility of an equivalence principle violation at galactic scales would be an exciting prospect. In this thesis, we will carefully examine the equivalence principle through the study of chameleon scalar-tensor theories, this will include solutions for hypothetical stars known as boson stars. Such theories find varied application, especially in cosmology, where they model dark energy and inflation. The AWE hypothesis, is an instance of this. It is a nonuniversally coupled model in which violations of the equivalence principle on galactic scales may be apparent. We investigate spherically symmetric and static solutions within the framework of this theory. The constraints obtained from galactic rotation curves results in values of the couplings that show no significant violation of the equivalence principle or values consistent with a theory of dark energy

The advent of laser cooling and optical manipulation for atomic samples revolutionized atomic physics in 1990’s, allowing the creation of new phases of matter, more accurate atomic clocks, and enabling leading candidates for the first functional quantum computer. This could not have been predicted at the time, and is a testament to the value of fundamental research for its own sake. These same laser cooling techniques are now being applied to simple molecular systems with the same revolutionary potential. In this thesis, I will present a range of experiments exploring these schemes in a new class of molecules, the diatomic alkaline earth hydrides. We present the creation and characterization of a bright beam of cold barium hydride molecules, high precision spectroscopy of these samples, as well as optical deflection and transverse cooling. This represents the first laser cooling of a Hydride molecule. This is a crucial step towards the creation of new cold molecular samples for a variety of scientific applications. In the final chapter, I will change gears, and introduce new ideas for the detection of scalar field dark matter. While this variety of dark matter is typically searched for using atomic clocks, I will show that the same coupling also leads to anomalous acceleration of test masses. This acceleration would be detectable using both a network of precision acceleration sensors known as the IGETS network, and by the LIGO observatory. This new technique will compliment existing search strategies, and has higher sensitivity for a wide region of parameter space.

In this work, we study two problems in quantum field theory from a boundary point of view. Our perspective is motivated by the bootstrap philosophy, which aims to understand how principles such as kinematics, unitarity, and symmetry constrain physical observables. Regarding kinematics, we actually first relax the unitarity constraint and investigate thenon-unitary representations of the boundary superconformal algebra for AdS4 with N = 2 supercharges. In particular, we identify multiplets containing partially massless (PM) fields, as well as other exotic shortening conditions and structures exclusive to the nonunitary regime. Then, turning on interactions, we study a problem centered in dynamics: we investigate the structure of the flat space wavefunctional in scalar field theories with nonlinearly realized symmetries. In particular, we highlight the so-called exceptional scalar field theories, which are the nonlinear sigma model, Dirac-Born-Infeld, and (special) galileon theories. We find that nonlinearly realized symmetries imply soft theorems which must be obeyed by the wavefunction. Moreover, we develop bootstrap techniques utilizing this information along with the singularity structure of the wavefunction to fix its form. In addition, we systematize this construction into a novel set of recursion relations.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第24410号 / 理博第4909号 / 新制||理||1701(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科物理学・宇宙物理学専攻 / (主査)准教授 福間 將文, 教授 橋本 幸士, 准教授 吉岡 興一 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

In this thesis, we investigate the thermodynamics of the de Sitter static patch in order to extract information which can constrain microscopic models of de Sitter quantum gravity. We begin by reviewing previous works which demonstrate how to make sense of the seemingly ill-defined static patch density of states through the introduction of Harish-Chandra group characters, or equivalently through renormalization with respect to a reference problem in Rindler space. A thermal partition function can then be constructed and expressed in terms of a sum over quasinormal mode frequencies. We recap how, in the scalar case, this partition function is equivalent to a 1-loop sphere path integral, as expected from the Gibbons-Hawking proposal, and provides macroscopic data which microscopic models must be consistent with. We next present novel results dealing with scalar Green functions in de Sitter. After constructing various static patch correlators and showing how they can be obtained from their sphere counterparts, we relate the spectral Green function to the Harish-Chandra characters that we came across before, tying them to observables directly accessible within the static patch. We comment on how this result will allow us to generalize thermodynamic considerations to interacting theoriesand therefore place stronger consistency constraints on microscopic models. We finally generalize our analysis to spinning fields, for which thermal partition functions differ from Euclidean path integrals by edge corrections. We reveal new findings which trace the source of these discrepancies to those quasinormal modes which do not correspond to regular Euclidean solutions, explicitly demonstrating this through several examples. Our results highlight the differences between Lorentzian and Euclidean approaches to de Sitter thermodynamics, and hint at new avenues to pursue in the hopes of providing more consistency constraints.

