Abstract: The LHC Computing Grid (LCG) leads by CERN, has solved with the LCG File Catalog (LFC) the major problem of scaling the data management catalog. However, additional performance issues should be faced to deploy a painless catalog service. With this aim, we present a decentralized LFC server configuration, and its performance evaluation compared with the traditional LFC deployment. A performance analysis is shown, including not only the catalog server, but also analysing the client side overhead. We find that the LFC service has in the clients a relevant workload of the overall service. The experimental results show that the proposed LFC deployment for servers and clients, improves the performance of the service.

Abstract: We propose a generic recipe for deforming extremal black holes into nonextremal black holes and we use it to find and study the static non-extremal black-hole solutions of several N = 2, d = 4 supergravity models (SL(2, R)/U(1), (CP) over bar (n) and STU with four charges). In all the cases considered, the non-extremal family of solutions smoothly interpolates between all the different extremal limits, supersymmetric and not supersymmetric. This fact can be used to explicitly find extremal non-supersymmetric solutions also in the cases in which the attractor mechanism does not completely fix the values of the scalars on the event horizon and they still depend on the boundary conditions at spatial infinity. We compare (supersymmetry) Bogomol'nyi bounds with extremality bounds, we find the first-order flow equations for the non-extremal solutions and the corresponding superpotential, which gives in the different extremal limits different superpotentials for extremal black holes. We also compute the entropies (areas) of the inner (Cauchy) and outer (event) horizons, finding in all cases that their product gives the square of the moduli-independent entropy of the extremal solution with the same electric and magnetic charges.

Abstract: We derive the effects of a nonzero cosmological constant Lambda on gravitational wave propagation in the linearized approximation of general relativity. In this approximation, we consider the situation where the metric can be written as g(mu nu) = eta(mu nu) + h(mu nu)(Lambda) + h(mu nu)(W), h(mu nu)(Lambda,W) << 1, where h(mu nu)(Lambda) is the background perturbation and h(mu nu)(W) is a modification interpretable as a gravitational wave. For Lambda not equal 0, this linearization of Einstein equations is self-consistent only in certain coordinate systems. The cosmological Friedmann-Robertson-Walker coordinates do not belong to this class and the derived linearized solutions have to be reinterpreted in a coordinate system that is homogeneous and isotropic to make contact with observations. Plane waves in the linear theory acquire modifications of order root Lambda, both in the amplitude and the phase, when considered in Friedmann-Robertson-Walker coordinates. In the linearization process for h(mu nu), we have also included terms of order O(Lambda h(mu nu)). For the background perturbation h(mu nu)(Lambda), the difference is very small, but when the term h(mu nu)(W)Lambda is retained the equations of motion can be interpreted as describing massive spin-2 particles. However, the extra degrees of freedom can be approximately gauged away, coupling to matter sources with a strength proportional to the cosmological constant itself. Finally, we discuss the viability of detecting the modifications caused by the cosmological constant on the amplitude and phase of gravitational waves. In some cases, the distortion with respect to gravitational waves propagating in Minkowski space-time is considerable. The effect of Lambda could have a detectable impact on pulsar timing arrays.