International Journal of Modern Physics D

The Cherenkov telescope array (CTA) is a next-generation observatory for very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy. With one array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes each in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, CTA will provide full-sky coverage, enhance flux sensitivity by one order of magnitude compared to current instruments, cover gamma-ray energies from 20 GeV to 300 GeV, and provide a wide field of view with angular resolution of a few arc-minutes.

Science themes to be addressed by the CTA observatory include (i) understanding the origin of relativistic cosmic particles, and the role these play in the evolution of star forming systems and galaxies, (ii) probing extreme environments such as neutron stars and black holes, but also the cosmic voids, and (iii) exploring frontiers in physics such as the nature of dark matter. With its superior performance, the prospects for CTA combine guaranteed science — the in-depth understanding of known objects and mechanisms — with anticipated detection of new classes of gamma-ray emitters and new phenomena, and a very significant potential for fundamentally new discoveries.

The black hole information problem and the firewall problem can be addressed by assuming an extra local symmetry: conformal invariance. It must be an exact symmetry, spontaneously broken by the vacuum, in a way similar to the Brout–Englert–Higgs (BEH) mechanism. We note how this symmetry formally removes the horizon and the singularity inside black holes. For the Standard Model this symmetry is severely restrictive, demanding all coupling constants, masses and even the cosmological constant to be computable, in principle. Finally, this symmetry suggests that the Weyl action (the square of the Weyl curvature) should be added to the Einstein–Hilbert action. The ensuing indefinite metric states are briefly studied, and we conclude with some remarks concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) is a hypothetical form of dark matter (DM), characterized by relatively strong (compared to the weak interaction strength) self-interactions (SIs), which has been proposed to resolve a number of issues concerning tensions between simulations and observations at the galactic or smaller scales. We review here some recent developments discussed at the 14th Marcel Grossmann Meeting (MG14), paying particular attention to restrictions on the SIDM (total) cross-section from using novel observables in merging galactic structures, as well as the rôle of SIDM on the Milky Way halo and its central region. We report on some interesting particle-physics inspired SIDM models that were discussed at MG14, namely the glueball DM, and a right-handed neutrino DM (with mass of a few tens of keV, that may exist in minimal extensions of the standard model (SM)), interacting among themselves via vector bosons mediators in the dark sector. A detailed phenomenology of the latter model on galactic scales, as well as the potential role of the right handed neutrinos in alleviating some of the small-scale cosmology problems, namely the discrepancies between observations and numerical simulations within standard $\mathrm{\Lambda }$CDM and $\mathrm{\Lambda }$WDM cosmologies are reported.

We explain the measure problem (cf. origin of the Born probability rule) in no-collapse quantum mechanics. Everett defined maverick branches of the state vector as those on which the usual Born probability rule fails to hold — these branches exhibit highly improbable behaviors, including possibly the breakdown of decoherence or even the absence of an emergent semi-classical reality. Derivations of the Born rule which originate in decision theory or subjective probability (i.e. the reasoning of individual observers) do not resolve this problem, because they are circular: they assume, a priori, that the observer occupies a non-maverick branch. An ab initio probability measure is sometimes assumed to explain why we do not occupy a maverick branch. This measure is constrained by, e.g. Gleason’s theorem or envariance to be the usual Hilbert measure. However, this ab initio measure ultimately governs the allocation of a self or a consciousness to a particular branch of the wave function, and hence invokes primitives which lie beyond the Everett wave function and beyond what we usually think of as physics. The significance of this leap has been largely overlooked, but requires serious scrutiny.

In this paper, we study a model which is composed of the cosmological constant and dark matter with nonzero equation of state parameter, which could be called as $\mathrm{\Lambda }$wDM. In the synchronous gauge, we obtain the perturbation equations of dark matter, and deduce the evolution equations of growth factor about the dark matter and baryons. Based on the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, we constrain this model by the recently available cosmic observations which include cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), type Ia supernovae (SNIa) and $f{\sigma }_8(z)$ data points from redshift-space distortion (RSD). The results present a tighter constraint on the model than the case without $f{\sigma }_8(z)$ data. In 3$\sigma$ regions, we find the dark matter equation of state parameter $w_{\mathrm{\text{dm}}}=0.00011_{-0.00070-0.00135-0.00178}^{+0.00069+0.00134+0.00179}$. The currently available cosmic observations do not favor the nonzero dark matter equation of state parameter, no deviation from the lambda cold dark matter ($\mathrm{\Lambda }$CDM) model is found in 1$\sigma$ region.

