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Mukohyama, Shinji

Publications and source records attributed to Mukohyama, Shinji.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Gravitational wave physics and astronomy in the nascent era

The detections of gravitational waves (GW) by the LIGO/Virgo collaborations provide various possibilities for both physics and astronomy. We are quite sure that GW observations will develop a lot, both in precision and in number, thanks to the continuous work on the improvement of detectors, including the expected new detector, KAGRA, and the planned detector, LIGO-India. On this occasion, we review the fundamental outcomes and prospects of gravitational wave physics and astronomy. We survey the development, focusing on representative sources of gravitational waves: binary black holes, binary neutron stars, and supernovae. We also summarize the role of gravitational wave observations as a probe of new physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

A class of minimally modified gravity theories

We investigate the Hamiltonian structure of a class of gravitational theories whose actions are linear in the lapse function. We derive the necessary and sufficient condition for a theory in this class to have two or less local physical degrees of freedom. As an application we then find several concrete examples of modified gravity theories in which the total number of local physical degrees of freedom in the gravity sector is two.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Anisotropic deformations of spatially open cosmology in massive gravity theory

We combine analytical and numerical methods to study anisotropic deformations of the spatially open homogeneous and isotropic cosmology in the ghost free massive gravity theory with flat reference metric. We find that if the initial perturbations are not too strong then the physical metric relaxes back to the isotropic de Sitter state. However, the dumping of the anisotropies is achieved at the expense of exciting the Stueckelberg fields in such a way that the reference metric changes and does not share anymore with the physical metric the same rotational and translational symmetries. As a result, the universe evolves towards a fixed point which does not coincide with the original solution, but for which the physical metric is still de Sitter. If the initial perturbation is strong, then its evolution generically leads to a singular anisotropic state or, for some parameter values, to a decay into flat spacetime. We also present an infinite dimensional family of new homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies in the theory.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Stable solutions of inflation driven by vector fields

Many models of inflation driven by vector fields alone have been known to be plagued by pathological behaviors, namely ghost and/or gradient instabilities. In this work, we seek a new class of vector-driven inflationary models that evade all of the mentioned instabilities. We build our analysis on the Generalized Proca Theory with an extension to three vector fields to realize isotropic expansion. We obtain the conditions required for quasi de-Sitter solutions to be an attractor analogous to the standard slow-roll one and those for their stability at the level of linearized perturbations. Identifying the remedy to the existing unstable models, we provide a simple example and explicitly show its stability. This significantly broadens our knowledge on vector inflationary scenarios, reviving potential phenomenological interests for this class of models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Ghost inflation and de Sitter entropy

In the setup of ghost condensation model the generalized second law of black hole thermodynamics can be respected under a radiatively stable assumption that couplings between the field responsible for ghost condensate and matter fields such as those in the Standard Model are suppressed by the Planck scale. Since not only black holes but also cosmology are expected to play important roles towards our better understanding of gravity, we consider a cosmological setup to test the theory of ghost condensation. In particular we shall show that the de Sitter entropy bound proposed by Arkani-Hamed, et al. is satisfied if ghost inflation happened in the early epoch of our universe and if there remains a tiny positive cosmological constant in the future infinity. We then propose a notion of cosmological Page time after inflation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Cosmology in generalized Proca theories

We consider a massive vector field with derivative interactions that propagates only the 3 desired polarizations (besides two tensor polarizations from gravity) with second-order equations of motion in curved space-time. The cosmological implications of such generalized Proca theories are investigated for both the background and the linear perturbation by taking into account the Lagrangian up to quintic order. In the presence of a matter fluid with a temporal component of the vector field, we derive the background equations of motion and show the existence of de Sitter solutions relevant to the late-time cosmic acceleration. We also obtain conditions for the absence of ghosts and Laplacian instabilities of tensor, vector, and scalar perturbations in the small-scale limit. Our results are applied to concrete examples of the general functions in the theory, which encompass vector Galileons as a specific case. In such examples, we show that the de Sitter fixed point is always a stable attractor and study viable parameter spaces in which the no-ghost and stability conditions are satisfied during the cosmic expansion history.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

