De-Chang Dai

BlackMax: A black-hole event generator with rotation, recoil, split branes, and brane tension

We present a comprehensive black-hole event generator, BlackMax, which simulates the experimental signatures of microscopic and Planckian black-hole production and evolution at the LHC in the context of brane world models with low-scale quantum gravity. The generator is based on phenomenologically realistic models free of serious problems that plague low-scale gravity, thus offering more realistic predictions for hadron-hadron colliders. The generator includes all of the black-hole gray-body factors known to date and incorporates the effects of black-hole rotation, splitting between the fermions, nonzero brane tension, and black-hole recoil due to Hawking radiation (although not all simultaneously). The generator can be interfaced with Herwig and Pythia. The main code can be downloaded from http://www-pnp.physics.ox.ac.uk/{approx}issever/BlackMax/blackmax.html.

Vanishing Dimensions and Planar Events at the LHC

We propose that the effective dimensionality of the space we live in depends on the length scale we are probing. As the length scale increases, new dimensions open up. At short scales the space is lower dimensional; at the intermediate scales the space is three-dimensional; and at large scales, the space is effectively higher dimensional. This setup allows for some fundamental problems in cosmology, gravity, and particle physics to be attacked from a new perspective. The proposed framework, among the other things, offers a new approach to the cosmological constant problem and results in striking collider phenomenology and may explain elongated jets observed in cosmic-ray data.

Measuring the cosmological bulk flow using the peculiar velocities of supernovae

We study large-scale coherent motion in our universe using the existing Type IA supernovae data. If the recently observed bulk flow is real, then some imprint must be left on supernovae motion. We perform a Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis in various redshift bins and find a sharp contrast between the z 0.05 data. The z 0.05 data (which contains 425 of the 557 supernovae in the Union2 data set) show no evidence for the bulk flow. While the direction of the bulk flow agrees very well with previous studies, the magnitude is significantly smaller. For example, the Kashlinsky, et al.s original bulk flow result of vbulk > 600km/s is inconsistent with our analysis at greater than 99.7% confidence level. Furthermore, our best-fit bulk flow velocity is consistent with the expectation for the ?CDM model, which lies inside the 68% confidence limit.

Analytic solution for a static black hole in the RSII model

Abstract We present here a static solution for a large black hole (whose horizon radius is larger than the AdS radius) located on the brane in RSII model. According to some arguments based on the AdS/CFT conjecture, a solution for the black hole located on the brane in RSII model must encode quantum gravitational effects and therefore cannot be static. We demonstrated that a static solution can be found if the bulk is not empty. The stress energy tensor of the matter distribution in the bulk for the solution we found is physical (i.e. it is non-singular with the energy density and pressure not violating any energy conditions). The scale of the solution is given by a parameter “a”. For large values of the parameter “a” we have a limit of an almost empty AdS bulk. It is interesting that the solution cannot be transformed into the Schwarzschild-like form and does not reduce to the Schwarzschild solution on the brane. We also present two other related static solutions. At the end, we discuss why the numerical methods failed so far in finding static solutions in this context, including the solutions we found analytically here.

String Resonances at Hadron Colliders

We consider extensions of the standard model based on open strings ending on D-branes, with gauge bosons due to strings attached to stacks of D-branes and chiral matter due to strings stretching between intersecting D-branes. Assuming that the fundamental string mass scale Ms is in the TeV range and that the theory is weakly coupled, we discuss possible signals of string physics at the upcoming HL-LHC run (integrated luminosity ¼ 3000 fb −1 ) with a center-of-mass energy of ffiffiffi s p ¼ 14 TeV and at potential future pp colliders, HE-LHC and VLHC, operating at ffiffiffi s p ¼ 33 and 100 TeV, respectively (with the same integrated luminosity). In such D-brane constructions, the dominant contributions to full-fledged string amplitudes for all the common QCD parton subprocesses leading to dijets and γ þ jet are completely independent of the details of compactification and can be evaluated in a parameter-free manner. We make use of these amplitudes evaluated near the first ðn ¼ 1Þ and second ðn ¼ 2Þ resonant poles to determine the discovery potential for Regge excitations of the quark, the gluon, and the color singlet living on the QCD stack. We show that for string scales as large as 7.1 TeV (6.1 TeV) lowest massive Regge excitations are open to discovery at the ≥ 5σ in dijet (γ þ jet) HL-LHC data. We also show that for n ¼ 1 the dijet discovery potential at HE-LHC and VLHC exceedingly improves: up to 15 TeVand 41 TeV, respectively. To compute the signal-to-noise ratio for n ¼ 2 resonances, we first carry out a complete calculation of all relevant decay widths of the second massive level string states (including decays into massless particles and a massive n ¼ 1 and a massless particle), where we rely on factorization and conformal field theory techniques. Helicity wave functions of arbitrary higher spin massive bosons are also constructed. We demonstrate that for string scales Ms ≲ 10.5 TeV (Ms ≲ 28 TeV) detection of n ¼ 2 Regge recurrences at HE-LHC (VLHC) would become the smoking gun for D-brane string compactifications. Our calculations have been performed using a semianalytic parton model approach which is cross checked against an original software package. The string event generator interfaces with HERWIG and Pythia through BlackMax. The source code is publicly available in the hepforge repository.

