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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 307 records · Page 17
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2011

DISCOVERY AND ATMOSPHERIC CHARACTERIZATION OF GIANT PLANET KEPLER-12b: AN INFLATED RADIUS OUTLIER

We report the discovery of planet Kepler-12b (KOI-20), which at 1.695 {+-} 0.030 R{sub J} is among the handful of planets with super-inflated radii above 1.65 R{sub J}. Orbiting its slightly evolved G0 host with a 4.438 day period, this 0.431 {+-} 0.041 M{sub J} planet is the least irradiated within this largest-planet-radius group, which has important implications for planetary physics. The planet's inflated radius and low mass lead to a very low density of 0.111 {+-} 0.010 g cm{sup -3}. We detect the occultation of the planet at a significance of 3.7{sigma} in the Kepler bandpass. This yields a geometric albedo of 0.14 {+-} 0.04; the planetary flux is due to a combination of scattered light and emitted thermal flux. We use multiple observations with Warm Spitzer to detect the occultation at 7{sigma} and 4{sigma} in the 3.6 and 4.5 {mu}m bandpasses, respectively. The occultation photometry timing is consistent with a circular orbit at e < 0.01 (1{sigma}) and e < 0.09 (3{sigma}). The occultation detections across the three bands favor an atmospheric model with no dayside temperature inversion. The Kepler occultation detection provides significant leverage, but conclusions regarding temperature structure are preliminary, given our ignorance of opacity sources at optical wavelengths in hot Jupiter atmospheres. If Kepler-12b and HD 209458b, which intercept similar incident stellar fluxes, have the same heavy-element masses, the interior energy source needed to explain the large radius of Kepler-12b is three times larger than that of HD 209458b. This may suggest that more than one radius-inflation mechanism is at work for Kepler-12b or that it is less heavy-element rich than other transiting planets.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Natural warm inflation

We derive the requirements that a generic axion-like field has to satisfy in order to play the role of the inflaton field in the warm inflation scenario. Compared to the parameter space in ordinary Natural Inflation models, we find that the parameter space in our model is enlarged. In particular, we avoid the problem of having an axion decay constant f that relates to the Planck scale, which is instead present in the ordinary Natural Inflation models; in fact, our model can easily accommodate values of the axion decay constant that lie well below the Planck scale.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Curvature perturbation and waterfall dynamics in hybrid inflation

We investigate the parameter spaces of hybrid inflation model with special attention paid to the dynamics of waterfall field and curvature perturbations induced from its quantum fluctuations. Depending on the inflaton field value at the time of phase transition and the sharpness of the phase transition inflation can have multiple extended stages. We find that for models with mild phase transition the induced curvature perturbation from the waterfall field is too large to satisfy the COBE normalization. We investigate the model parameter space where the curvature perturbations from the waterfall quantum fluctuations vary between the results of standard hybrid inflation and the results obtained here.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Large non-Gaussianity in non-minimal inflation

We consider a simple inflation model with a complex scalar field coupled to gravity non-minimally. Both the modulus and the angular directions of the complex scalar are slowly rolling, leading to two-field inflation. The modulus direction becomes flat due to the non-minimal coupling, and the angular direction becomes a pseudo-Goldstone boson from a small breaking of the global U(1) symmetry. We show that large non-Gaussianity can be produced during slow-roll inflation under a reasonable assumption on the initial condition of the angular direction. This scenario may be realized in particle physics models such as the Standard Model with two Higgs doublets.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Phenomenology of the minimal inflation scenario: inflationary trajectories and particle production

We discuss the phenomenology of the minimal inflation scenario. We concentrate on two aspects: inflationary trajectories and particle production. Our findings can be summarized in two main results: first, that inflationary trayectories that are very flat and provide enough number of e-foldings are natural in the scenario without fine tunning. We present a general formalism to identify attractors in multi-field inflation regardless of trajectories fulfilling the slow-roll conditions. We then explore particle production in the model and show how the inflaton naturally transmutes into a dark matter particle. One interesting feature of our model is that it provides a novel mechanism to generate particles and entropy in the universe: the filling of the Fermi sphere up to a given momentum p{sub F} due to the sea of goldstinos that are an important part of the matter generated after inflation. With this mechanism in hand we predict that the gravitino should have a mass of > 100−1000 TeV. Another interesting feature of our model is that the predicted level of gravity waves is r = 0.1−0.001, which is in the range of detectability from Planck and upcoming CMB polarization experiments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

The inflating curvaton

The primordial curvature perturbation ζ may be generated by some curvaton field σ, which is negligible during inflation and has more or less negligible interactions until it decays. In the current scenario, the curvaton starts to oscillate while its energy density ρσ is negligible. We explore the opposite scenario, in which ρσ drives a few e-folds of inflation before the oscillation begins. In this scenario for generating ζ it is exceptionally easy to solve the η problem; one just has to make the curvaton a string axion, with anomaly-mediated susy breaking which may soon be tested at the LHC. The observed spectral index n can be obtained with a potential V∝φ{sup p} for the first inflation; p = 1 or 2 is allowed by the current uncertainty in n but the improvement in accuracy promised by Planck may rule out p = 1. The predictions include (i) running n' ≅ 0.0026 (0.0013) for p = 1 (2) that will probably be observed, (ii) non-gaussianity parameter f{sub NL}; ∼ −1 that may be observed, (iii) tensor fraction r is probably too small to ever observed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Constraining inflation with future galaxy redshift surveys

