Tuesday, April 23, 2019

general relativity - Can hyperbolic space be bounded?


There are many visualisations of hyperbolic geometry using Poincaré disks.




  1. What are their purpose?





  2. Can hyperbolic space be bounded?




  3. Can we endow the disk with the structure described by the FLRW metric?




  4. Does it have constant curvature?




  5. Could our universe be bounded, but yet still infinite like this?






Answer




What are their purpose?



The "purposes" of Hyperbolic geometries are many and varied in mathematics, but one stands out far beyond all others, at least historically as the purpose. Hyperbolic geometries were constructed to prove that the Euclid parallel postulate (see "Parallel Postulate" Wiki page) was logically independent of Euclid's other axioms of geometry. Before János Bolyai and Nikolai Lobachevsky discovered concrete examples of geometries that fulfilled all the other Euclid postulates, but not the parallel postulate in the 1820s, there were many notable supposed (but later shown to be flawed) "proofs" of the parallel postulate from Euclid's others (these are discussed on the Wiki page). But the concrete demonstration of a geometry fulfilling the other axioms but wherein the parallel postulate did not hold decisively showed that it could not be derived from the others alone: otherwise it would be in logical contradiction with the exhibited concrete models (see "Model Theory" Wiki page) that Bolyai and Lobachevsky discovered.


Another, probably the main, modern purpose (outside the study of hyperbolic geometry for its own sake) is as a local approximation to the geometry of a general manifold in a neighbourhood where the curvature can be taken as approximately constant and negative. It is "one step up" from the Euclidean / Minkowskian (signatured flat) local approximation to a manifold given by the tangent space. If you like, hyperbolic geometry (and henceforth I mean constant curvature hyperbolic geometry by these words) is like taking Taylor approximation to a suface to second order (in a region of negative curvature) where the tangent space is the first order Taylor approximation. In two dimensions, for example, hyperbolic geometry is a good approximation to the geometry on a surface in the neighbourhood of a saddle point.



Can hyperbolic space be bounded?




Truly constant curvature hyperbolic space cannot be compact in the topology that makes it hyperbolic: take the Poincaré disk model and witness that for any distance $d_0$, no matter how big, there are always points $u,\,v$ for which global minimum distance between them is greater. Take $u$ to be the centre of the Poincaré disk and $v$ to be the point given by $y=z=0$ and $x = \sqrt{\frac{\cosh(d_0+\epsilon)-1}{\cosh(d_0+\epsilon)+1}}$, where $\epsilon>0$ for example. However, manifolds which are locally hyperbolic can certainly be compact: intuitively this is obvious if you blow a balloon up and poke two fingers into its surface to give it two concave dimples. The saddle region in between the dimples is locally hyperbolic, but the global manifold is diffeomorphic to the compact 2-sphere.


However, you seem to be thinking something slightly different from my paragraph above, i.e. that the Poincaré disk is homeomorphic to a bounded but open i.e noncompact subspace of Euclidean space: let's hold this thought until I answer your last question.



Can we endow the disk with the structure described by the FLRW metric?



Yes you can. The Poincaré disk models constant negative curvature hyperbolic space, so one can think of the FLRW metric as a kind of dilation of the Poincaré disk by a function of the FLRW scale factor $a(t)$. See my calculations at the end of my answer to see this more clearly.



Could our universe be bounded, but yet still infinite like this?




As in Doetoe's answer, a nonlinear transformation maps an FLRW constant negative curvature onto a "finite" set - finite in the ambient Euclidean space. But the Minkowskian distance is what a being belonging to and living in this universe would measure. It is the only "physical" distance function in this universe, and such a universe always contains points arbitrarily distant from one another. So if you think of such a structure as bounded, then the answer is "yes", but this is a wholly artificial construction and has nothing to do with physics. You can always find a nonlinear transformation to map infinite regions to open, bounded ones. It is like mapping all time - the unbounded real line $\mathbb{R}$ to a finite interval by the transformation $\tau:\mathbb{R}\to(-1,\,1);\,\tau(x) = \tanh(x)$.


It may be helpful to you to understand that the Poincaré disk is the bijective ("information preserving" or "invertible") and isometric ("length and angle preserving") Stereographic Projection (see the "Relation to the hyperboloid model" section on the Poincaré disk Wiki page)) of the hyperboloid, an unbounded geometric object.





