Suchergebnisse

Parallel Contributed Talk at the "XIX International Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes" on line - 18-26 February, 2021 ; in collaboration with Shashank Shalgar and Irene Tamborra based on 2012.03948 Co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union

This work is supported by the Spanish Government through the projects FIS2017-86497-C2-2-P and PID2019-105943GB-I00 (with FEDER contribution). RN acknowledges financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the research grant SFRH/BD/143525/2019. JO acknowledges the Operative Program FEDER2014-2020 Junta de Andalucía-Consejería de Economía y Conocimiento under project E-FQM-262-UGR18 by Universidad de Granada. ; Recently, States of Low Energy (SLEs) have been proposed as viable vacuum states of primordial perturbations within Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC). In this work we investigate the effect of the high curvature region of LQC on the definition of SLEs. Shifting the support of the test function that defines them away from this regime results in primordial power spectra of perturbations closer to those of the so-called Non-oscillatory (NO) vacuum, which is another viable choice of initial conditions previously introduced in the LQC context. Furthermore, through a comparison with the Hadamard-like SLEs, we prove that the NO vacuum is of Hadamard type as well. ; FEDER2014-2020 Junta de Andalucía-Consejería de Economía y Conocimiento E-FQM-262-UGR18 ; Spanish Government FIS2017-86497-C2-2-P, PID2019-105943GB-I00 ; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia ; Universidad de Granada ; Fundació Catalana de Trasplantament SFRH/BD/143525/2019

From the sixth century BCE onwards there occurred a revolution in thought, with novel ideas such as such as that understanding the inner self is both vital for human well-being and central to understanding the universe. This intellectual transformation is sometimes called the beginning of philosophy. And it occurred – independently it seems - in both India and Greece, but not in the vast Persian Empire that divided them. How was this possible? This is a puzzle that has never been solved.

This volume brings together Hellenists and Indologists representing a variety of perspectives on the similarities and differences between the two cultures, and on how to explain them. It offers a collaborative contribution to the burgeoning interest in the Axial Age and will be of interest to anyone intrigued by the big questions inspired by the ancient world.

We consider a minimal scale-invariant extension of the standard model of particle physics combined with unimodular gravity formulated in [M. Shaposhnikov and D. Zenhausern, Phys. Lett. B 671, 187 (2009).]. This theory is able to describe not only an inflationary stage, related to the standard model Higgs field, but also a late period of dark-energy domination, associated with an almost massless dilaton. A number of parameters can be fixed by inflationary physics, allowing us to make specific predictions for any subsequent period. In particular, we derive a relation between the tilt of the primordial spectrum of scalar fluctuations, ns, and the present value of the equation of state parameter of dark energy (DE), wDE0. We find bounds for the scalar tilt, ns<0.97, the associated running, -0.0006 -1. The relation between ns and wDE0 allows us to use the current observational bounds on ns to further constrain the dark-energy equation of state to 0<1+wDE0<0.02, which is to be confronted with future dark-energy surveys ; We acknowledge financial support from the Madrid Regional Government (CAM) under the Program No. HEPHACOS P-ESP-00346 and MICINN under Grant No. AYA2009-13936-C06-06. We also participate in the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 PAU (CSD2007-00060), as well as in the European Union Marie Curie Network UniverseNet under Contract No. MRTN-CT-2006-035863. J. R. would like to acknowledge financial support from UAM/CSIC. The work of M. S. and D. Z. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and by the Tomalla Foundation