Several new families of exact solution to the Einstein–Maxwell system of differential equations are found for anisotropic charged matter. The spacetime geometry is that of Finch and Skea which satisfies all criteria for physical acceptability. The exact solutions can be expressed in terms of elementary functions, Bessel functions and modified Bessel functions. When a parameter is restricted to be an integer then the special functions reduce to simple elementary functions. The uncharged model of Finch and Skea [R. Finch and J. E. F. Skea, Class. Quantum Grav. 6 (1989) 467.] and the charged model of Hansraj and Maharaj [S. Hansraj and S. D. Maharaj, Int. J. Mod. Phys. D 15 (2006) 1311.] are regained as special cases. The solutions found admit a barotropic equation of state. A graphical analysis indicates that the matter and electric quantities are well behaved.

In this work, we use cosmography to alleviate the degeneracy among cosmological models, proposing a way to parametrize matter and dark energy in terms of cosmokinematics quantities. The recipe of using cosmography allows to expand observable quantities in Taylor series and to directly compare those expansions with data. The strategy involves the expansions of $q$ and $j$, up to the second-order around $a(t)=1$. This includes additional cosmographic parameters which are fixed by current values of $q_0$ and $j_0$. We therefore propose a fully self-consistent parametrization of the total energy density driving the late-time universe speed up. This stratagem does not remove all the degeneracy but enables one to pass from the model-dependent couple of coefficients, ${\omega }_0$ and ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{m,0}$, to model-independent quantities determined from cosmography. Afterwards, we describe a feasible cosmographic dark energy model, in which matter is fixed whereas dark energy evolves by means of the cosmographic series. Our technique provides robust constraints on cosmokinematic parameters, permitting one to separately bound matter from dark energy densities. Our cosmographic dark energy model turns out to be one parameter only, but differently from the lambda cold dark matter ($\mathrm{\Lambda }$CDM) paradigm, it does not contain ansatz on the dark energy form. In addition, we even determine the free parameter of our model in suitable $1\sigma$ intervals through Monte Carlo analyses based on the Metropolis algorithm. We compare our results with the standard concordance model and we find that our treatment seems to indicate that dark energy slightly evolves in time, reducing to a pure cosmological constant only as $z\to 0$.

In the spirit of Galileon inflation and by considering some sorts of noncanonical kinetic terms in the action, we realize a stage of super-inflation leading to a blue-tilted tensor perturbation. We show also that addition of Galileon-like term to the action leads to avoidance of ghost instabilities in this setup.

We consider the critical behaviors and phase transitions of Gauss–Bonnet–Born–Infeld-AdS black holes (GB–BI-AdS) for $d=5,6$ and the extended phase space. We assume the cosmological constant, $\mathrm{\Lambda }$, the coupling coefficient $\alpha$, and the BI parameter $\beta$ to be thermodynamic pressures of the system. Having made these assumptions, the critical behaviors are then studied in the two canonical and grand canonical ensembles. We find “reentrant and triple point phase transitions” (RPT-TP) and “multiple reentrant phase transitions” (multiple RPT) with increasing pressure of the system for specific values of the coupling coefficient $\alpha$ in the canonical ensemble. Also, we observe a reentrant phase transition (RPT) of GB–BI-AdS black holes in the grand canonical ensemble and for $d=6$. These calculations are then expanded to the critical behavior of Born–Infeld-AdS (BI-AdS) black holes in the third-order of Lovelock gravity and in the grand canonical ensemble to find a van der Waals (vdW) behavior for $d=7$ and a RPT for $d=8$ for specific values of potential $\varphi$ in the grand canonical ensemble. Furthermore, we obtain a similar behavior for the limit of $\beta \to \infty$, i.e. charged-AdS black holes in the third-order of the Lovelock gravity. Thus, it is shown that the critical behaviors of these black holes are independent of the parameter $\beta$ in the grand canonical ensemble.

In two frameworks, we discuss the thermodynamic stability of noncommutative geometry inspired Schwarzschild black hole (NCSBH). Under the horizon thermodynamics of black holes, we show that the NCSBH cannot be thermodynamically stable if requiring positive temperature. We note the inconsistency in the work of Larrañaga et al. and propose an effective first law of black hole thermodynamics for the NCSBH to eliminate the inconsistency. Based on the effective first law, we recalculate the heat capacity and the thermodynamic curvature by means of geometrothermodynamics (GTD) to revisit the thermodynamic stability.