To see how the Poincaré disk fits in FLRW Metricwith the Reduced-circumference polar coordinates for the FLRW metric, we begin with:


$$\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}^2 = \frac{\mathrm{d}r^2}{1-k r^2} + r^2 \mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Omega}^2, \quad \text{where } \mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Omega}^2 = \mathrm{d}\theta^2 + \sin^2 \theta \, \mathrm{d}\phi^2\tag{1}$$


as on the Wiki page. Exactly as for the Schwarzschild metric, here $r = const$ parameterises the hypersphere centred on the origin such that the length of a geodesic around the hypersphere is $2\,\pi\,r$. $r$ does not correspond to the length of a geodesic joining a point on the hypersphere and the origin, aside from when the curvature $k$ is nought.


In terms of the ambient Euclidean co-ordinates $(x,\,y,\,z)$ for points on the Poincaré disk, we have:


$$\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}_P^2 = 4\,\frac{\mathrm{d}\,x^2+\mathrm{d}\,y^2+\mathrm{d}\,z^2}{(1-R^2)^2}\tag{2}$$


where $R=x^2+y^2+z^2$; take careful heed of the difference between little $r$ and big $R$. $R$ is the polar radial co-ordinate in the ambient Euclidean space and $\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}_P^2$ is the line element on the Poincaré disk. Therefore, the length of a great circle on the Poincaré disk is:



$$C(R)=\int_0^{2\,\pi}\, 2\,\frac{R}{1-R^2}\,\mathrm{d}\,\theta = 4\,\pi\,\frac{R}{1-R^2} = 2\,\pi\,r\tag{3}$$


the last step following from the definition of the reduced circumference radius, and so:


$$r = \frac{2\,R}{1-R^2}\tag{4}$$


and so:


$$\mathrm{d}r^2 = \frac{4\,(1+R^2)^2}{(1-R^2)^4}\,\mathrm{d}R^2\tag{5}$$


On substituting (4) and (5) into (1), but now (i) letting $\phi$ stand for the azimuthal co-ordinate on the plane wherein the tangent vector along which we measure the line element lies (i.e. without loss of generality we think of our tangent vector lying in the appropriate equatorial plane) and (ii) setting the constant curvature to be $k=-1$ we find:


$$\begin{array}{lcl}\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}^2 &=& \frac{\frac{4\,(1+R^2)^2}{(1-R^2)^4}}{1-k\,\left(\frac{2\,R}{1-R^2}\right)^2}\,\mathrm{d}R^2 + \frac{4\,R^2}{(1-R^2)^2}\,\mathrm{d}\Omega^2\\&=&\frac{4}{(1-R^2)^2}\left(\mathrm{d}R^2+R^2\,\mathrm{d}\,\phi^2\right)\\&=&4\frac{\mathrm{d}\,x^2+\mathrm{d}\,y^2+\mathrm{d}\,z^2}{(1-R^2)^2}\\&=&\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}_P^2\end{array}\tag{6}$$


i.e. is equal to the line element measured on the Poincaré disk.


special relativity - Results of two equivalent scenarios in SR


This is not a homework question. It may appear as noob to most of you but SR is not my area of expertise and hence it seems very complex to me.




Question: Consider that there are two in-line pin hole separated by some distance. Both the pinholes at rest w.r.t to each other. There is a light source that moves relative to the pinholes. The relative movement is normal to line joining the pinholes.



Case 1: I consider that pinholes is the rest frame and light source as moving. In this configuration when the light source and one of the pinholes are overlapping, a pulse of light can pass through the first pinhole and strike the other pinhole, passing it too.


Case 2: Now I consider pinholes to be moving and light source to be rest frame. From the rest frame of light source, I see that a pulse of light passes through the first pinhole during the overlap. This light pulse will travel to other pinhole but will not be able to pass the second pinhole because the pinhole has already moved. (For this to happen, I will assume suitable relative velocity and separation between the pinholes so that the second pinhole has moved enough to avoid avoid the light ray)


So, you see that although these two are equivalent scenarios, their result is not same. Now I believe that I might be wrong because the relative motion and light are normal to each other and hence it does not qualify to be equivalent scenarios and so their results are not bound to be same. Is my thinking correct? Or is there any other explanation or am I missing something important here?



Answer



It is important to consider whether the source emits dispersed light or directed ray.


These examples can be considered either as the Transverse Doppler Effect or the or longitudinal Relativistic Doppler Effect (to be exact - a mix of longitudinal and transverse components).


The first example is the Transverse Doppler effect.


