Related papers: Charges suspended by strings: a new twist to an ol…
Jamming is a phenomenon occurring in systems as diverse as traffic, colloidal suspensions and granular materials. A theory on the reversible elastic deformation of jammed states is presented. First, an explicit granular stress-strain…
Some recent experimental and theoretical work on 1) charge symmetry-breaking, 2) parity non-conservation, and 3) searches for breaking of time reversal invariance are reviewed. The examples illustrate the uses of symmetry to learn about…
String theory and supersymmetry are theoretical ideas that go beyond the standard model of particle physics and show promise for unifying all forces. After a brief introduction to supersymmetry, we discuss the prospects for its experimental…
Colloidal suspensions and polyelectrolyte solutions containing multivalent counterions can exhibit some very counter-intuitive behavior usually associated with the low temperature physics. There are two particularly striking phenomena…
We examine whether fluctuation-induced forces can lead to stable levitation. First, we analyze a collection of classical objects at finite temperature that contain fixed and mobile charges, and show that any arrangement in space is unstable…
Systems of interacting networks of strings such as cosmic strings or quantum vortices can be approximated in a certain regime as an anisotropic fluid with an equation of state depending on a conserved flux. The equations for ideal…
We study the interaction potential between two polyions inside a colloidal suspension. It is shown that at large separation the interaction potential is purely repulsive, with the induced attractive interactions being doubly screened. For…
Based on a reconsideration of the Gibbs paradox, we show that a residual, non-extensive term in entropy turns up upon mixing identical particles, whether they are indistinguishable or not. The positive contribution from this residual…
The fascinating and anomalous behaviour of a chain that instead of falling straight down under gravity, first rises and then falls, acquiring a steady shape in space that resembles a fountain's sprinkle, has recently attracted both popular…
The origin of the string conformal anomaly is studied in detail. We use a reformulated string Lagrangian which allows to consider the string tension $T_{0}$ as a small perturbation. The expansion parameter is the worldsheet speed of light…
String theory predicts that the couplings of Nature descend from dynamical fields. All known string-motivated particle physics models also come with a wide range of possible extra sectors. It is common to posit that such moduli are frozen…
We derive the equations of motion for general strings, i.e. strings with arbitrary relation between tension $\tau$ and energy per unit length $\epsilon$. The renormalization of $\tau$ and $\epsilon$ that results from averaging out small…
Standard formulae of classical electromagnetism for the forces between electric charges in motion derived from retarded potentials are compared with those obtained from a recently developed relativistic classical electrodynamic theory with…
It is shown that stringy charge leads naturally to an observable magnetic moment of the electron.
The mechanism by which gauge and gravitational anomalies cancel in certain string theories is reviewed. The presentation is aimed at theorists who do not necessarily specialize in string theory.
We study the possibility of extended inflation in the effective theory of gravity from strings compactified to four dimensions and find that it strongly depends on the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking. We consider a general class of…
Two oppositely charged droplets of (say) water in e.g. oil or air will tend to drift together under the influence of their charges. As they make contact, one might expect them to coalesce and form one large droplet, and this indeed happens…
Three-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to zero, one and two forms is solved in terms of a polyhomogeneous asymptotic expansion, generalising stationary black string solutions. From first order terms we obtain, in closed form, a new…
We review the current status of the singularity problem in string theory for non-experts. After the problem is discussed from the point of view of supergravity, we discuss classic examples and recent examples of singularity resolution in…
An elastic double pendulum subject to a force acting along a fixed straight line, the so-called "Reut's column problem", is a structure exhibiting flutter and divergence instability, which was never realized in practice and thus debated…