Holographic renormalization in no-boundary quantum cosmology
Recent results of Hartle-Hawking wave functions on asymptotic dS boundaries show non-normalizability, while the bulk origin is not clear. This paper attempts to addresse this problem by studying (Kerr-)dS_3 cosmology in Einstein gravity deformed by a minimally coupled scalar field. Various saddle-point contributions exp[i(saddle-point action)] to the Hartle-Hawking wave functions are computed with mini-superspace formalism. The saddle-point actions are first obtained in the spacetime bulks by direct computation, then on the asymptotic dS boundary by holographic renormalization. It is found that the imaginary part of the saddle-point actions, as functions of scalar field deformation, are generally bounded in the bulk, but can diverge to -infty on the boundary. This can probably be a source of the scalar field-related non-normalizability of the boundary Hartle-Hawking wave functions. For Kerr-dS_3 cosmology, some saddle-point actions have imaginary parts diverging to -infty both in the bulk and on the boundary, when the boundary T^2 is stretched to infinitely long. This can be an origin of non-normalizability of the boundary Hartle-Hawking wave functions related to temperature divergence. Finally the holographic renormalization is extended to scalar-deformed dS_{d+1} (d>= 3) cosmologies for the imaginary part of the saddle-point actions. The result is tested on a 5d example, and saddle points leading to divergent contribution to the boundary Hartle-Hawking wave function are shown to exist.

title: Lecture notes on thermodynamics of ideal string gases and its application in cosmology
abstract: In these lecture notes I give a pedagogical introduction to the thermodynamics of ideal string gases. The computation of thermodynamic quantities in the canonical ensemble formalism will be shown in detail with explicit examples. Attention will be given mainly to the thermodynamical consequences of string degrees of freedom, where I will especially address i) the Hagedorn temperature, a critical temperature above which the canonical ensemble description breaks down, which can be the onset point of some instability of the string gas; ii) the phase structure arising from compactification, embodied in the moduli-dependence of the Helmholtz free energy, which corrects the tree-level vacuum and can provide mechanism for moduli stabilization. Then I will briefly explain the implementation of string gas thermodynamics in cosmology, showing a simple example which gives rise to a radiation-dominated early universe. Further phenomenological issues and open questions will be discussed qualitatively with references indicated, including the Hagedorn instability in the resolution of the initial singularity, moduli stabilization, generation of hierarchy, radiative symmetry breaking and primordial cosmological fluctuations.

title: Stability of BTZ black strings
abstract: We study the dynamical stability of the Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black string against fermionic and gravitational perturbations. The BTZ black string is not always stable against these perturbations. There exist threshold values for m{sup 2} related to the compactification of the extra dimension for fermionic perturbation, the scalar part of the gravitational perturbation, and the tensor perturbation, respectively. Above the threshold values, perturbations are stable; while below these thresholds, perturbations can be unstable. We find that this nontrivial stability behavior qualitatively agrees with that predicted by a thermodynamical argument, showing that the BTZ black string phase is not the privileged stable phase.

title: Energy absorption problem of a brane-world black hole
abstract: We have studied the wave dynamics and the energy absorption problem for the scalar field as well as the brane-localized gravitational field in the background of a brane-world black hole. Comparing our results with the four-dimensional Schwarzschild black hole, we have observed the signature of the extra dimension in the energy absorption spectrum.

title: Topological limit of gravity admitting an SU(2) connection formulation
abstract: We study the Hamiltonian formulation of the generally covariant theory defined by the Lagrangian 4-form L=e{sub I} and e{sub J} and F{sup IJ}({omega}), where e{sup I} is a tetrad field and F{sup IJ} is the curvature of a Lorentz connection . This theory can be thought of as the limit of the Holst action for gravity for the Newton constant G{yields}{infinity} and Immirzi parameter {gamma}{yields}0, while keeping the product G{gamma} fixed. This theory has for a long time been conjectured to be topological. We prove this statement both in the covariant phase space formulation as well as in the standard Dirac formulation. In the time gauge, the unconstrained phase space of theory admits an SU(2) connection formulation which makes it isomorphic to the unconstrained phase space of gravity in terms of Ashtekar-Barbero variables. Among possible physical applications, we argue that the quantization of this topological theory might shed new light on the nature of the degrees of freedom that are responsible for black entropy in loop quantum gravity.