If the source emits diffused light, photon will pass through both holes in both cases. It's not a problem, and the photon will be red shifted after passing through second pinhole. Please note that if a photon approached observer at right angle it was released at oblique angle in source's frame.



If the source is laser pointer, the laser pointer has to be tilted backward to direction of motion. The angle depends on relative velocity of the source and can be calculated employing relativistic aberration formula. Otherwise a photon will not go through the both pinholes. Neither in first nor in the second example. For example, if a laser pointer is directed at right angle to direction of it's motion, photon will not go through the holes. But, if laser pointer is tilted backward, the photon will pass through the both pinholes and it will be red shifted.


You can imagine a tube that connects pinholes.


Very simple animation in youtube. Maybe it helps to visualize.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnphFr2Iai4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-AAC4pemDI


Is there any evidence that subatomic particles are affected by gravity?


If so what experiment has been done to show this?



Answer



Yes. For the phrasing of this question, the neutron qualifies.


Neutrons have been slowed and collected, which are diverted from nuclear reactors via beamports. The methods for doing this are quite complicated, but in the final state, they are confined within a box where the "walls" present a nuclear barrier to the neutrons. The neutrons have a wavelength longer than the spacing between atoms in the wall, thus, they bounce off. An interesting fact about the design is that the containment area doesn't need a "top" because the neutrons are at such a low energy that thermal movement isn't enough for them to leap out. This phenomenon, alone, is a physical demonstration of gravitational affects on subatomic particles.



So thorough is our understanding and testing of these particles in gravity, that quantized levels of height have been observed for ultra-cold neutrons.


Monday, April 22, 2019

quantum mechanics - Quantitative contribution of kinetic and potential energies to the binding energy of the $sigma$ orbital in $text{H}_2$ or $text{H}_2^+$


When a hydrogen molecule forms, 4.52 eV of energy is released, while for $\text{H}_2^+$ the binding energy is 2.77 eV. Such a binding energy is the difference of energies that have four terms in them: (1) the kinetic energy of the electron(s), (2) the potential energy of the electron(s) interacting with the nuclei, (3) the electron-electron interaction, and (4) the proton-proton interaction.


Explanations of $\sigma$ bonding in freshman chemistry texts tend to focus on #2. However, if we want to explain the difference in energy between bonding and anti-bonding orbitals, then it seems plausible that there should be a large difference in kinetic energy, #1. This is because the KE of the bonding orbital is low compared to that of the antibonding orbital because the bonding orbital basically a particle in a long box with wavelength in the long direction equal to twice the length of the box. In the antibonding case, this component of the wave-vector should be basically doubled.


All four of these energy terms can be represented by quantum-mechanical observables, and they can therefore be defined numerically, and calculated for a given set of trial wavefunctions. How much of the truth is captured by explanations that only mention #2?




general relativity - Symmetrical twin paradox in a closed universe


Take the following gedankenexperiment in which two astronauts meet each other again and again in a perfectly symmetrical setting - a hyperspherical (3-manifold) universe in which the 3 dimensions are curved into the 4. dimension so that they can travel without acceleration in straight opposite directions and yet meet each other time after time.


On the one hand this situation is perfectly symmetrical - even in terms of homotopy and winding number. On the other hand the Lorentz invariance should break down according to GRT, so that one frame is preferred - but which one?


So the question is: Who will be older? And why?


And even if there is one prefered inertial frame - the frame of the other astronaut should be identical with respect to all relevant parameters so that both get older at the same rate. Which again seems to be a violation of SRT in which the other twin seems to be getting older faster/slower...


How should one find out what the preferred frame is when everything is symmetrical - even in terms of GRT?



And if we are back to a situation with a preferred frame: what is the difference to the classical Galilean transform? Don't we get all the problems back that seemed to be solved by RT - e.g. the speed limit of light, because if there was a preferred frame you should be allowed to classically add velocities and therefore also get speeds bigger than c ?!? (I know SRT is only a local theory but I don't understand why the global preferred frame should not 'override' the local one).


Could anyone please enlighten me (please in a not too technical way because otherwise I wouldn't understand!)