We enlarge the classes of inflaton and quintessence fields by generalizing the pseudo-Nambu–Goldstone boson potential by means of elliptic Jacobian functions, which are characterized by a parameter $k$. We use such a generalization to implement an inflationary era and a late acceleration of the universe. As an inflationary model, the Jacobian generalization leads us to a number of e-foldings and a primordial spectrum of perturbations compatible with the Planck Collaboration 2015. As a quintessence model, a study of the evolution of its equation-of-state (EoS) and its $w^{\prime }$–$w$ plane helps us to classify it as a thawing model. This allows us to consider analytical approximations for the EoS recently discovered for thawing quintessence. By using JLA supernovae Ia and Hubble parameter $H(z)$ data sets, we perform an observational analysis of the viability of the model as quintessence.

An analysis of the effects of the passage of a gravitational wave (GW) on the quantum vacuum is made within the context of the Nexus paradigm of quantum gravity. Results indicate that if the quantum vacuum includes electrically charged virtual particle fields, then a GW will induce vacuum polarization. The equations of General Relativity (GR) are then reformulated to include electric charge displacements in the quantum vacuum imposed by an anisotropic stress — momentum tensor. It is then demonstrated that as a result of the spacetime piezoelectric effect, a gravitational wave is associated with a rotating electromagnetic wave and that the converse effect produced by strong electromagnetic fields is responsible for the generation of relativistic jets and gamma ray bursts. Objects with strong electromagnetic fields will apparently violate the strong equivalence principle.

Here, we study the evolution of a Robertson–Walker (RW) metric under the Ricci flow and 2-loop renormalization group flow (RG-2 flow). We show that a RW metric is a fixed point of the Ricci flow and it is not a solution of the RG-2 flow. RG-2 flow is considered on a doubly twisted product metric with further assumptions and also we introduce a necessary condition for existence of the solution of RG-2 flow.

We study a classical, noncommutative (NC), Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) cosmological model. The spatial sections may have positive, negative or zero constant curvatures. The matter content is a generic perfect fluid. The initial noncommutativity between some canonical variables is rewritten, such that, we end up with commutative variables and a NC parameter. Initially, we derive the scale factor dynamic equations for the general situation, without specifying the perfect fluid or the curvature of the spatial sections. Next, we consider two concrete situations: a radiation perfect fluid and dust. We study all possible scale factor behaviors, for both cases. We compare them with the corresponding commutative cases and one with the other. We obtain, some cases, where the NC model predicts a scale factor expansion which may describe the present expansion of our universe. Those cases are not present in the corresponding commutative models. Finally, we compare our model with another NC model, where the noncommutativity is between different canonical variables. We show that, in general, it leads to a scale factor behavior that is different from our model.

We propose a topological model of induced gravity (pregeometry) where both Newton’s coupling constant and the cosmological constant appear as integration constants in solving field equations. The matter sector of a scalar field is also considered, and by solving field equations it is shown that various types of cosmological solutions in the Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) universe can be obtained. A detailed analysis is given of the meaning of the BRST transformations, which make the induced gravity be a topological field theory, by means of the canonical quantization analysis, and the physical reason why such BRST transformations are needed in the present formalism is clarified. Finally, we propose a dynamical mechanism for fixing the Lagrange multiplier fields by following the Higgs mechanism. The present study clearly indicates that the induced gravity can be constructed at the classical level without recourse to quantum fluctuations of matter and suggests an interesting relationship between the induced gravity and the topological quantum-field theory (TQFT).

In literature, there is a model of modified gravity in which the matter Lagrangian is coupled to the geometry via trace of the stress–energy–momentum tensor $T=T_{\mu }^{\mu }$. This type of modified gravity is denoted $f(R,T)$ in which $R$ is Ricci scalar $R=R_{\mu }^{\mu }$. We extend manifestly this model to include the higher derivative term $\square R$. We derived equations of motion (EOM) for the model by starting from the basic variational principle. Later we investigate FLRW cosmology for our model. We show that de Sitter (dS) solution is unstable for a generic type of $f(R,\square R,T)$ model. Furthermore we investigate an inflationary scenario based on this model. A graceful exit from inflation is guaranteed in this type of modified gravity.

It has been argued that wormholes are as good a prediction of Einstein’s theory as black holes but the theoretical construction requires a reverse strategy, specifying the desired geometric properties of the wormhole and leaving open the determination of the stress–energy tensor. We begin by confirming an earlier result by the author showing that a complete wormhole solution can be obtained by adopting the equation of state $p=\omega \rho$ and assuming that the wormhole admits a one-parameter group of conformal motions. The main purpose of this paper is to use the assumption of conformal symmetry to show that the wormhole is stable to linearized radial perturbations whenever $-1.5<\omega <-1$.