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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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79 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Dynamics of long-lived (axionic) domain walls and its cosmological implications

Here, we perform an updated analysis on a long-lived domain wall (DW) network, which may apply to a broad class of axion models. By simulating an axion-like scalar field on a 3D lattice and fitting an analytical model for the DW evolution, we identify the leading energy loss mechanisms of the DWs and compute the spectrum of axions emitted from the network. The contribution from the DWs to axion-like dark matter (DM) density is derived, with viable parameter space given. The application to both QCD axions and general axion-like particles (ALPs) is considered. Due to the new approaches taken, while our results bear consistency with earlier literature, notable discrepancies are also revealed, such as the specifics about DW decay rate which impacts the prediction for DM abundance, which may have a profound impact on axion phenomenology at large.

Cosmic strings↗
DOE OSTI2020

Lifting at higher levels in the D1D 5 CFT

The D1D 5 P system has a large set of BPS states at its orbifold point. Perturbing away from this ‘free’ point leads to some states joining up into long supermultiplets and lifting, while other states remain BPS. We consider the simplest orbifold which exhibits this lift: that with N = 2 copies of the free c = 6 CFT. We write down the number of lifted and unlifted states implied by the index at all levels upto 6. We work to second order in the perturbation strength λ. For levels upto 4, we find the wavefunctions of the lifted states, their supermultiplet structure and the value of the lift. All states that are allowed to lift by the index are in fact lifted at order O(λ 2 ). We observe that the unlifted states in the untwisted sector have an antisymmetry between the copies in the right moving Ramond ground state sector, and extend this observation to find classes of states for arbitrary N that will remain unlifted to O(λ 2 )

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Repulsive black holes and higher-derivatives

In two-derivative theories of gravity coupled to matter, charged black holes are self-attractive at large distances, with the force vanishing at zero temperature. However, in the presence of massless scalar fields and four-derivative corrections, zero-temperature black holes no longer need to obey the no-force condition. In this paper, we show how to calculate the long-range force between such black holes. We develop an efficient method for computing the higher-derivative corrections to the scalar charges when the theory has a shift symmetry, and compute the resulting force in a variety of examples. We find that higher-derivative corrected black holes may be self-attractive or self-repulsive, depending on the value of the Wilson coefficients and the VEVs of scalar moduli. Indeed, we find black hole solutions which are both superextremal and self-attractive. Furthermore, we present examples where no choice of higher-derivative coefficients allows for self-repulsive black hole states in all directions in charge space. This suggests that, unlike the Weak Gravity Conjecture, which may be satisfied by the black hole spectrum alone, the Repulsive Force Conjecture requires additional constraints on the spectrum of charged particles.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Cosmohedra

It has been a long-standing challenge to find a geometric object underlying the cosmological wavefunction for Tr(ϕ 3 ) theory, generalizing associahedra and surfacehedra for scattering amplitudes. In this note, we describe a new class of polytopes — “cosmohedra” — that provide a natural solution to this problem. The faces of associahedra capture the combinatorics of non-overlapping chords of the momentum polygon, reflecting all partial factorizations of amplitudes. Cosmohedra are far richer — instead of non-overlapping chords, their faces capture the “russian doll” structure of non-overlapping subpolygons that determine the wavefunction. We show that cosmohedra are intimately related to associahedra, obtained by “blowing up” faces of the associahedron in a simple way. We give a full combinatorial description of cosmohedron faces and their factorization properties, and provide an explicit realization in terms of facet inequalities that further “shave” the facet inequalities of the associahedron. We also discuss a novel way for computing the wavefunction from cosmohedron geometry that extends the usual connection with polytope canonical forms. We illustrate cosmohedra with examples at tree-level and one loop; the close connection to surfacehedra suggests the generalization to all loop orders. Moving beyond the wavefunction, we briefly describe “cosmological correlahedra” for full correlators, which are one higher-dimensional polytopes, interpolating between associahedra and cosmohedra on opposite facets in an extra direction associated with the total energy. We speculate on how the existence of cosmohedra might suggest a “stringy” formulation for the cosmological wavefunction/correlators, generalizing the way in which the Minkowski sum decomposition of associahedra naturally extend particle to string amplitudes.