New quasidilaton theory in partially constrained vielbein formalism

In this work we study the partially constrained vielbein formulation of the new quasidilaton theory of massive gravity, where the quasidilaton field couples to both physical and fiducial metrics simultaneously via a composite effective metric and Lorentz violation is introduced by a constraint on the vielbein. This formalism improves the new quasidilaton model since the Boulware-Deser ghost is removed fully non-linearly at all scales. This also yields crucial implications in the cosmological applications. We derive the governing cosmological background evolution and study the stability of the attractor solution.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Phenomenology in minimal theory of massive gravity

We investigate the minimal theory of massive gravity (MTMG) recently introduced. After reviewing the original construction based on its Hamiltonian in the vielbein formalism, we reformulate it in terms of its Lagrangian in both the vielbein and the metric formalisms. It then becomes obvious that, unlike previous attempts in the literature of Lorentz-violating massive gravity, not only the potential but also the kinetic structure of the action is modified from the de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) massive gravity theory. We confirm that the number of physical degrees of freedom in MTMG is two at fully nonlinear level. This proves the absence of various possible pathologies such as superluminality, acausality and strong coupling. Afterwards, we discuss the phenomenology of MTMG in the presence of a dust fluid. We find that on a flat homogeneous and isotropic background we have two branches. One of them (self-accelerating branch) naturally leads to acceleration without the genuine cosmological constant or dark energy. For this branch both the scalar and the vector modes behave exactly as in general relativity (GR). The phenomenology of this branch differs from GR in the tensor modes sector, as the tensor modes acquire a non-zero mass. Hence, MTMG serves as a stable nonlinear completion of the self-accelerating cosmological solution found originally in dRGT theory. The other branch (normal branch) has a dynamics which depends on the time-dependent fiducial metric. For the normal branch, the scalar mode sector, even though as in GR only one scalar mode is present (due to the dust fluid), differs from the one in GR, and, in general, structure formation will follow a different phenomenology. The tensor modes will be massive, whereas the vector modes, for both branches, will have the same phenomenology as in GR.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Matter coupling in partially constrained vielbein formulation of massive gravity

We consider a linear effective vielbein matter coupling without introducing the Boulware-Deser ghost in ghost-free massive gravity. This is achieved in the partially constrained vielbein formulation. We first introduce the formalism and prove the absence of ghost at all scales. As next we investigate the cosmological application of this coupling in this new formulation. We show that even if the background evolution accords with the metric formulation, the perturbations display important different features in the partially constrained vielbein formulation. We study the cosmological perturbations of the two branches of solutions separately. The tensor perturbations coincide with those in the metric formulation. Concerning the vector and scalar perturbations, the requirement of absence of ghost and gradient instabilities yields slightly different allowed parameter space.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Cosmology in bimetric theory with an effective composite coupling to matter

We study the cosmology of bimetric theory with a composite matter coupling. We find two possible branches of background evolution. We investigate the question of stability of cosmological perturbations. For the tensor and vector perturbations, we derive conditions on the absence of ghost and gradient instabilities. For the scalar modes, we obtain conditions for avoiding ghost degrees. In the first branch, we find that one of the scalar modes becomes a ghost at the late stages of the evolution. Conversely, this problem can be avoided in the second branch. However, we also find that the constraint for the second branch prevents the doubly coupled matter fields from being the standard ingredients of cosmology. We thus conclude that a realistic and stable cosmological model requires additional minimally coupled matter fields.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

A new quasidilaton theory of massive gravity

We present a new quasidilaton theory of Poincare invariant massive gravity, based on the recently proposed framework of matter coupling that makes it possible for the kinetic energy of the quasidilaton scalar to couple to both physical and fiducial metrics simultaneously. We find a scaling-type exact solution that expresses a self-accelerating de Sitter universe, and then analyze linear perturbations around it. It is shown that in a range of parameters all physical degrees of freedom have non-vanishing quadratic kinetic terms and are stable in the subhorizon limit, while the effective Newton's constant for the background is kept positive.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Hamiltonian structure of scalar-tensor theories beyond Horndeski

