Modern Physics Letters A

It is thought that the final product of the gravitational collapse is a Kerr black hole and astronomers have discovered several good astrophysical candidates. While there are some indirect evidences suggesting that the latter have an event horizon, and therefore that they are black holes, a proof that the spacetime around these objects is described by the Kerr geometry is still lacking. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the possibility of testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis with present and future experiments. In this paper, I briefly review the state-of-the-art of the field, focusing on some recent results and works in progress.

We construct a gravity dual for scale invariant but non-conformal field theories with a cyclic renormalization group flow. A slight modification of our construction gives a gravity dual of discretely scale invariant field theories. The underlying gravitational theory breaks the null energy condition.

It is known that the presence of background magnetic field in cosmic plasma distorts the acoustic peaks in CMBR. This primarily results from different types of waves in the plasma with velocities depending on the angle between the magnetic field and the wave vector. We consider the consequences of these effects in relativistic heavy-ion collisions where very strong magnetic fields arise during early stages of the plasma evolution. We show that flow coefficients can be significantly affected by these effects when the magnetic field remains strong during early stages due to strong induced fields in the conducting plasma. In particular, the presence of magnetic field can lead to enhancement in the elliptic flow coefficient v₂.

In this work, the PLECHDE model with Granda–Oliveros (G–O) IR-cutoff is studied. The evolution of dark energy density, deceleration and EoS parameters are calculated. I demonstrate that under a condition, our universe can accelerate near the phantom barrier at present time. We calculate these parameters also in PLECHDE at Ricci scale, when α = 2 and β = 1, and a comparison between Ricci scale, G–O cutoff and non-corrected HDE without matter field with G–O cutoff is done. The correspondence between this model and some scalar field of dark energy models is established. By this method, the evolutionary treatment of kinetic energy and potential for quintessence, tachyon, K-essence and dilaton fields, are obtained. I show that the results has a good compatibility with previous work in the limiting case of flat, dark dominated and non-corrected holographic dark energy.

The prevailing view in modern cosmology is that the universe is comprised of immense quantities of exotic materials (i.e. Dark Matter and Dark Energy) that have yet to be positively identified. However, there is also a small group of scientists who believe that the answer to this dilemma is to be found in the modification of gravity (i.e. General Relativity). This short paper states that if we make the bold assumption that all objects/observers are comprised of sets of spacetime coordinates that change (albeit slowly) as the universe ages, then three puzzles that currently confront cosmologists, astronomers and astrophysicists can easily be answered using relatively simple calculations. The condition necessary to explore this possibility can be obtained if one postulates that relativistic gravitational potential lessens (in absolute magnitude) everywhere as the universe ages (n). That is, the spacetime metric g_μν(x)→g_μν(x, n). If gravity behaves in this manner, then it can be shown that it is the causitive agent of indeterminism in nature.

We show that the Chern–Simons–CP(1) model can support a singular soliton solution in which the magnetic field is a Dirac delta.