Samir D. Mathur

Cosmology presents us with several puzzles that are related to the fundamental structure of quantum theory. We discuss three such puzzles, linking them to effects that arise in black hole physics. We speculate that puzzles in cosmology may be resolved by the vecro structure of the vacuum that resolves the information paradox and the `bags of gold' problem for black holes.

A. A. Eremko, L. Brizhik, V. M. Loktev

The Dirac equation with the Coulomb potential is studied. It is shown that there exists a new invariant in addition to the known Dirac and Johnson-Lippman ones. The solution of the Dirac equation, using the generalized invariant, and explicit expressions for the bispinors corresponding to the three sets of the invariants, their eigenvalues and quantum numbers are obtained. The general solution of the Dirac equation with the Coulomb potential is shown to contain free parameters, whose variation transforms one particular solution into any other and controls spatial electron probability amplitude and spin polarization. The electron probability densities and spin polarizations are obtained in the general form and calculated explicitly for some electron states in the hydrogen-like energy spectrum. The spatial distributions of these characteristics are shown to depend essentially on the invariant set, demonstrating physical difference of the states corresponding to different invariants.

Hua-Yu Yang, Ping He, Weishan Zhu, Long-Long Feng

The cosmic baryonic fluid at low redshifts is similar to a fully developed turbulence. In this work, we use simulation samples produced by the hybrid cosmological hydrodynamical/N-body code, to investigate on what scale the deviation of spatial distributions between baryons and dark matter is caused by turbulence. For this purpose, we do not include the physical processes such as star formation, supernovae (SNe) and active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback into our code, so that the effect of turbulence heating for IGM can be exhibited to the most extent. By computing cross-correlation functions $r_m(k)$ for the density field and $r_v(k)$ for the velocity field of both baryons and dark matter, we find that deviations between the two matter components for both density field and velocity field, as expected, are scale-dependent. That is, the deviations are the most significant at small scales and gradually diminish on larger and larger scales. Also, the deviations are time-dependent, i.e. they become larger and larger with increasing cosmic time. The most emphasized result is that the spatial deviations between baryons and dark matter revealed by velocity field are more significant than that by density field. At z = 0, at the 1% level of deviation, the deviation scale is about 3.7 $h^{-1}$Mpc for density field, while as large as 23 $h^{-1}$Mpc for velocity field, a scale that falls within the weakly non-linear regime for the structure formation paradigm. Our results indicate that the effect of turbulence heating is indeed comparable to that of these processes such as SN and AGN feedback.

Dong Jin Lee, Dong-han Yeom

In this paper, we critically revisit the Horowitz-Maldacena proposal and its generalization of Lloyd. In the original proposal, as well as in Lloyd's generalization, Hawking radiation involves a pair of maximally entangled quantum states in which the ingoing partner state and the collapsed matter form either a maximally entangled pair or a Schmidt decomposed state near the singularity. However, this cannot be the most generic state if there is an interaction between the collapsing matter and the incoming Hawking radiation. In opposition to Lloyd's conclusion such that information can almost certainly escape from a black hole, we analytically and numerically confirm that information will almost certainly be lost because the fidelity will approach zero as the degrees of freedom increase.

Juan Calderón Bustillo, Nicolas Sanchis-Gual, Alejandro Torres-Forné, José A. Font, Avi Vajpeyi, Rory Smith, Carlos Herdeiro, Eugen Radu, Samson H. W. Leong

Advanced LIGO-Virgo reported a short gravitational-wave signal (GW190521) interpreted as a quasi-circular merger of black holes, one populating the pair-instability supernova gap, forming a remnant black hole of $M_f\sim 142 M_\odot$ at a luminosity distance of $d_L \sim 5.3$ Gpc. With barely visible pre-merger emission, however, GW190521 merits further investigation of the pre-merger dynamics and even of the very nature of the colliding objects. We show that GW190521 is consistent with numerically simulated signals from head-on collisions of two (equal mass and spin) horizonless vector boson stars (aka Proca stars), forming a final black hole with $M_f = 231^{+13}_{-17}\,M_\odot$, located at a distance of $d_L = 571^{+348}_{-181}$ Mpc. The favoured mass for the ultra-light vector boson constituent of the Proca stars is $\mu_{\rm V}= 8.72^{+0.73}_{-0.82}\times10^{-13}$ eV. This provides the first demonstration of close degeneracy between these two theoretical models, for a real gravitational-wave event. Confirmation of the Proca star interpretation, which we find statistically slightly preferred, would provide the first evidence for a long sought dark matter particle.

Gero von Gersdorff

Maybe the biggest puzzle in grand unified theories (GUTs) is the apparent large splitting of the doublet and triplet Higgs masses. We suggest a novel mechanism to solve this puzzle, which relies on the clockwork mechanism to generate large hierarchies from order-one numbers. The tension between gauge coupling unification and proton lifetime from minimal SU(5) GUTs is also removed in this scenario, and the theory remains perturbative until the Planck scale.

Elisabetta Baracchini, William DeRocco, Giorgio Dho

Supernovae can produce vast fluxes of new particles with masses on the MeV scale, a mass scale of interest for models of light dark matter. When these new particles become diffusively trapped within the supernova, the escaping flux will emerge semirelativistic with an order-one spread in velocities. As a result, overlapping emissions from Galactic supernovae will produce an overall flux of these particles at Earth that is approximately constant in time. However, this flux is highly anisotropic and is steeply peaked towards the Galactic center. This is in contrast with the cosmological abundance of a WIMP-like dark matter which, due to the rotation of the Galaxy, appears to come from the direction of the Cygnus constellation. In this paper, we demonstrate the need for a directional detector to efficiently discriminate between a signal from a cold cosmological abundance of GeV-scale WIMPs and a signal from a hot population of supernova-produced MeV-scale dark matter.