title: Moduli stabilization in type II Calabi-Yau compactifications at finite temperature
abstract: A bstractWe consider the type II superstring compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds, at finite temperature. The latter is implemented at the string level by a free action on the Euclidean time circle. We show that all Kähler and complex structure moduli involved in the gauge theories geometrically engineered in the vicinity of singular loci are lifted by the stringy thermal effective potential. The analysis is based on the effective gauged super-gravity at low energy, without integrating out the non-perturbative BPS states becoming massless at the singular loci. The universal form of the action in the weak coupling regime and at low enough temperature is determined in two cases. Namely, the conifold locus, as well as a locus where the internal space develops a genus-g curve of AN −1 singularities, thus realizing an SU(N ) gauge theory coupled to g hypermultiplets in the adjoint. In general, we argue that the favored points of stabilization sit at the intersection of several such loci. As a result, the entire vector multiplet moduli space is expected to be lifted, together with hypermultiplet moduli. The scalars are dynamically stabilized during the cosmological evolution induced by the back-reaction of the thermal effective potential on the originally static background. When the universe expands and the temperature T drops, the scalars converge to minima, with damped oscillations. Moreover, they store an energy density that scales as T4, which never dominates over radiation. The reason for this is that the mass they acquire at one-loop is of order the temperature scale, which is time-dependent rather than constant. As an example, we analyze the type IIA compactification on a hy-persurface $$ \mathbb{P}_{{\left(  \right)}}^4 $$ [12], with Hodge numbers h11 = 2 and h12 = 128. In this case, both Kähler moduli are stabilized at a point, where the internal space develops a node and an enhanced SU(2) gauge theory coupled to 2 adjoint hypermultiplets. This shows that in the dual thermal heterotic picture on K3 × T2, the torus modulus and the axio-dilaton are stabilized, though in a strong coupling heterotic regime.

title: The Statistic thermodynamical entropy of de Sitter space and its one loop correction
abstract: From the partition function of canonical ensemble we derive the entropy of the de Sitter space by anti-Wick rotation. And then from the one-loop bubble $S^2\times S^2$ created from vacuum fluctuation in de Sitter background space, we obtain the one-loop quantum correction to the entropy of de Sitter space.

title: The quantum cosmology in the Brans-Dicke theory
abstract: In this paper, we try to establish the quantum cosmology based on the Brans-Dicke gravitational theory. The most remarkable property of it is that the scale factora(t) has a lower limit, where the cosmological wave function approaches zero.

title: NON-ABELIAN VORTEX-STRING DYNAMICS FROM NONLINEAR REALIZATION
abstract: The dynamics of the non-Abelian vortex-string, which describes its low energy oscillations into the target D = 3+1 space–time as well as its orientations in the internal space, is derived by the approach of nonlinear realization. The resulting action correlating these two sectors is found to have an invariant synthesis form of the Nambu–Goto-CPN-1 model actions. Higher order corrections to the vortex actions are presented up to the order of quartic derivatives. General p-brane dynamics in terms of the internal symmetry breaking is also discussed.

title: Tetraquarks, hadronic molecules, meson-meson scattering and disconnected contributions in lattice QCD
abstract: There are generally two types of Wick contractions in lattice QCD calculations of a correlation function: connected and disconnected ones. The disconnected contribution is difficult to calculate and noisy, thus it is often neglected. In the context of studying tetraquarks, hadronic molecules, and mesonmeson scattering, we show that whenever there are both connected and singly disconnected contractions, the singly disconnected part gives the leading order contribution, and thus should never be neglected. As an explicit example, we show that information about the scalar mesons sigma, f(0)(980), a(0)(980), and kappa will be lost when neglecting the disconnected contributions.

title: Alignment of the ALICE inner tracking system with cosmic-ray tracks
abstract: ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment devoted to investigating the strongly interacting matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC energies. The ALICE ITS, Inner Tracking System, consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors with three different technologies; in the outward direction: two layers of pixel detectors, two layers each of drift, and strip detectors. The number of parameters to be determined in the spatial alignment of the 2198 sensor modules of the ITS is about 13,000. The target alignment precision is well below 10 mu m in some cases (pixels). The sources of alignment information include survey measurements, and the reconstructed tracks from cosmic rays and from proton-proton collisions. The main track-based alignment method uses the Millepede global approach. An iterative local method was developed and used as well. We present the results obtained for the ITS alignment using about 10(5) charged tracks from cosmic rays that have been collected during summer 2008, with the ALICE solenoidal magnet switched off.