False vacuum decay in Jordan-Brans-Dicke cosmologies
We examine the bubble nucleation rate in a first-order phase transition taking place in a background Jordan-Brans-Dicke cosmology. We compute the leading order terms in the nucleation rate when the Jordan-Brans-Dicke field is large (i.e., late times) by means of a Weyl rescaling of the fields in the theory. We find that despite the fact that the Jordan-Brans-Dicke field (hence the effective gravitational constant) has a time dependence in the false vacuum, at late times the nucleation rate is time independent.

title: Constraints on generalized extended inflationary models.
abstract: We study the physical constraints on generalized extended inflationary theories, in which the Brans-Dicke field {Phi} couples to the inflaton sector in the form of two arbitrary power-law functions of {Phi}. We find that the most stringent constraints arise from the need to suppress large bubbles and from considerations of the density perturbations generated during extended inflation. We find that there are sizable portions of the parameter spaces in which all the constraints are satisfied.

title: Wavelets and WMAP non-Gaussianity
abstract: We study the statistical properties of the first-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data on different scales using the spherical Mexican hat wavelet transform. Consistent with the 2004 results of Vielva et al., we find a deviation from Gaussianity in the form of kurtosis of wavelet coefficients on 3-4 scales in the southern Galactic hemisphere. This paper extends the work of Vielva et al. as follows: We find that the non-Gaussian signal shows up more strongly in the form of a larger than expected number of cold pixels and also in the form of scale-scale correlations among wavelet coefficients. We establish the robustness of the non-Gaussian signal under more wide-ranging assumptions regarding the Galactic mask applied to the data and the noise statistics. This signal is unlikely to be due to the usual quadratic term parameterized by the nonlinearity parameter fNL. We use the skewness of the spherical Mexican hat wavelet coefficients to constrain fNL with the first-year WMAP data. Our results constrain fNL to be 50+/-80 at 68% confidence and less than 280 at 99% confidence.

title: Dark Energy Constraints from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
abstract: Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) in the galaxy power spectrum allow us to extract the scale of the comoving sound horizon at recombination, a cosmological standard ruler accurately determined by the cosmic microwave background anisotropy data. We examine various issues important in the use of BAOs to probe dark energy. We find that if we assume a flat universe and priors on ?m, ?mh2, and ?bh2 as expected from the Planck mission, the constraints on dark energy parameters (w0, w') scale much less steeply with survey area than (area)-1/2 for a given redshift range. The constraints on the dark energy density ?X(z), however, do scale roughly with (area)-1/2 due to the strong correlation between H(z) and ?m (which reduces the effect of priors on ?m). Dark energy constraints from BAOs are very sensitive to the assumed linear scale of matter clustering and the redshift accuracy of the survey. For a BAO survey with 0.5 ? z ? 2, ? (R) = 0.4 [corresponding to kmax (z = 0) = 0.086 h Mpc-1], and ?z/ (1 + z) = 0.001, we find = (0.115,0.183) and (0.069, 0.104) for survey areas of 1000 and 10,000 deg2, respectively. We find that it is critical to minimize the bias in the scale estimates in order to derive reliable dark energy constraints. For a 1000 (10,000) deg2 BAO survey, a 1 ? bias in ln H (z) leads to a 2 ? (3 ?) bias in w'. The bias in w' due to the same scale bias from ln DA (z) is slightly smaller and opposite in sign. The results from this paper will be useful in assessing different proposed BAO surveys and guiding the design of optimal dark energy detection strategies.

title: Dark Energy Search with Supernovae
abstract: To determine the nature of dark energy from observational data, it is important that we use model-independent and optimal methods. We should probe dark energy using its density (allowed to be a free function of cosmic time) instead of its equation of state. We should minimize gravitational lensing effect on supernovae by flux-averaging. We need to include complementary data (for example, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure (LSS)) in a consistent manner to help break the degeneracy between the dark energy density and the matter density fraction. We should push for ambitious future supernova surveys that can observe a large number of supernovae at the highest possible redshifts. I discuss these and other issues that will be important in our quest to unravel the mystery of the nature of dark energy. Current supernova, CMB, and LSS data already rule out dark energy models with dark energy densities that vary greatly with time; with the cosmological constant model providing an excellent fit to the data. A precise measurement of dark energy density as a free function of cosmic time will have a fundamental impact on particle physics and cosmology.