We analyse the implications of the Planck data for cosmic inflation. The Planck nominal mission temperature anisotropy measurements, combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, constrain the scalar spectral index to be ns = 0.9603 ± 0.0073, ruling out exact scale invariance at over 5σ.Planck establishes an upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r< 0.11 (95% CL). The Planck data thus shrink the space of allowed standard inflationary models, preferring potentials with V′′< 0. Exponential potential models, the simplest hybrid inflationary models, and monomial potential models of degree n ≥ 2 do not provide a good fit to the data. Planck does not find statistically significant running of the scalar spectral index, obtaining dns/ dlnk = − 0.0134 ± 0.0090. We verify these conclusions through a numerical analysis, which makes no slow-roll approximation, and carry out a Bayesian parameter estimation and model-selection analysis for a number of inflationary models including monomial, natural, and hilltop potentials. For each model, we present the Planck constraints on the parameters of the potential and explore several possibilities for the post-inflationary entropy generation epoch, thus obtaining nontrivial data-driven constraints. We also present a direct reconstruction of the observable range of the inflaton potential. Unless a quartic term is allowed in the potential, we find results consistent with second-order slow-roll predictions. We also investigate whether the primordial power spectrum contains any features. We find that models with a parameterized oscillatory feature improve the fit by Δχ2eff ≈ 10; however, Bayesian evidence does not prefer these models. We constrain several single-field inflation models with generalized Lagrangians by combining power spectrum data with Planck bounds on fNL. Planck constrains with unprecedented accuracy the amplitude and possible correlation (with the adiabatic mode) of non-decaying isocurvature fluctuations. The fractional primordial contributions of cold dark matter (CDM) isocurvature modes of the types expected in the curvaton and axion scenarios have upper bounds of 0.25% and 3.9% (95% CL), respectively. In models with arbitrarily correlated CDM or neutrino isocurvature modes, an anticorrelated isocurvature component can improve the χ2eff by approximately 4 as a result of slightly lowering the theoretical prediction for the ℓ ≲ 40 multipoles relative to the higher multipoles. Nonetheless, the data are consistent with adiabatic initial conditions. ; European Space Agency ; Centre National D'etudes Spatiales ; CNRS/INSU-IN2P3-INP (France) ; Italian Space Agency (ASI) ; Italian National Research Council ; Istituto Nazionale Astrofisica (INAF) ; National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) ; United States Department of Energy (DOE) ; Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) ; UKSA (UK) ; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) ; Spanish Government ; JA ; RES (Spain) ; Finnish Funding Agency for Technology & Innovation (TEKES) ; AoF ; CSC (Finland) ; Helmholtz Association ; German Aerospace Centre (DLR) ; Max Planck Society ; CSA (Canada) ; DTU Space (Denmark) ; SER/SSO (Switzerland) ; RCN (Norway) ; Science Foundation Ireland ; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology ; European Union (EU) ; Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) ST/K001051/1 ST/K004131/1 ST/L000768/1 ST/K00106X/1 ST/H008586/1 ST/K003674/1 ST/I000976/1 ST/K002899/1 ST/G003874/1 ST/K000985/1 ST/J005673/1 ST/J004812/1 ST/J001368/1 ST/J000388/1 ST/L001314/1 ST/L000393/1 ST/I005765/1 ST/H001239/1 ST/I002006/1 ST/M007685/1 ST/K002805/1 ST/K00333X/1

Abstract
Agency belongs to a distinctly moral understanding of the cosmos, buttressed by faith in an ultimately just and knowable universe. On some deep level, historians believe that the good will out. But looking at those moments when the agency concept creates cognitive dissonance—when, for example, Holocaust perpetrators' "agency" was placed in the service of evil—reveals things about the moral universe historians think we inhabit. Using the example of post-1945 West Germany, the essay asks whether a shift toward increasingly diffuse forms of agency across various fields may be part of a larger historical, and not merely historiographical, pattern. In the "post-truth" early twenty-first century, will historians' accounts of the past continue to be shaped by the idea of a benevolent and graspable universe, or will chaos make agency seem like an unrecognizable relic from a lost world?