Scattering Amplitudes↗
DOE OSTI2022

Dynamical evolution in the D1D5 CFT

It is interesting to ask: how does the radial space direction emerge from the CFT in gauge-gravity duality? In this context we resolve a long-standing puzzle with the gravity duals of two classes of states in the D1D5 CFT. For each class the CFT states are in the untwisted sector, suggesting that the energy gap should be 1/R y where R y is the radius of the circle on which the D1D5 CFT is compactified. For one class of states, the gravity dual indeed has exactly this gap, while for the other class, the gravity dual has a very deep throat, leading to an energy gap much smaller than 1/R y . We resolve this puzzle by showing that for the latter class of states, perturbing the CFT off its free point leads to the formation of a band structure in the CFT. We also explain why such a band structure does not arise for the first class of states. Thus for the case where a deep throat emerges in the gravity description, the dynamics of falling down this throat is described in the CFT as a sequential ‘hopping’ between states all of which have the same energy at the free point; this hopping amplitude converts an integer spaced spectrum into a closely spaced band of energy levels.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Modular flow in JT gravity and entanglement wedge reconstruction

It has been shown in recent works that JT gravity with matter with two boundaries has a type II ∞ algebra on each side. As the bulk spacetime between the two boundaries fluctuates in quantum nature, we can only define the entanglement wedge for each side in a pure algebraic sense. As we take the semiclassical limit, we will have a fixed long wormhole spacetime for a generic partially entangled thermal state (PETS), which is prepared by inserting heavy operators on the Euclidean path integral. Under this limit, with appropriate assumptions of the matter theory, geometric notions of the causal wedge and entanglement wedge emerge in this background. In particular, the causal wedge is manifestly nested in the entanglement wedge. Different PETS are orthogonal to each other, and thus the Hilbert space has a direct sum structure over sub-Hilbert spaces labeled by different Euclidean geometries. The full algebra for both sides is decomposed accordingly. From the algebra viewpoint, the causal wedge is dual to an emergent type III 1 subalgebra, which is generated by boundary light operators. To reconstruct the entanglement wedge, we consider the modular flow in a generic PETS for each boundary. We show that the modular flow acts locally and is the boost transformation around the global RT surface in the semiclassical limit. It follows that we can extend the causal wedge algebra to a larger type III 1 algebra corresponding to the entanglement wedge. Within each sub-Hilbert space, the original type II ∞ reduces to type III 1 .

2D Gravity↗
DOE OSTI2026

Universal CMB 𝐵-mode spectrum from early causal tensor sources

Many early Universe scenarios predict postinflationary tensor perturbations from causality-limited, subhorizon sources. While the microphysical details may be different, as long as these sources are bounded in duration and correlation length, their tensor power spectra exhibit a universal scaling behavior at small wave number: 𝒫 ℎ ⁡(𝑘)∝𝑘 3 , corresponding to white noise on superhorizon scales at the time of production. If these early causal tensor sources (ECTs) exclusively produce gravitational waves before redshift 𝑧 ∼10 5 , this scaling is realized on all of the scales observed in the CMB, and thus yields a universal multipole distribution for the 𝐵-mode angular power spectrum. Unlike the scale-invariant distributions of inflationary 𝐵 modes, ECTs generically predict enhanced power on small scales and suppressed power on large scales, which allows these source classes to be distinguished given measurements over a sufficient range of angular scales. In this paper, we introduce a unified framework for characterizing ECTs and demonstrate how their universal infrared scaling manifests in low-frequency observables, including CMB 𝐵 modes and stochastic gravitational wave spectral densities. We illustrate this mapping with representative case studies of this universality class involving first-order phase transitions, topological defects, and enhanced scalar perturbations, which source tensor modes at second order in perturbation theory.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