title: A robust distance measurement and dark energy constraints from the spherically averaged correlation function of Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red Galaxies
abstract: We measure the effective distance to z = 0.26, DV (0.26), and mh 2 from the overall shape of the spherically-averaged two-point correlati on function of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7) volume-limited luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample, without assuming a dark energy model or a flat Universe. We giv e the mean and covariance matrix of DV (0.26), mh 2 , bh 2 , and ns. We show that these provide an efficient and accurate summary of the volume-limited LRG data. With flat priors on bh 2 and ns (7σWMAP7), we find mh 2 = 0.131 ± 0.020, and rs/DV (0.26) = 0.1466 +0.0068 0.0073 (the ratio of the sound horizon at the drag epoch to the effective distance to z = 0.26). We find that measurements of mh 2 or m are biased low if flux-limited (instead of volume-limited) L RG sample is used. By scaling the spherically-averaged correlation fun ction, we find the Hubble parameter H(0.26) = 79 +12 13 km s 1 Mpc 1 and the angular diameter distance DA(0.26) = 848 +86 88 Mpc. Combining our results with the cosmic microwave background and supernova data, we obtain k = 0.0059 +0.0092 0.0093 andw = 1.023 +0.054 0.053 (assuming a constant dark energy equation of state). We use LasDamas SDSS mock catalogs to compute the covariance matrix of the correlation function, and investigate the use of lognormal catal ogs as an alternative. We find that the input correlation function can be accurately recovered from lognormal catalogs, although they give larger errors on all scales (especially on small sc ales) compared to the mock catalogs derived from cosmological N-body simulations.

title: COMMISSIONING OF IMP 14.5GHZ ECR ION SOURCE
abstract: A 14.5 GHz.~ew. ECR ion source has been designed and constructed for the upgraded injection beam line of HIRF1.. SFC(Heavy Ion ~esearch FaCility m Lanzhou, Sector Focus Cyclotron) so that eventually two ECR ion sources could be available on the line. The new ECR Ion source has a compact struClUre with a high magnetic mirror ratio and a long chamber. The maximum axial magnetic field on the axis is around 1.5Tesla and the bexapole field on the chamber wall is I.OTesla. The ion source is being tested on the test bench. The preliminary results are typically 100 eJ1A of 0 7+, 160 eJ1A of Arll+ and 50 eJ1A of Xe26+. The design points, characteristics and commissioning are presented .

title: CMB Temperature and Matter Power Spectrum in a Decay Vacuum Dark Energy Model
abstract: In this paper, a decay vacuum model $\bar{\rho}_\Lambda=3\sigma M_p^2H_0 H$ is revisited by detailed analysis of background evolution and perturbation equations. We show the imprints on CMB temperature and matter power spectrum from the effective coupling terms between dark sectors by comparing to the standard cosmological constant model and observational data points (WMAP7 and SDSS DR7). We find that the decay vacuum model can describe the expansion rate at late times as well as the standard cosmological constant model but it fails to simultaneously reproduce the observed CMB and matter power spectrum. Its generalization $\bar{\rho}_\Lambda=3M_p^2(\xi_1 H_0 H+\xi_2 H^2)$ is also discussed. Detailed analysis of the background evolution shows that the dimensionless parameter $\xi_{2}$ would be zero to avoid the unnatural 'fine tuning' and to keep the positivity of energy density of dark matter and dark energy in the early epoch.

title: CMB cold spot from inflationary feature scattering
abstract: We propose a “feature-scattering” mechanism to explain the cosmic microwave background cold spot seen from WMAP and Planck maps. If there are hidden features in the potential of multi-field inflation, the inflationary trajectory can be scattered by such features. The scattering is controlled by the amount of isocurvature fluctuations, and thus can be considered as a mechanism to convert isocurvature fluctuations into curvature fluctuations. This mechanism predicts localized cold spots (instead of hot ones) on the CMB. In addition, it may also bridge a connection between the cold spot and a dip on the CMB power spectrum at l ∼ 20 .

title: Holographic SIS Josephson junction
abstract: A bstractWe construct a holographic model for the superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) Josephson junction at zero temperature by considering a complex scalar field coupled with a Maxwell field in the four-dimensional anti-de Sitter soliton background. From the gravity side we reproduce the sine relation between the Josephson current and the phase difference across the junction. We also study the dependence of the maximal current on the dimension of the condensate operator and on the width of the junction, and obtain expected results.

title: Quasi-Single Field Inflation with Large Mass
abstract: We study the effect of massive isocurvaton on density perturbations in quasi-single field inflation models, when the mass of the isocurvaton M becomes larger than the order of the Hubble parameter H. We analytically compute the correction to the power spectrum, leading order in coupling but exact for all values of mass. This verifies the previous numerical results for the range 0 < M < 3H/2 and shows that, in the large mass limit, the correction is of order H2/M2.