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The Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) is a narrow band, very wide field Cosmological Survey to be carried out from the Javalambre Observatory in Spain with a purpose-built, dedicated 2.5m telescope and a 4.7 sq.deg. camera with 1.2Gpix. Starting in late 2015, J-PAS will observe 8500sq.deg. of Northern Sky and measure $0.003(1+z)$ photo-z for $9\times10^7$ LRG and ELG galaxies plus several million QSOs, sampling an effective volume of $\sim 14$ Gpc$^3$ up to $z=1.3$ and becoming the first radial BAO experiment to reach Stage IV. J-PAS will detect $7\times 10^5$ galaxy clusters and groups, setting constrains on Dark Energy which rival those obtained from its BAO measurements. Thanks to the superb characteristics of the site (seeing ~0.7 arcsec), J-PAS is expected to obtain a deep, sub-arcsec image of the Northern sky, which combined with its unique photo-z precision will produce one of the most powerful cosmological lensing surveys before the arrival of Euclid. J-PAS unprecedented spectral time domain information will enable a self-contained SN survey that, without the need for external spectroscopic follow-up, will detect, classify and measure $\sigma_z\sim 0.5\%$ redshifts for $\sim 4000$ SNeIa and $\sim 900$ core-collapse SNe. The key to the J-PAS potential is its innovative approach: a contiguous system of 54 filters with $145\AA$ width, placed $100\AA$ apart over a multi-degree FoV is a powerful "redshift machine", with the survey speed of a 4000 multiplexing low resolution spectrograph, but many times cheaper and much faster to build. The J-PAS camera is equivalent to a 4.7 sq.deg. "IFU" and it will produce a time-resolved, 3D image of the Northern Sky with a very wide range of Astrophysical applications in Galaxy Evolution, the nearby Universe and the study of resolved stellar populations., Comment: 215 pages, 70 figures. J-PAS "Red Book", containing a description of the technical aspects of the Survey and its main scientific goals

Quintessential inflation describes a scenario in which both inflation and dark energy (quintessence) are described by the same scalar field. In conventional braneworld models of quintessential inflation gravitational particle production is used to reheat the universe. This reheating mechanism is very inefficient and results in an excessive production of gravity waves which violate nucleosynthesis constraints and invalidate the model. We describe a new method of realizing quintessential inflation on the brane in which inflation is followed by `instant preheating' (Felder, Kofman & Linde 1999). The larger reheating temperature in this model results in a smaller amplitude of relic gravity waves which is consistent with nucleosynthesis bounds. The relic gravity wave background has a `blue' spectrum at high frequencies and is a generic byproduct of successful quintessential inflation on the brane., Comment: 9 pages, 5 eps figures. Discussion and one eps figure summarizing the GB correction to steep brane world inflation added, typos corrected and references added; final version to appear in PRD

We report here the first systematic study of the supercluster-void network in the LCDM concordance cosmology in which voids and superclusters are treated on an equal footing. Superclusters are defined as individual members of an over-dense excursion set and voids are defined as individual members of a complementary under-dense excursion set at the same density threshold. We determine the geometric, topological and morphological properties of the cosmic web at a large set of density levels by computing Minkowski functionals for every supercluster and void using SURFGEN. The properties of the largest (percolating) supercluster and the complementary void are found to be very different from properties of individual superclusters and voids. Individual superclusters totally occupy no more than about 5% of the total volume and contain no more than 20% of mass if the largest supercluster is excluded. Likewise, individual voids totally occupy no more than 14% of volume and contain no more than 4% of mass if the largest void is excluded. Although superclusters are more massive and voids are more voluminous the difference in maximum volumes is not greater than by an order of magnitude. The genus value of individual superclusters can be 5 while the genus of individual voids can reach 40, implying significant amount of substructure in superclusters and especially in voids. One of our main results is that large voids, as defined through the density field (read dark matter distribution) can be distinctly non-spherical., Comment: 15 pages, 18 figures

The peak effect in weakly pinned superconductors is accompanied by metastable vortex states. Each metastable vortex configuration is characterized by a different critical current density J_c, which mainly depends on the past thermomagnetic history of the superconductor. A recent model [G. Ravikumar, et al, Phys. Rev. B 61, R6479 (2000)] proposed to explain the history dependent J_c postulates a stable state of vortex lattice with a critical current density J_c^{st}, determined uniquely by the field and temperature. In this paper, we present evidence for the existence of the stable state of the vortex lattice in the peak effect region of 2H-NbSe_2. It is shown that this stable state can be reached from any metastable vortex state by cycling the applied field by a small amplitude. The minor magnetization loops obtained by repeated field cycling allow us to determine the pinning and "equilibrium" properties of the stable state of the vortex lattice at a given field and temperature unambiguously. The data imply the occurence of a first order phase transition from an ordered phase to a disordered vortex phase across the peak effect., Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures. Corresponding author: S. Ramakrishnan

A universal phase diagram for weakly pinned low-T$_c$ type-II superconductors is revisited and extended with new proposals. The low-temperature ``Bragg glass'' phase is argued to transform first into a disordered, glassy phase upon heating. This glassy phase, a continuation of the high-field equilibrium vortex glass phase, then melts at higher temperatures into a liquid. This proposal provides an explanation for the anomalies observed in the peak effect regime of 2H-NbSe$_2$ and several other low-T$_c$ materials which is independent of the microscopic mechanisms of superconductivity in these systems., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures

The Peak Effect (PE) regime in a single crystal of Ca$_3$Rh$_4$Sn$_{13}$ has been investigated in detail via ac susceptibility as well as dc magnetization measurements. The PE region comprises two discontinuous first order like transitions, located near its onset and peak positions and reflects a stepwise fracturing of the flux line lattice (FLL). This scenario can be construed as an alternative to a scheme involving the appearance of Generalized Fulde-Ferrel-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (GFFLO) state as considered in the case of PE phenomenon in isostructural Yb$_3$Rh$_4$Sn$_{13}$ system. The procedure of thermal cycling across the onset position of PE produces an open hysteresis loop, which is consistent with the notion of the fracturing of the FLL. A study of thermomagnetic history dependence of different metastable vortex states shows the path dependence in the critical current density J_c(H,T) over a large part of the (H,T) parameter space. The path dependence in J_c ceases above the peak position of the PE, suggesting a complete amorphization and the loss of long range correlations of the FLL at (T_p, H_p) line. A plausible vortex phase diagram has been illustrated for Ca$_3$Rh$_4$Sn$_{13}$n and phases like an elastic solid, a plastic solid, a pinned amorphous and an unpinned amorphous states have been identified., Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures

We probe gravitational clustering in N-body simulations using geometrical descriptors sensitive to `connectedness': the genus curve, percolation and shape statistics. We find that both genus and percolation curves provide complementary probes of large scale structure topology and could be used to discriminate between models of structure formation and the analysis of observational data such as galaxy catalogs and MBR maps. An analysis of `shapes' in N-body simulations has shown that filaments are more pronounced than pancakes. To probe shapes of clusters and superclusters more rigorously we propose a new shape statistic which does not fit isodensity surfaces by ellipsoids (as done earlier). Our shape statistic is derived from fundamental properties of a compact body: its Minkowski functionals. The new shape statistic gives sensible results for topologically simple surfaces such as the ellipsoid, and for more complicated surfaces such as the torus. (Invited talk, to appear in: Proceedings of the IAU Symposium No. 183, Kyoto, Japan Aug. 1997, ed. K. Sato, Kluwer Academic Publ.), Comment: 11 pages, latex, 3 figures

The morphological nature of structures that form under gravitational instability has been of central interest to cosmology for over two decades. A remarkable feature of large scale structures in the Universe is that they occupy a relatively small fraction of the volume and yet show coherence on scales comparable to the survey size. With the aid of a useful synthesis of percolation analysis and shape statistics we explore the evolution of morphology of isolated density clumps in {\it real space} and that of the cluster distribution as a whole in scale-invariant cosmological models of gravitational instability. Our results, based on an exhaustive statistical analysis, indicate that at finite density thresholds one-dimensional filaments are more abundant than two-dimensional sheets (pancakes) at most epochs and for all spectra although the first singularities could be pancake-like. Both filamentarity and pancakeness of structures grow with time (in scale-free models this is equivalent to an increase in resolution) leading to the development of a long coherence length scale in simulations., Comment: 8 pages, latex, 3 figures; To appear in ApJ Lett

We study the behaviour of spherical Voids in Lagrangian perturbation theories L(n), of which the Zel'dovich approximation is the lowest order solution L(1). We find that at early times higher order L(n) give an increasingly accurate picture of Void expansion. However at late times particle trajectories in L(2) begin to turnaround and converge leading to the {\em contraction} of a Void, a sign of pathological behaviour. By contrast particle trajectories in L(3) are well behaved and this approximation gives results in excellent agreement with the exact top-hat solution as long as the Void is not too underdense. For very underdense Voids, L(3) evacuates the Void much too rapidly leading us to conclude that the Zel'dovich approximation L(1), remains the best approximation to apply to the late time study of Voids. The behavior of high order approximations in spherical voids is typical for asymptotic series and may be generic for Lagrangian perturbation theory., Comment: 6 pages, latex, two figures. Better quality figures are available upon request from varun@iucaa.ernet.in

We study the development of gravitational instability in the strongly non-linear regime. For this purpose we use a number of statistical indicators such as filamentary statistics, spectrum of overdense/underdense regions and the void probability function, each of which probes a particular aspect of gravitational clustering. We use these statistical indicators to discriminate between different approximations to gravitational instability which we test against N-body simulations. The approximations which we test are, the truncated Zel'dovich approximation (TZ), the adhesion model (AM), and the frozen flow (FF) and linear potential (LP) approximations. Of these we find that FF and LP break down relatively early, soon after the non-linear length scale exceeds $R_*$ -- the mean distance between peaks of the gravitational potential. The reason for this break down is easy to understand, particles in FF are constrained to follow the streamlines of the initial velocity field. Shell crossing is absent in this case and structure gradually freezes as particles begin to collect near minima of the gravitational potential. In LP particles follow the lines of force of the primordial potential, oscillating about its minima at late times when the non-linear length scale $k_{\rm NL}^{-1}\simeq R_*$. Unlike FF and LP the adhesion model (and to some extent TZ) continues to give accurate results even at late times when $k_{\rm NL}^{-1} \ge R_*$. This is because both AM and TZ use, Comment: mn.sty (Latex), 20 pages + 11 figures (not included: hardcopy available on request from munshi@iucaa.ernet.in), Submitted to MNRAS, IUCAA-24/94