Cu-rich magnesioferrite was found in vesicular basaltic trachyandesite in one of lava tubes (Duplex) that formed during the 2012-2013 eruption of the Tolbachik volcano, Kamchatka. This mineral is commonly associated with hematite, tenorite, halite, sylvite, and Ca-rich silicates (mainly, esseneite and Na-rich melilite) in high-temperature (800-1000 degrees C) reactionary zones (up to 100 mu m) covering vesicular rocks and lava stalactites in the Duplex tube. The mineral relationships of this assemblage indicate the following crystallization sequence: Ca-rich silicates + hematite -> Cu-rich magnesioferrite -> tenorite -> chlorides. This formed due to the reaction of hot gases containing Cu, alkalis, and Cl with solidified lava rock. The composition of magnesioferrite varies strongly in CuO (5.8-17.3 wt %; cuprospinel end-member-15-47 mol %), whereas the contents of other oxides are minor, indicating the main isomorphic substitution is Mg2+ Cu2+. Compositions with maximal CuO content nominally belong to Mg-rich cuprospinel: (Cu0.48Mg0.41Mn0.09Zn0.02Ca0.02) (Fe1.943+Al0.03Ti0.02)O-4. Increasing CuO content of the Duplex Cu-rich magnesioferrite is reflected in Raman spectra by moderate right shifting bands at approximate to 700-710 and 200-210 cm(-1) and the appearance of an additional band at 596 cm(-1). This supports the main isomorphic scheme and may indicate a degree of inversion in the spinel structure.

Adding an extra singlet scalar S to the Higgs sector can provide a barrier at tree level between a false vacuum with restored electroweak symmetry and the true one. This has been demonstrated to readily give a strong phase transition as required for electroweak baryogenesis. We show that with the addition of a fermionic dark matter particle chi coupling to S, a simple UV-complete model can realize successful electroweak baryogenesis. The dark matter gets a CP asymmetry that is transferred to the standard model through a CP portal interaction, which we take to be a coupling of chi to tau leptons and an inert Higgs doublet. The CP asymmetry induced in left-handed tau leptons biases sphalerons to produce the baryon asymmetry. The model has promising discovery potential at the LHC, while robustly providing a large enough baryon asymmetry and correct dark matter relic density with reasonable values of the couplings.

We study inflation with the non-minimally coupled Standard Model Higgs in the case when quantum corrections generate a hilltop in the potential. We consider both the metric and the Palatini formulation of general relativity. We investigate hilltop inflation in different parts of the Higgs potential and calculate predictions for CMB observables. We run the renormalization group equations up from the electroweak scale and down from the hilltop, adding a jump in-between to account for unknown corrections in the intermediate regime. Within our approximation, no viable hilltop inflation is possible for small field values, where the non-minimal coupling has no role, nor for intermediate field values. For large field values, hilltop inflation works. We find the spectral index to be n(s)

We study the impact of stochastic noise on the generation of primordial black hole (PBH) seeds in ultra-slow-roll (USR) inflation with numerical simulations. We consider the non-linearity of the system by consistently taking into account the noise dependence on the inflaton perturbations, while evolving the perturbations on the coarse-grained background affected by the noise. We capture in this way the non-Markovian nature of the dynamics, and demonstrate that non-Markovian effects are subleading. Using the Delta N formalism, we find the probability distribution P(R) of the comoving curvature perturbation R. We consider inflationary potentials that fit the CMB and lead to PBH dark matter with i) asteroid, ii) solar, or iii) Planck mass, as well as iv) PBHs that form the seeds of supermassive black holes. We find that stochastic effects enhance the PBH abundance by a factor of O(10)-O(10(8)), depending on the PBH mass. We also show that the usual approximation, where stochastic kicks depend only on the Hubble rate, either underestimates or overestimates the abundance by orders of magnitude, depending on the potential. We evaluate the gauge dependence of the results, discuss the quantum-to-classical transition, and highlight open issues of the application of the stochastic formalism to USR inflation.

It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantized metric perturbations. We consider the issue in a semiclassical setup in which only matter is quantized, and spacetime is classical. We assume that the state collapses on a spacelike hypersurface and find that the spectrum of scalar perturbations depends on the hypersurface. For reasonable choices, we can recover the usual inflationary predictions for scalar perturbations in minimally coupled single-field models. In models where nonminimal coupling to gravity is important and the field value is sub-Planckian, we do not get a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of scalar perturbations. As gravitational waves are only produced at second order, the tensor-to-scalar ratio is negligible. We conclude that detection of inflationary gravitational waves would indeed be needed to have observational evidence of quantization of gravity.

Sterile neutrinos are one of the leading dark matter candidates. Their masses may originate from a vacuum expectation value of a scalar field. If the sterile neutrino couplings are very small and their direct coupling to the inflaton is forbidden by the lepton number symmetry, the leading dark matter production mechanism is the freeze-in scenario. We study this possibility in the neutrino mass range up to 1 GeV, taking into account relativistic production rates based on the Bose-Einstein statistics, thermal masses and phase transition effects. The specifics of the production mechanism and the dominant mode depend on the relation between the scalar and sterile neutrino masses as well as on whether or not the scalar is thermalized. We find that the observed dark matter abundance can be produced in all of the cases considered. We also revisit the freeze-in production of a Higgs portal scalar, pointing out the importance of a fusion mode, as well as the thermalization constraints.

