Oscillating inflation with a nonminimally coupled scalar field
The oscillating inflation model recently proposed by Damour and Mukhanov is investigated with nonminimal coupling. Numerical study confirms an inflationary behavior and density perturbation is obtained. Successful inflation requires the gravity-dilaton coupling to be small.

title: Radiation Damping at a Bubble Wall
abstract: The first order phase transition proceeds via nucleation and growth of true vacuum bubbles. When charged particles collide with the bubble they could radiate electromagnetic wave. We show that, due to an energy loss of the particles by the radiation, the damping pressure acting on the bubble wall depends on the velocity of the wall even in a thermal equilibrium state.

title: Dark energy, inflation and the cosmic coincidence problem
abstract: We show that holographic dark energy could explain why the current dark energy density is so small, if there was an inflation with a sufficient expansion in the early universe. It is also suggested that an inflation with the number of e-folds N ≃ 65 may solve the cosmic coincidence problem in this context. Assuming the inflation and the power-law acceleration phase today we obtain approximate formulas for the event horizon size of the universe and dark energy density as functions of time. A simple numerical study exploiting the formula well reproduces the observed evolution of dark energy. This nontrivial match between the theory and the observational data supports both inflation and holographic dark energy models.

title: Black Hole as an Information Eraser
abstract: We discuss the identity of black hole entropy and show that the first law of black hole thermodynamics, in the case of a Schwarzschild black hole, can be derived from Landauer's principle by assuming that the black hole is one of the most efficient information erasers. The term "most efficient" implies that maximal information will be erased for a given amount of work. We calculate the discrete mass spectra and the entropy of a Schwarzschild black hole assuming that the black hole processes information in unit of bits. The black hole entropy acquires a subleading contribution proportional to the logarithm of its mass-squared in addition to the usual mass-squared term without an artificial cutoff. We also argue that the minimum of the black hole mass is $\sqrt{\log 2/(8\pi)}M_{\rm P}$.

title: Zero cosmological constant and nonzero dark energy from the holographic principle
abstract: The first law of thermodynamics and the holographic principle applied to an arbitrary large cosmic causal horizon are shown to naturally demand a zero cosmological constant and a non-zero dynamical dark energy in the form of the holographic dark energy. A semiclassical analysis shows that the holographic dark energy has a parameter d = 1 and an equation of state comparable to current observational data if the entropy of the horizon saturates the Bekenstein-Hawking bound. This result indicates that quantum field theory should be modified on a large scale to explain the dark energy. The relations among the dark energy, the quantum vacuum energy and the entropic gravity are also discussed.

title: BEC dark matter can explain collisions of galaxy clusters
abstract: We suggest that the dark matter model based on Bose Einstein condensate or scalar field can resolve the apparently contradictory behaviors of dark matter in the Abell 520 and the Bullet cluster. During a collision of two galaxies in the cluster, if initial kinetic energy of the galaxies is large enough, two dark matter halos pass each other in a soliton-like way as observed in the Bullet cluster. If not, the halos merge due to the tiny repulsive interaction among dark matter particles as observed in the Abell 520. This idea can also explain the origin of the dark galaxy and the galaxy without dark matter.

title: Classical stability of black D3-branes
abstract: We have investigated the classical stability of charged black D3-branes in the type-IIB supergravity under small perturbations. For s-wave perturbations it turns out that black D3-branes are unstable when they have small charge density. As the charge density increases for given mass density, however, the instability decreases down to zero at a certain finite value of the charge density, and then black D3-branes become stable all the way down to the extremal point. It has also been shown that such critical value at which its stability behavior changes agrees very well with the predicted one by the thermodynamic stability behavior of the corresponding black hole system through the Gubser-Mitra conjecture. Unstable mode solutions we found involve non-vanishing fluctuations of the self-dual five-form field strength. Some implications of our results are also discussed.

title: Photometric Properties of the Near-Contact Binary GW Geminorum
abstract: New multiband CCD photometry is presented for the eclipsing binary GW Gem; the RI light curves are the first ever compiled. Four new minimum timings have been determined. Our analysis of eclipse timings observed during the past 79 years indicates a continuous period increase at a fractional rate of +(1.2 ± 0.1) × 10-10, in excellent agreement with the value +1.1 × 10-10 calculated from the Wilson-Devinney binary code. The new light curves display an inverse O'Connell effect increasing toward longer wavelengths. Hot- and cool-spot models are developed to describe these variations but we prefer a cool spot on the secondary star. Our light-curve synthesis reveals that GW Gem is in a semidetached, but near-contact, configuration. It appears to consist of a near-main-sequence primary star with a spectral type of about A7 and an evolved early K-type secondary star that completely fills its inner Roche lobe. Mass transfer from the secondary to the primary component is responsible for the observed secular period change.

title: Recent Developments in Heavy-Quarkonium Phenomenology
abstract: We review recent developments in heavy-quarkonium phenomenology within the nonrelativistic QCD factorization approach. Main issues we consider in this work include the polarization of prompt J / ψ at the Fermilab Tevatron and the large relativistic and QCD corrections to double-charmonium production at the B factories. We also consider inclusive charm production in bottomonia decays.

title: Factorization in exclusive quarkonium production
abstract: We present factorization theorems for two exclusive heavy-quarkonium production processes: production of two quarkonia in ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ annihilation and production of a quarkonium and a light meson in $B$-meson decays. We describe the general proofs of factorization and supplement them with explicit one-loop analyses, which illustrate some of the features of the soft-gluon cancellations. We find that violations of factorization are generally suppressed relative to the factorized contributions by a factor ${v}^{2}{m}_{c}/Q$ for each $S$-wave charmonium and a factor ${m}_{c}/Q$ for each $L$-wave charmonium with $Lg0$. Here, $v$ is the velocity of the heavy quark or antiquark in the quarkonium rest frame, $Q=\sqrt{s}$ for ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ annihilation, $Q={m}_{B}$ for $B$-meson decays, $\sqrt{s}$ is the ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ center-of-momentum energy, ${m}_{c}$ is the charm-quark mass, and ${m}_{B}$ is the $B$-meson mass. There are modifications to the suppression factors if quantum-number restrictions apply for the specific process.

title: Leptogenesis in a seesaw model with Fritzsch-type lepton mass matrices
abstract: We investigate how the baryon asymmetry of our Universe via leptogenesis can be achieved within the framework of the seesaw model with Fritzsch-type lepton mass matrices proposed by Fukugita et al. We study the cases with $CP$-violating phases in charged-lepton Yukawa matrix, however, with and without Dirac neutrino Yukawa phases. We consider both flavor-independent and flavor-dependent leptogenesis, and demonstrate how they lead to different amounts of lepton asymmetries in detail. In particular, it is shown that flavor-dependent leptogenesis in this model can be achieved only for very tiny or zero values of $CP$ phases in Dirac neutrino Yukawa matrix at the grand unified theory scale. In addition to the $CP$ phases, for successful leptogenesis in the model it is required that the degeneracy of the heavy Majorana neutrino mass spectrum should be broken and we also show that the breakdown of the degeneracy can be radiatively induced.