You can see a clock running backwards in time

The epitome of acausal or anti-chronological behaviour would be to see a clock running backwards in time. In this essay we point out that this is indeed possible, but there is no problem with causality. What you see isnt what is really happening. Locally, causality is always respected. However our observation should be cause for pause to astronomers and cosmologists, who strictly observe events occurring at very large distances or very long ago and certainly not locally. It can be that what you see isnt what you necessarily get.

Stable, thin wall, negative mass bubbles in de Sitter space-time

Negative mass makes perfect physical sense as long as the dominant energy condition is satisfied by the corresponding energy-momentum tensor. Heretofore, only {it configurations} of negative mass had been found cite{Belletete:2013nqa,Mbarek:2014ppa}, the analysis did not address stability or dynamics. In this paper, we analyze both of these criteria. We demonstrate the existence of {it stable}, static, negative mass bubbles in an asymptotically de Sitter space-time. The bubbles are solutions of the Einstein equations and correspond to an interior region of space-time containing a specific mass distribution, separated by a thin wall from the exact, negative mass Schwarzschild-de Sitter space-time in the exterior. We apply the Israel junction conditions at the wall. For the case of an interior corresponding simply to de Sitter space-time with a different cosmological constant from the outside space-time, separated by a thin wall with energy density that is independent of the radius, we find static but unstable solutions which satisfy the dominant energy condition everywhere. The bubbles can collapse through spherically symmetric configurations to the exact, singular, negative mass Schwarzschild-de Sitter solution. Interestingly, this provides a counter-example of the cosmic censorship hypothesis. Alternatively, the junction conditions can be used to give rise to an interior mass distribution that depends on the potential for the radius of the wall. We show that for no choice of the potential, for positive energy density on the wall that is independent of the radius, can we get a solution that is non-singular at the origin. However, if we allow the energy density on the wall to depend on the radius of the bubble, we can find {it stable}, static, non-singular solutions of negative mass which everywhere satisfy the dominant energy condition.

Transition from a Dirac spin liquid to an antiferromagnet: Monopoles in a QED3-Gross-Neveu theory

We study the quantum phase transition from a Dirac spin liquid to an antiferromagnet driven by condensing monopoles with spin quantum numbers. We describe the transition in field theory by tuning a fermion interaction to condense a spin-Hall mass, which in turn allows the appropriate monopole operators to proliferate and confine the fermions. We compute various critical exponents at the quantum critical point (QCP), including the scaling dimensions of monopole operators by using the state-operator correspondence of conformal field theory. We find that the degeneracy of monopoles in QED3 is lifted and yields a non-trivial monopole hierarchy at the QCP. In particular, the lowest monopole dimension is found to be smaller than that of QED3 using a large $N_f$ expansion where $2N_f$ is the number of fermion flavors. For the minimal magnetic charge, this dimension is $0.39N_f$ at leading order. We also study the QCP between Dirac and chiral spin liquids, which allows us to test a conjectured duality to a bosonic CP$^1$ theory. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for quantum magnets on the Kagome lattice.

New sources of gravitational wave signals: The black hole graviton laser

A graviton laser works, in principle, by the stimulated emission of coherent gravitons from a lasing medium. For significant amplification, we must have a very long path length and/or very high densities. Black holes and the existence of weakly interacting sub-eV dark matter particles (WISPs) solve both of these obstacles. Orbiting trajectories for massless particles around black holes are well understood cite{mtw} and allow for arbitrarily long graviton path lengths. Superradiance from Kerr black holes of WISPs can provide the sufficiently high density cite{ABH}. This suggests that black holes can act as efficient graviton lasers. Thus directed graviton laser beams have been emitted since the beginning of the universe and give rise to new sources of gravitational wave signals. To be in the path of particularly harmfully amplified graviton death rays will not be pleasant.

The twin paradox: the role of acceleration

The twin paradox, which evokes from the the idea that two twins may age differently because of their relative motion, has been studied and explained ever since it was first described in 1906, the year after special relativity was invented. The question can be asked: Is there anything more to say? It seems evident that acceleration has a role to play, however this role has largely been brushed aside since it is not required in calculating, in a preferred reference frame, the relative age difference of the twins. Indeed, if one tries to calculate the age difference from the point of the view of the twin that undergoes the acceleration, then the role of the acceleration is crucial and cannot be dismissed. In the resolution of the twin paradox, the role of the acceleration has been denigrated to the extent that it has been treated as a red-herring. This is a mistake and shows a clear misunderstanding of the twin paradox.