We report on the implications for cosmic inflation of the 2018 release of the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements. The results are fully consistent with those reported using the data from the two previous Planck cosmological releases, but have smaller uncertainties thanks to improvements in the characterization of polarization at low and high multipoles. Planck temperature, polarization, and lensing data determine the spectral index of scalar perturbations to be n(s)=0.9649 +/- 0.0042 at 68% CL. We find no evidence for a scale dependence of n(s), either as a running or as a running of the running. The Universe is found to be consistent with spatial flatness with a precision of 0.4% at 95% CL by combining Planck with a compilation of baryon acoustic oscillation data. The Planck 95% CL upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r(0.002)<0.10, is further tightened by combining with the BICEP2/Keck Array BK15 data to obtain r(0.002)<0.056. In the framework of standard single-field inflationary models with Einstein gravity, these results imply that: (a) the predictions of slow-roll models with a concave potential, V(phi) <0, are increasingly favoured by the data; and (b) based on two different methods for reconstructing the inflaton potential, we find no evidence for dynamics beyond slow roll. Three different methods for the non-parametric reconstruction of the primordial power spectrum consistently confirm a pure power law in the range of comoving scales 0.005 Mpc(-1)k less than or similar to 0.2 Mpc(-1). A complementary analysis also finds no evidence for theoretically motivated parameterized features in the Planck power spectra. For the case of oscillatory features that are logarithmic or linear in k, this result is further strengthened by a new combined analysis including the Planck bispectrum data. The new Planck polarization data provide a stringent test of the adiabaticity of the initial conditions for the cosmological fluctuations. In correlated, mixed adiabatic and isocurvature models, the non-adiabatic contribution to the observed CMB temperature variance is constrained to 1.3%, 1.7%, and 1.7% at 95% CL for cold dark matter, neutrino density, and neutrino velocity, respectively. Planck power spectra plus lensing set constraints on the amplitude of compensated cold dark matter-baryon isocurvature perturbations that are consistent with current complementary measurements. The polarization data also provide improved constraints on inflationary models that predict a small statistically anisotropic quadupolar modulation of the primordial fluctuations. However, the polarization data do not support physical models for a scale-dependent dipolar modulation. All these findings support the key predictions of the standard single-field inflationary models, which will be further tested by future cosmological observations.

Polyampholyte nanogels based on N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM), (3-acrylamidopropyl) trimethylammonium chloride (APTAC) and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid sodium salt (AMPS) were synthesized via conventional redox-initiated free radical copolymerization. The resultant nanogels of various compositions, specifically [NIPAM]:[APTAC]:[AMPS] = 90:5:5; 90:7.5:2.5; 90:2.5:7.5 mol.%, herein abbreviated as NIPAM(90)-APTAC(5)-AMPS(5), NIPAM(90)-APTAC(7.5)-AMPS(2.5) and NIPAM(90)-APTAC(2.5)-AMPS(7.5), were characterized by a combination of H-1 NMR and FTIR spectroscopy, TGA, UV-Vis, DLS and zeta potential measurements. The temperature and salt-responsive properties of amphoteric nanogels were studied in aqueous and saline solutions in a temperature range from 25 to 60 degrees C and at ionic strengths (mu) of 10(-3) to 1M NaCl. Volume phase transition temperatures (VPTT) of the charge-balanced nanogel were found to reach a maximum upon the addition of salt, whereas the same parameter for the charge-imbalanced nanogels exhibited a sharp decrease at higher saline concentrations. A wide bimodal distribution of average hydrodynamic sizes of nanogel particles had a tendency to transform to a narrow monomodal peak at elevated temperatures and higher ionic strengths. According to the DLS results, increasing ionic strength results in the clumping of nanogel particles.

A prospective technology for reversible enzyme complexation accompanied with its inactivation and protection followed by reactivation after a fast thermocontrolled release has been demonstrated. A thermoresponsive polymer with upper critical solution temperature, poly(N-acryloyl glycinamide) (PNAGA), which is soluble in water at elevated temperatures but phase separates at low temperatures, has been shown to bind lysozyme, chosen as a model enzyme, at a low temperature (10 & DEG;C and lower) but not at room temperature (around 25 & DEG;C). The cooling of the mixture of PNAGA and lysozyme solutions from room temperature resulted in the capturing of the protein and the formation of stable complexes; heating it back up was accompanied by dissolving the complexes and the release of the bound lysozyme. Captured by the polymer, lysozyme was inactive, but a temperature-mediated release from the complexes was accompanied by its reactivation. Complexation also partially protected lysozyme from proteolytic degradation by proteinase K, which is useful for biotechnological applications. The obtained results are relevant for important medicinal tasks associated with drug delivery such as the delivery and controlled release of enzyme-based drugs.