Light sterile neutrinos might mix with the active ones and be copiously produced in the early Universe. In the present paper, a detailed multi-flavor analysis of sterile neutrino production is performed. Making some justified approximations allows us to consider not only neutrino interactions with the primeval medium and neutrino coherence breaking effects, but also oscillation effects arising from the presence of three light (mostly-active) neutrino states mixed with two heavier (mostly-sterile) states. First, we emphasize the underlying physics via an analytical description of sterile neutrino abundances that is valid for cases with small mixing between active and sterile neutrinos. Then, we study in detail the phenomenology of (3+2) sterile neutrino models in light of short-baseline oscillation data, including the LSND and MiniBooNE results. Finally, by using the information provided by this analysis, we obtain the expected sterile neutrino cosmological abundances and then contrast them with the most recet available data from Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure observations. We conclude that (3+2) models are significantly more disfavored by the internal inconsistencies between sterile neutrino interpretations of appearance and disappearance short-baseline data themselves, rather than by the used cosmological data. ; OM is supported by a Ram´on y Cajal contract from the Spanish Government. SPR is supported by the Portuguese FCT through the projects POCI/FP/81919/2007 and CFTP-FCT UNIT 777, which are partially funded through POCTI (FEDER). SPR is also partially supported by the Spanish Grant FPA2005-01678 of the MCT. MS would like to acknowledge support by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation via a CSIC JAE-DOC contract, and use of the computing cluster of the experimental neutrino group at IFIC for this work. ; Peer reviewed

During an interview in September 1986, some three years prior to seeking political asylum with his wife at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Fang Lizhi was asked how he felt about the progress of political reform in China. Fang responded, "I must start with cosmology in answering this question."Fang's linkage of politics with cosmology – a branch of astrophysics concerned with the origins of the universe – must seem peculiar to those who know him only as a human rights advocate and critic of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet this was no idiosyncrasy on Fang's part. Fang's life and published work from the early 1970s to the present leave no doubt that his emergence as the symbolic leader of China's democracy movement is deeply rooted in his experiences and outlook as a scientist.Fang's personal universe began to expand in 1972, when he and his colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) published a paper in Physica entitled "A Solution of the cosmological equations in scalar-tensor theory, with mass and blackbody radiation." This innocuous-sounding article met with a furious response from leading theoretical circles of the Party. Fang et al. had broken a long-standing taboo by introducing the Big Bang theory to the Chinese physics world. Insofar as the Big Bang contradicted Engels's declaration that the universe must be infinite in space and time, Fang's paper was tantamount to heresy.

Life is tough for many in the increasing precarity of today's academy. Despite all the degrees received, courses taught, grants awarded, conferences attended, articles published, resumes polished, and networks established, many people aspiring to a thriving academic career are now denied the opportunity to prosper in a stable position and to secure a settled life. Given the shrinking academic job market worldwide, especially for humanities and social science disciplines, it is no wonder that over the last two decades quit-lit written by disillusioned members of the academy has grown to such an extent that it now comprises a particular genre. From personal social media accounts to newspapers and websites circulating recent news about academics' life across and beyond the United States, a wide array of platforms daily reveals the gloomy perspectives and emotional reactions of nontenured academic laborers overwhelmed by the uncertainties and insecurities that mark their professional and private lives.

After narrating early life and times of Fang Lizhi, the physicist, the author discusses criticisms of relativistic cosmological theories in the USSR and China as bourgeois science, 1978 as a watershed year in China for Fang and the Chinese scientific community, as Deng Xiaoping comandeered supreme leadership of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and directed the drastic change of course from class struggle to modernization. Critical re-evaluation and revision of Marxist philosophy of science, Fang's identification of deep-rooted cultural orientations in China as impediments to scientific modernizations, his role as administrator, campaign against burgeois liberalization in the country, the removal of Fang from his University of Science and Technology of China post, Tiananmen massacre and Fang's seeking and receiving political asylum at the U.S. embassy in Peking on 6.6.1989. (DÜI-Sen)

"How can we explain the immense popularity of the English Bible? Naomi Tadmor argues that the vernacular Bible became so influential in early modern English society and culture not only because it was deeply revered, widely propagated, and resonant but also because it was - at least in some ways - Anglicised. She focuses in particular on the rendering into English of biblical terms of social description and demonstrates the emergence of a social universe through the processes of translation from ancient and medieval texts to successive and inter-related English versions. She investigates the dissemination of these terms in early modern society and culture, focusing on community ties, gender and labour relations, and offices of state. The result is an important contribution to the history of the English Bible, biblical translations, and to early modern English history more generally"--