This dissertation documents the results of two related efforts. Firstly, a model of nucleon-nucleon (NN) interactions is developed based on scalar field theory. Secondly, the relativistic 2-body Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) is generalized to handle inelastic processes in the ladder approximation. Scalar field theory describes the behavior of scalar particles, particles with spin 0. In the present work scalar field theory is used to describe NN interactions mediated by pion exchange. The scalar theory is applied to nucleons despite the fact that nucleons are fermions, spin 1/2 particles best described by fourcomponent Dirac spinor fields. Nevertheless, the scalar theory is shown to give a good fit to experiment for the total cross sections for several reactions [1]. The results are consistent with more elaborate spinor models involving one boson exchange (OBE). The results indicate that the spin and isospin of nucleons can to some extent be ignored under certain conditions. Being able to ignore spin and isospin greatly reduces the complexity of the model. A limitation of the scalar theory is that it does not distinguish between particle and anti-particle. Consequently one must decide how to interpret the s-channel diagrams generated by the theory, diagrams which involve particle creation and annihilation. The issue is resolved by extending the scalar theory to include electric charge, and formulating NN interactions in terms of complex scalar fields, which are able to describe both particles and anti-particles. A generalized Bethe-Salpeter equation (GBSE) is developed to handle inelastic processes in the ladder approximation. The GBSE, formulated using the scalar theory, is new, and introduces a systematic method for analyzing families of coupled reactions. A formalism is developed centered around the amplitude matrix M' defined for a given Lagrangian. M' gives the amplitudes of a family of reactions that arise from the Lagrangian. The formalism demonstrates how these amplitudes, to 2nd order, segregate into independent groups of coupled BSE's. The GBSE formalism is applied to the coupled BSE (CBSE) of Faassen and Tjon (FT) [2] for the reaction N+N->N+Delta, showing that the CBSE is missing a coupling channel, and in the expansion, under counts ladder diagrams. A proof is given of the equivalence of the series of ladder diagrams generated by M' and the S-matrix. A section on future work discusses several projects for further development and application of the GBSE.

The objective is to contribute to several issues regarding the traditional view of the local structure of passive scalar fields: (1) probability density function (PDF) of the scalar concentration and scalar gradient, (2) the scalar power spectrum, (3) the structure functions, and (4) correlation functions and multi-point correlators. In addition, the research provides a geometric description of two-dimensional transects of the passive scalar iso-surfaces using the tools of fractal geometry. The local structure is analyzed as a function of large-scale anisotropy, intermittency factor, Reynolds number, and initial condition of the scalar injection. Experiments were performed in the bed boundary layer produced by a uniform depth open channel flow of water in a tilting flume for Re_lamda = 63, 94, and 120. A small nozzle iso-kinetically delivers a passive scalar of high Schmidt number ( Sc = 1000) at mid-depth to generate the turbulent scalar field. Three nozzle diameters are used to study the effects of the injection length scale. High-resolution planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) technique is used to measure the scalar field. The local structure far from isotropic and is influenced even at the smallest scales by large-scale anisotropy, initial injection length scale and the Reynolds number of the flow. The PDF of the scalar fluctuations is non-Gaussian and dependent on large-scale anisotropy. The PDF of scalar gradients show the influence of large-scale anisotropy on the structure at the smallest scales. The spectrum of the scalar field deviates from the in the inertial convection regime and is dependent on large-scale anisotropy, external intermittency, and low Reynolds number. There is no evidence of Batchelors k^-1 scaling law. The scaling exponents of the even-ordered structure functions appear to be inversely correlated with the kurtosis of the scalar fluctuations. The fractal geometry of the two dimensional transects of passive scalar iso-surfaces is scale dependent. The fractal dimension is 1.0 at the smallest length scale and increases in a universal manner in the viscous-convective regime. The coverage length underestimate reflects this universal behavior with practical significance. The lacunarity function shows that the instantaneous scalar field is most in-homogenous around the Kolmogorov scale.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-02-18Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:53:27Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ruy_dv_me_ift.pdf: 500107 bytes, checksum: fef6f049175c290422f569aa7ad7e26e (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta dissertação trata da construção de hierarquias compatíveis com a equação PIV a partir dos modelos: AKNS, dois bósons e dois bósons quadráticos. Também são construidos os problema linear de Jimbo-Miwa dos três modelos e discutimos a hamiltoniana correspondente a equação PIV a partir do formalismo lagrangiano / This dissertation contains the construction of compatible hierarchies with the PIV equation from the models: AKNS, two-boson and quadratic two-boson. Also it is build the Jimbo-Miwa linear problem for the three models and we discuss the hamiltonian corresponding to fouth Painlevé equation from the Lagrangian formalism

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:14:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1469905 bytes, checksum: 95c9e3653497fa18a127fc9aae221421 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / We focus this work in scalar field theory. We review the basic aspects of models containing one scalar field, like the 4, and the two scalars field theory, like the BNRT. We still review the deformation procedure, in order to generate new soluble one field models. The main result is concerned to a new procedure wich makes possible to generate new two field models and its static solutions. / Focamos este trabalho em teoria de campos escalares. Revisamos os aspectos básicos dos modelos contendo um campo, como o 4 e modelos contendo dois campos escalares, como o BNRT. Ainda, revisamos o procedimento de deformação, para gerar novos modelos solúveis com um campo escalar. Nosso principal resultado é um novo procedimento que possibilita a geração de modelos solúveis de dois campos escalares.