Gravitational Lenses in Generalized Einstein-Aether theory: The Bullet Cluster

We study the lensing properties of an asymmetric mass distribution and vector field in generalized Einstein-aether (GEA) theory. As vector-field fluctuations are responsible in GEA for seeding baryonic structure formation, vector-field concentrations can exist independently of baryonic matter. Such concentrations would not be expected to be tied to baryonic matter except gravitationally, and so, like dark matter halos, would become separated from baryonic matter in interacting systems such as the bullet cluster. These vector-field concentrations cause metric deviations that affect weak lensing. Therefore, the distribution of weak lensing deviates from that which would be inferred from the luminous mass distribution, in a way that numerical calculations demonstrate can be consistent with observations. This suggests that MOND-inspired theories can reproduce weak lensing observations, but makes clear the price: the existence of a coherent large-scale fluctuation of a field(s) weakly tied to the baryonic matter, not completely dissimilar to a dark matter halo.

Unparticle dark energy

We examine a dark energy model where a scalar unparticle degree of freedom plays the role of quintessence. In particular, we study a model where the unparticle degree of freedom has a standard kinetic term and a simple mass potential, the evolution is slowly rolling and the field value is of the order of the unparticle energy scale ({lambda}{sub u}). We study how the evolution of w depends on the parameters B (a function of unparticle scaling dimension d{sub u}), the initial value of the field {phi}{sub i} (or equivalently, {lambda}{sub u}) and the present matter density {omega}{sub m0}. We use observational data from type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations and the cosmic microwave background to constrain the model parameters and find that these models are not ruled out by the observational data. From a theoretical point of view, unparticle dark energy model is very attractive, since unparticles (being bound states of fundamental fermions) are protected from radiative corrections. Further, coupling of unparticles to the standard model fields can be arbitrarily suppressed by raising the fundamental energy scale M{sub F}, making the unparticle dark energy model free of most of the problems that plague conventional scalar field quintessence models.

Time dependent fluctuations and particle production in cosmological de Sitter and anti-de Sitter spaces

We study the evolution of time-dependent fluctuations and particle production in an expanding dS and contracting AdS universe. Using the functional Schrodinger formalism we are able to probe the time-dependent regime which is out of the reach of the standard approximations like the Bogolyubov method. In both cases, the evolution of fluctuations is governed by the harmonic oscillator equation with time-dependent frequency. In the case of an expanding dS universe we explicitly show that the frequency of fluctuations produced at a certain moment diminish in time, while the distribution of the created particles quickly approaches the thermal radiation of the dS space. In the case of a contracting AdS universe we show that the frequency of fluctuations produced at a certain moment grow in time. Nominally, the temperature of radiation diverges as the Big Crunch is approaching, however, increasing oscillations of the spectrum make the temperature poorly defined, which is in agreement with the fact that AdS space does not have an event horizon which would cause thermal radiation. Unlimited growth of fluctuations indicates that an eventual tunneling into AdS vacuum would have catastrophic consequences for our universe.

Constraints on dark matter particles charged under a hidden gauge group from primordial black holes

In order to accommodate increasingly tighter observational constraints on dark matter, several models have been proposed recently in which dark matter particles are charged under some hidden gauge group. Hidden gauge charges are invisible for the standard model particles, hence such scenarios are very difficult to constrain directly. However black holes are sensitive to all gauge charges, whether they belong to the standard model or not. Here, we examine the constraints on the possible values of the dark matter particle mass and hidden gauge charge from the evolution of primordial black holes. We find that the existence of the primordial black holes with reasonable mass is incompatible with dark matter particles whose charge to mass ratio is of the order of one. For dark matter particles whose charge to mass ratio is much less than one, we are able to exclude only heavy dark matter in the mass range of 1011?GeV?1016?GeV. Finally, for dark matter particles whose charge to mass ratio is much greater than one, there are no useful limits coming from primordial black holes.

Limited utility of Birkhoff's theorem in modified Newtonian dynamics: Nonzero accelerations inside a shell

We investigate the consequences of Birkhoff’s theorem in general relativity (GR) and in Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND). We study, in particular, the system of a finite-mass test particle inside a spherical shell. In both GR and MOND, we find non-vanishing acceleration for that test particle. The direction of the acceleration is such that it pushes the test particle toward the center of the shell. In GR, the acceleration is found analytically in the case of a small test mass with a small displacement from the center of the shell. In MOND, the acceleration is found analytically in the limit of large test mass and small displacement, and a comparison to numerical values is made. Numerical simulations are done for more general cases with parameters that mimic the system of a galaxy in a cluster. In GR, the acceleration is highly suppressed, and physically insignificant. In MOND, on the contrary, the acceleration of the point particle can be a significant fraction of the field just outside of the spherical shell.