Collapse of vacuum bubbles in a vacuum
We revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter spacetime. We find that there exists a large parameter space that allows the bubble to collapse into a black hole or to form a wormhole. This may have interesting implications for the creation of a baby universe in the laboratory, the string landscape where the bubble nucleation takes place among a plenitude of metastable vacua, and the inflationary physics.

title: Real time nonequilibrium dynamics in hot QED plasmas: Dynamical renormalization group approach
abstract: We study the real-time nonequilibrium dynamics in hot QED plasmas implementing a dynamical renormalization group and using the hard thermal loop (HTL) approximation. The focus is on the study of the relaxation of gauge and fermionic mean fields and on the quantum kinetics of the photon and fermion distribution functions. For semihard photons of momentum eT q \gamma and \bar{q} -> \bar{q}\gamma) at O(\alpha) grows logarithmically in time and is comparable to that produced from on-shell Compton scattering and pair annihilation at O(\alpha \alpha_s). Fermion mean fields relax as e^{-\alpha T t ln(\omega_P t)} with \omega_P=eT/3 the plasma frequency, as a consequence of the emission and absorption of soft magnetic photons. A quantum kinetic equation for hard fermions is obtained directly in real time from a field theoretical approach improved by the dynamical renormalization group. The collision kernel is time-dependent and infrared finite.

title: Nonequilibrium relaxation of Bose-Einstein condensates: Real-time equations of motion and Ward identities
abstract: We present a field-theoretical method to obtain consistently the equations of motion for small amplitude condensate perturbations in a homogeneous Bose-condensed gas directly in real time. It is based on a linear response and combines the Schwinger–Keldysh formulation of nonequilibrium quantum field theory with the Nambu–Gor'kov formalism of quasiparticle excitations in the condensed phase and the tadpole method in quantum field theory. This method leads to causal equations of motion that allow us to study the nonequilibrium evolution as an initial value problem. It also allows us to extract directly the Ward identities, which are a consequence of the underlying gauge symmetry and which in equilibrium lead to the Hugenholtz–Pines theorem. An explicit one-loop calculation of the equations of motion beyond the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov approximation reveals that the nonlocal, absorptive contributions to the self-energies corresponding to the Beliaev and Landau damping processes are necessary to fulfill the Ward identities in or out of equilibrium. It is argued that a consistent implementation at low temperatures must be based on the loop expansion, which is shown to fulfill the Ward identities order by order in perturbation theory.

title: Dynamical electron mass in a strong magnetic field
abstract: Motivated by recent interest in understanding properties of strongly magnetized matter, we study the dynamical electron mass generated through approximate chiral symmetry breaking in QED in a strong magnetic field. We reliably calculate the dynamical electron mass by numerically solving the nonperturbative Schwinger-Dyson equations in a consistent truncation within the lowest Landau level approximation. It is shown that the generation of dynamical electron mass in a strong magnetic field is significantly enhanced by the perturbative electron mass that explicitly breaks chiral symmetry in the absence of a magnetic field.

title: REAL-TIME NONEQUILIBRIUM DYNAMICS IN HOT QED PLASMAS
abstract: The quantum kinetics of photons in hot QED plasmas is studied directly in real time by implementing the dynamical renormalization group. In contrast to conventional approach, the dynamical renormalization group method consistently includes off-shell (energy non-conserving) effects and accounts for time-dependent collisional kernel. To lowest order we find that in the relaxation time approximation the semihard photon distribution function relaxes with a power law.

title: PROGRESS ON CHIRAL SYMMETRY BREAKING IN A STRONG MAGNETIC FIELD
abstract: The problem of chiral symmetry breaking in QED in a strong magnetic field is briefly reviewed. Recent progress on issues regarding the gauge fixing independence of the dynamically generated fermion mass is discussed.

title: Observation of $\eta_{c}$ decay into $\Sigma^{+}\bar{\Sigma}^{-}$ and $\Xi^{-}\bar{\Xi}^{+}$ final states
abstract: Using a data sample of $2.25\times10^{8}$ $J/\psi$ events collected with the BESIII detector, we present the first observation of the decays of $\eta_{c}$ mesons to $\Sigma^{+}\bar{\Sigma}^{-}$ and $\Xi^{-}\bar{\Xi}^{+}$. The branching fractions are measured to be $(2.11\pm0.28_{\rm stat.}\pm0.18_{\rm syst.}\pm0.50_{\rm PDG})\times10^{-3}$ and $(0.89\pm0.16_{\rm stat.}\pm0.08_{\rm syst.}\pm0.21_{\rm PDG})\times10^{-3}$ for $\eta_{c} \to \Sigma^{+}\bar{\Sigma}^{-}$ and $\Xi^{-}\bar{\Xi}^{+}$, respectively. These branching fractions provide important information on the helicity selection rule in charmonium-decay processes.

title: Model-independent and quasi-model-independent search for new physics at CDF
abstract: Data collected in run II of the Fermilab Tevatron are searched for indications of new electroweak scale physics. Rather than focusing on particular new physics scenarios, CDF data are analyzed for discrepancies with respect to the standard model prediction. A model-independent approach (Vista) considers the gross features of the data and is sensitive to new large cross section physics. A quasi-model-independent approach (Sleuth) searches for a significant excess of events with large summed transverse momentum and is particularly sensitive to new electroweak scale physics that appears predominantly in one final state. This global search for new physics in over 300 exclusive final states in 927pb-1 of pp collisions at s=1.96TeV reveals no such significant indication of physics beyond the standard model.

title: Dark energy: A brief review
abstract: The problem of dark energy is briefly reviewed in both theoretical and observational aspects. In the theoretical aspect, dark energy scenarios are classified into symmetry, anthropic principle, tuning mechanism, modified gravity, quantum cosmology, holographic principle, back-reaction and phenomenological types. In the observational aspect, we introduce cosmic probes, dark energy related projects, observational constraints on theoretical models and model independent reconstructions.

title: Thermodynamics of Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetimes: variable cosmological constant

title: Is the Schwarzschild black hole really stable
abstract: The stability of the Schwarzschild black hole is studied. Regge and Wheeler treated the problem first at 1957 and obtained the dynamical equations for the small perturbation. There are two kinds of perturbations: odd one and even one. Using the Painlev\'{e} coordinate, we reconsider the odd perturbation and find that: the white-hole-connected universe(r>2m, see text) is unstable. Because the odd perturbation may be regarded as the angular perturbation, therefore, the physical mean to it may be that the white-hole-connected universe is unstable with respect to the rotating perturbation.