Conference

I describe a variety of bubbles of nothing which do not require a Kaluza-Klein circle but instead may be found in asymptotically flat or AdS spaces without any identifications.  There are many such bubbles which expand outwards and threaten to destabilize spacetimes with more than four dimensions.   In the AdS case, one can show there are both bubbles and topologically trivial smooth states which violate all of the energy bounds, both classical and quantum, in the corresponding gauge theory.

We argue that, within a broad class of extensions of the Standard Model, there is a tight corellation between the dynamics of the electroweak phase transition and the cubic self-coupling of the Higgs boson: Models which exhibit a strong first-order electroweak phase transition predict a large deviation of the Higgs self-coupling from the Standard Model prediction, as long as no accidental cancellations occur. Order-one deviations are typical. This shift would be observable at the Large Hadron Collider if the proposed luminosity or energy upgrades are realized, as well as at a future electron-positron collider such as the proposed International Linear Collider. These measurements would provide a laboratory test of the dynamics of the electroweak phase transition.

Loop quantum cosmology is a non-perturbative canonical quantization of simple cosmological models based on loop quantum gravity. In recent years, a greater control on the underlying quantum theory has revealed a picture where the big bang is replaced by a quantum bounce at Planck scale. The evolution across the bounce is unitary and non-singular without a need of choice of exotic potential or matter. By analysis of an exactly solvable model of a homogeneous and isotropic spacetime we will describe how the backward evolution of our universe with the quantum constraint leads to a pre big bang branch. We will also discuss the way it predicts modifications to Friedman dynamics at high curvatures, contrasts with the Wheeler-DeWitt scenario and semi-classicality across the bounce.

According to Doering and Isham the spectral topos corresponds to any quantum system. The descriptions of the systems become similar to these given by classical theories. Topoi can also modify local smooth spacetime structure. Supposing that a quantum system modifies the local spacetime structure and interacts with a gravitational field via the spectral topos, a natural pattern for non-gravitating quantum zero-point modes of the system, appears. A way how to add gravity into the spectral topos of a system is presented. A theory of gravity and systems should be symmetric with respect to some 2-group derived from the category of systems. Hence, a fundamental symmetry of gravity is rather 2-group of automorphisms of the category of systems. This higher symmetry is responsible for the vanishing of the cotributions to the cosmological constant derived from zero-point modes of energy of quantum systems in spacetime. A connection with strings (via the coefficients of the 2-connection of some 2-bundle, with this 2group as the structure group) is also shown. Institute of Physics, University of Silesia

Searches for neutrinoless double beta decays could determine if neutrinos are Majorana particles and could measure their absolute mass scale. The initial stage of the Enriched Xenon Observatory project, EXO-200, will look for two-neutrino and neutrinoless double-beta decays of Xe-136 in a liquid-xenon time-projection chamber. By combining the ionization signal with detection of the scintillation light collected in Large Area Avalanche Photodiodes (LAAPDs), an energy resolution of about 1.4% at the decay energy can be achieved. All construction materials have been systematically selected to minimize naturally-occurring radioactive impurities. An active muon veto is presently under construction. Using these background reduction techniques and the available 200 kg of isotopically enriched xenon (80% in Xe-136), EXO-200 will be soon able to test present constraints on the effective Majorana-neutrino mass. It will also serve to demonstrate the potential performance of a larger-scale EXO experiment which will further reduce backgrounds by detecting the residual Ba ion produced in the decay. Installation of the EXO-200 detector is now in progress at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.

Linear confinement in holographic QCD can be obtained with a soft-wall quadratic dilaton background. We present a dynamical five-dimensional model realizing this setup and discuss the implications for the hypothetical string theory dual to QCD.

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargue, Argentina, is the world\'s largest detector for the study of the origin of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. The experiment stretches over 3000 km^2 and measures cosmic rays with energies above 10^18 eV using two complementary detector types: an array of 1600 particle detectors on the ground, and 4 fluorescence detectors overlooking the ground array from the periphery. The Observatory is now nearing completion, but scientific data taking started at the beginning of 2004. The analysis of the data shows first indications that the arrival direction distribution of the highest energy cosmic rays is not isotropic, but might be associated with the positions of nearby extragalactic objects. In this talk, I will review recent results from the first few years of data taking.

We systematically explore the parameter space of the state-of-the-art brane-antibrane inflation model (Baumann et al.) which is most rigorously derived from string theory, applying the COBE normalization and constraints on the spectral index. We define an effective volume in parameter space consistent with the constraints, and show that the fine tuning problem is this model is alleviated by four orders of magnitude for the optimal parameter values, relative to a fiducial point which has previously been considered. We also discuss the overshooting problem in this model which restricts the allowed initial conditions on the brane-antibrane separation, showing that the allowed region is expanded (by a factor of 5) when optimal model parameters are chosen. We point out a subtlety for getting correct predictions in the approximation of effective single field inflation, where the Kahler modulus is integrated out.

The validity of the perturbative analysis during inflation imposes bounds on the inflationary parameters. For single field inflation, the current experimental bounds on non-Gaussianity necessarily imply that the physics is weakly coupled at CMB scales. In this talk, I will show that for models with a scale dependent sound speed, the system can become strongly coupled at lower scale. I will also discuss multiple field models which can produce non-Gaussianity at CMB scales. In these scenarios, the extra scalar fields are strongly coupled in a large part of the parameter space.