Graviton laser

We consider the possibility of creating a graviton laser. The lasing medium would be a system of contained, ultra cold neutrons. Ultra cold neutrons are a quantum mechanical system that interacts with gravitational fields and with the phonons of the container walls. It is possible to create a population inversion by pumping the system using the phonons. We compute the rate of spontaneous emission of gravitons and the rate of the subsequent stimulated emission of gravitons. The gain obtainable is directly proportional to the density of the lasing medium and the fraction of the population inversion. The applications of a graviton laser would be interesting.

The phase-diagram of the Blume-Capel-Haldane-Ising spin chain

We consider the one-dimensional spin chain for arbitrary spin $s$ on a periodic chain with $N$ sites, the generalization of the chain that was studied by Blume and Capel cite{bc}: $$H=sum_{i=1}^N left(a (S^z_i)^2+ b S^z_iS^z_{i+1}right).$$ The Hamiltonian only involves the $z$ component of the spin thus it is essentially an Ising cite{Ising} model. The Hamiltonian also figures exactly as the anisotropic term in the famous model studied by Haldane cite{haldane} of the large spin Heisenberg spin chain cite{bethe}. Therefore we call the model the Blume-Capel-Haldane-Ising model. Although the Hamiltonian is trivially diagonal, it is actually not always obvious which eigenstate is the ground state. In this paper we establish which state is the ground state for all regions of the parameter space and thus determine the phase diagram of the model. We observe the existence of solitons-like excitations and we show that the size of the solitons depends only on the ratio $a/b$ and not on the number of sites $N$. Therefore the size of the soliton is an intrinsic property of the soliton not determined by boundary conditions.

Gravitationally induced quantum transitions

In this letter, we calculate the probability for resonantly induced transitions in quantum states due to time dependent gravitational perturbations. Contrary to common wisdom, the probability of inducing transitions is not infinitesimally small. We consider a system of ultra cold neutrons (UCN), which are organized according to the energy levels of the Schrodinger equation in the presence of the earths gravitational field. Transitions between energy levels are induced by an oscillating driving force of frequency $omega$. The driving force is created by oscillating a macroscopic mass in the neighbourhood of the system of neutrons. The neutrons decay in 880 seconds while the probability of transitions increase as $t^2$. Hence the optimal strategy is to drive the system for 2 lifetimes. The transition amplitude then is of the order of $1.06times 10^{-5}$ hence with a million ultra cold neutrons, one should be able to observe transitions.

Solitons in an effective theory of CP violation

We study an effective field theory describing CP-violation in a scalar meson sector. We write the simplest interaction that we can imagine, $${cal L}sim epsilon_{i_1cdots i_5}epsilon^{mu_1cdotsmu_4}phi_{i_1}partial_{mu_1}phi_{i_2}partial_{mu_2}phi_{i_3}partial_{mu_3}phi_{i_4}partial_{mu_4}phi_{i_5}$$ which involves 5 scalar fields. The theory describes CP-violation only when it contains scalar fields representing mesons such as the $K^*_0$, sigma, $f_0$ or $a_0$. If the fields represent pseudo-scalar mesons, such as B, K and $pi$ mesons then the Lagrangian describes anomalous processes such as $KKto pipipi$. We speculate that the field theory contains long lived excitations corresponding to $Q$-ball type domain walls expanding through space-time. In an 1+1 dimensional, analogous, field theory we find an exact, analytic solution corresponding to such solitons. The solitons have a U(1) charge $Q$, which can be arbitrarily high, but oddly, the energy behaves as $Q^{2/3}$ for large charge, thus the configurations are stable under disintegration into elementary charged particles of mass $m$ with $Q=1$. We also find analytic complex instanton solutions which have finite, positive Euclidean action.

Tunneling decay of false domain walls: the silence of the lambs

We study the decay of false domain walls, which are metastable states of the quantum theory where the true vacuum is trapped inside the wall, with the false vacuum outside. We consider a theory with two scalar fields, a shepherd field and a field of sheep. The shepherd field serves to herd the solitons of the sheep field so that they are nicely bunched together. However, quantum tunnelling of the shepherd field releases the sheep to spread out uncontrollably. We show how to calculate the tunnelling amplitude for such a disintegration.