We study the nature of constraints and the Hamiltonian structure in a scalar-tensor theory of gravity recently proposed by Gleyzes, Langlois, Piazza and Vernizzi (GLPV). For the simple case with A{sub 5}=0, namely when the canonical momenta conjugate to the spatial metric are linear in the extrinsic curvature, we prove that the number of physical degrees of freedom is three at fully nonlinear level, as claimed by GLPV. Therefore, while this theory extends Horndeski's scalar-tensor gravity theory, it is protected against additional degrees of freedom.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Galileons coupled to massive gravity: general analysis and cosmological solutions

We further develop the framework for coupling galileons and Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) scalar fields to a massive graviton while retaining both the non-linear symmetries of the scalars and ghost-freedom of the theory. The general construction is recast in terms of vielbeins which simplifies calculations and allows for compact expressions. Expressions for the general form of the action are derived, with special emphasis on those models which descend from maximally symmetric spaces. We demonstrate the existence of maximally symmetric solutions to the fully non-linear theory and analyze their spectrum of quadratic fluctuations. Finally, we consider self-accelerating cosmological solutions and study their perturbations, showing that the vector and scalar modes have vanishing kinetic terms.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Blue tensor spectrum from particle production during inflation

We discuss a mechanism of particle production during inflation that can result in a blue gravitational wave (GW) spectrum, compatible with the BICEP2 result and with the r < 0.11 limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio at the Planck pivot scale. The mechanism is based on the production of vector quanta from a rolling pseudo-scalar field. Both the vector and the pseudo-scalar are only gravitationally coupled to the inflaton, to keep the production of inflaton quanta at an unobservable level (the overproduction of non-gaussian scalar perturbations is a generic difficulty for mechanisms that aim to generate a visible GW signal from particle production during inflation). This mechanism can produce a detectable amount of GWs for any inflationary energy scale. The produced GWs are chiral and non-gaussian; both these aspects can be tested with large-scale polarization data (starting from Planck). We study how to reconstruct the pseudo-scalar potential from the GW spectrum.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Viable cosmology in bimetric theory

We study cosmological perturbations in bimetric theory with two fluids each of which is coupled to one of the two metrics. Focusing on a healthy branch of background solutions, we clarify the stability of the cosmological perturbations. For this purpose, we extend the condition for the absence of the so-called Higuchi ghost, and show that the condition is guaranteed to be satisfied on the healthy branch. We also calculate the squared propagation speeds of perturbations and derive the conditions for the absence of the gradient instability. To avoid the gradient instability, we find that the model parameters are weakly constrained.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Is there supercurvature mode of massive vector field in open inflation?

We investigate the Euclidean vacuum mode functions of a massive vector field in a spatially open chart of de Sitter spacetime. In the one-bubble open inflationary scenario that naturally predicts a negative spatial curvature after a quantum tunneling, it is known that a light scalar field has the so-called supercurvature mode, i.e. an additional discrete mode which describes fluctuations over scales larger than the spatial curvature scale. If such supercurvature modes exist for a vector field with a sufficiently light mass, then they would decay slower and easily survive the inflationary era. However, the existence of supercurvature mode strongly depends on details of the system. To clarify whether a massive vector field has supercurvature modes, we consider a U(1) gauge field with gauge and conformal invariances spontaneously broken through the Higgs mechanism, and present explicit expressions for the Euclidean vacuum mode functions. We find that, for any values of the vector field mass, there is no supercurvature mode. In the massless limit, the absence of supercurvature modes in the scalar sector stems from the gauge symmetry.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Nonlinear stability of cosmological solutions in massive gravity

We investigate nonlinear stability of two classes of cosmological solutions in massive gravity: isotropic Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) solutions and anisotropic FLRW solutions. For this purpose we construct the linear cosmological perturbation theory around axisymmetric Bianchi type-I backgrounds. We then expand the background around the two classes of solutions, which are fixed points of the background evolution equation, and analyze linear perturbations on top of it. This provides a consistent truncation of nonlinear perturbations around these fixed point solutions and allows us to analyze nonlinear stability in a simple way. In particular, it is shown that isotropic FLRW solutions exhibit nonlinear ghost instability. On the other hand, anisotropic FLRW solutions are shown to be ghost-free for a range of parameters and initial conditions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