EDIT
Because there are still things that are unclear to me I posted a follow-up question: Here



Answer



Your question is addressed in the following paper:



The twin paradox in compact spaces
Authors: John D. Barrow, Janna Levin
Phys. Rev. A 63 no. 4, (2001) 044104

arXiv:gr-qc/0101014


Abstract: Twins travelling at constant relative velocity will each see the other's time dilate leading to the apparent paradox that each twin believes the other ages more slowly. In a finite space, the twins can both be on inertial, periodic orbits so that they have the opportunity to compare their ages when their paths cross. As we show, they will agree on their respective ages and avoid the paradox. The resolution relies on the selection of a preferred frame singled out by the topology of the space.



geometry - Tiling rectangles with Heptomino plus rectangle #4


Inspired by Polyomino T hexomino and rectangle packing into rectangle


See also series Tiling rectangles with F pentomino plus rectangles and Tiling rectangles with Hexomino plus rectangle #1


Previous puzzle in this series Tiling rectangles with Heptomino plus rectangle #3


Next puzzle in this series Tiling rectangles with Heptomino plus rectangle #6



The goal is to tile rectangles as small as possible with the given heptomino, in this case number 4 of the 108 heptominoes. We allow the addition of copies of a rectangle. For each rectangle $a\times b$, find the smallest area larger rectangle that copies of $a\times b$ plus at least one of the given heptomino will tile.


Example with the $1\times 1$ you can tile a $2\times 6$ as follows:


1x1_2x6


Now we don't need to consider $1\times 1$ further as we have found the smallest rectangle tilable with copies of the heptomino plus copies of $1\times 1$.


I found 31 more but lots of them can be found by 'expansion rules' or pattern variations. I considered component rectangles of width 1 through 11 and length to 32 but my search was far from complete.


List of known sizes:



  • Width 1: Lengths 1 to 15, 18, 22

  • Width 2: Lengths 2 to 9, 11, 15, 21

  • Width 3: Lengths 4, 5, 7


  • Width 4: Length 5


Most of these could be tiled by hand using logic rather than trial and error.




quantum mechanics - Why do neutron stars with more mass have smaller volume?


I know about Heisenberg uncertainty which makes more localized neutrons have a wider range of undefined momentum, and Pauli exclusion principle which prohibit neutrons from getting too close or "occupying the same quantum state" so as to say. But they only explain how neutron stars don't increase in volume while increasing in mass, yet it doesn't (at least from my understanding) explain how it gets smaller. I understand this degeneracy pressure only accounts for part of the opposing forces inside the neutron stars, with the others being a variety of stuff including strong force repulsion. I also know there are equations for calculating this, but I want to know if there's a more intuitive way of understanding how this phenomenon is created by these rules and forces or if there is a good explanation as to how the equations was formed and what they meant



Answer




Try this argument.


To be in hydrostatic equilibrium, the pressure gradient inside a star must equal (minus) the density multiplied by the gravitational field $$ \frac{dP}{dr} = - \rho g$$


If we take the average pressure gradient to be $-P_c/R$, where $R$ is the stellar radius and $P_c$ is the central pressure, then this will roughly be equal to average density multiplied by the average gravitational field. So in proportionality terms $$ \frac{P_c}{R} \sim \frac{M}{R^3}\frac{M}{R^2}\, ,$$ where $M$ is the stellar mass and thus $$ P_c \sim M^2 R^{-4} \tag*{(1)}$$


The relationship between mass and radius will depend on what provides the pressure.


If it is perfect gas pressure (in a non-degenerate star), then $P_c \propto \rho T \sim MT/R^3$. But in a main sequence star, the core temperature is roughly fixed, because hydrogen burning has a strong temperature dependence and hardly changes as the mass changes. Thus we have from eqn (1): $$ P_c \sim MR^{-3} \propto M^2 R^{-4}$$ $$ \rightarrow \ \ \ \ R \propto M $$


Now consider (non-relativistic) degeneracy pressure. This scales as $\rho^{5/3}$ and is independent of temperature. Thus $P_c \propto M^{5/3} R^{-5}$. Putting this into eqn (1): $$P_c \sim M^{5/3} R^{-5} \propto M^2 R^{-4}$$ $$ \rightarrow \ \ \ \ R \propto M^{-1/3} $$


Note that real neutron stars are not governed by the ideal equation of state for degenerate neutrons. Neutrons in fact are strongly intercting particles when compressed to separations of $\sim 10^{-15}$ m. The interaction is repulsive and leads to a "hardening" of the equation of state, such that $P_c \sim \rho^2 \propto M^2 R^{-6}$. If we put this into equation (1) we find that there is only one value of $R$ that will satisfy the equation. i.e. That the radius does not depend on mass. If you look at many examples of theoretical mass-radius relations for neutron stars you will see that there usually is a range of masses for which the radius is nearly constant.


classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...