With future galaxy surveys, a huge number of Fourier modes of the distribution of the large scale structures in the Universe will become available. These modes are complementary to those of the CMB and can be used to set constraints on models of the early universe, such as inflation. Using a MCMC analysis, we compare the power of the CMB with that of the combination of CMB and galaxy survey data, to constrain the power spectrum of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation. We base our analysis on the Planck satellite and a spectroscopic redshift survey with configuration parameters close to those of the Euclid mission as examples. We first consider models of slow-roll inflation, and show that the inclusion of large scale structure data improves the constraints by nearly halving the error bars on the scalar spectral index and its running. If we attempt to reconstruct the inflationary single-field potential, a similar conclusion can be reached on the parameters characterizing the potential. We then study models with features in the power spectrum. In particular, we consider ringing features produced by a break in the potential and oscillations such as in axion monodromy. Adding large scale structures improves the constraints on features by more than a factor of two. In axion monodromy we show that there are oscillations with small amplitude and frequency in momentum space that are undetected by CMB alone but can be measured by including galaxy surveys in the analysis.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

A field range bound for general single-field inflation

We explore the consequences of a detection of primordial tensor fluctuations for general single-field models of inflation. Using the effective theory of inflation, we propose a generalization of the Lyth bound that applies to models of inflation coupled to Einstein gravity. Our strongest bound applies to all single-field models with two-derivative kinetic terms for the scalar fluctuations and is always stronger than the corresponding bound for slow-roll models. This shows that non-trivial dynamics of the inflaton can't evade the Lyth bound. We also present a weaker, but more universal bound that holds when the Null Energy Condition (NEC) is satisfied at horizon crossing.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

PeV-scale supersymmetry from new inflation

We show that heavy supersymmetric particles around O(100) TeV to O(1) PeV naturally appear in new inflation in which the Higgs boson responsible for the breaking of U(1){sub B−L} plays the role of inflaton. Most important, the supersymmetric breaking scale is bounded above by the inflationary dynamics, in order to suppress the Coleman-Weinberg potential which would otherwise spoil the slow-roll inflation. Our scenario has rich phenomenological and cosmological implications: the Higgs boson mass at around 125 GeV can be easily explained, non-thermal leptogenesis works automatically, the gravitino production from inflaton decay is suppressed, the dark matter is either the lightest neutralino or the QCD axion, and the upper bound on the inflation scale for the modulus stabilization can be marginally satisfied.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Can inflation be connected to low energy particle physics?

It is an interesting question whether low energy degrees of freedom may be responsible for early universe inflation. To examine this, here we present a simple version of Higgs-inflation with minimal coupling to gravity and a quadratic inflationary potential. This quantitatively differs from the popular non-minimally coupled models, although it is qualitatively similar. In all such models, new heavy fields must enter in order for the theory to be well behaved in the UV. We show that in all cases the Higgs self coupling λ must be quite small in order to integrate out the heavy fields and use the resulting low energy effective field theory of the Higgs to describe inflation. For moderately sized λ, the UV completion is required and will, in general, determine the inflationary regime. We discuss the important issue of the arbitrariness of the Lagrangians used in all these setups by presenting a new class of such models, including a supergravity version. This suggests that the inflationary potential is disconnected from low energy physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

The consistency condition for the three-point function in dissipative single-clock inflation

We generalize the consistency condition for the three-point function in single field inflation to the case of dissipative, multi-field, single-clock models. We use the recently introduced extension of the effective field theory of inflation that accounts for dissipative effects, to provide an explicit proof to leading (non-trivial) order in the generalized slow roll parameters and mixing with gravity scales. Our results illustrate the conditions necessary for the validity of the consistency relation in situations with many degrees of freedom relevant during inflation, namely that there is a preferred clock. Departures from this condition in forthcoming experiments would rule out not only single field but also a large class of multi-field models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Observable spectra of induced gravitational waves from inflation

Measuring the primordial power spectrum on small scales is a powerful tool in inflation model building, yet constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background measurements alone are insufficient to place bounds stringent enough to be appreciably effective. For the very small scale spectrum, those which subtend angles of less than 0.3 degrees on the sky, an upper bound can be extracted from the astrophysical constraints on the possible production of primordial black holes in the early universe. A recently discovered observational by-product of an enhanced power spectrum on small scales, induced gravitational waves, have been shown to be within the range of proposed space based gravitational wave detectors; such as NASA's LISA and BBO detectors, and the Japanese DECIGO detector. In this paper we explore the impact such a detection would have on models of inflation known to lead to an enhanced power spectrum on small scales, namely the Hilltop-type and running mass models. We find that the Hilltop-type model can produce observable induced gravitational waves within the range of BBO and DECIGO for integral and fractional powers of the potential within a reasonable number of e−folds. We also find that the running mass model can produce a spectrum within the range of these detectors, but require that inflation terminates after an unreasonably small number of e−folds. Finally, we argue that if the thermal history of the Universe were to accomodate such a small number of e−folds the Running Mass Model can produce Primordial Black Holes within a mass range compatible with Dark Matter, i.e. within a mass range 10{sup 20}g∼<M{sub BH}∼<10{sup 27}g.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Universal upper limit on inflation energy scale from cosmic magnetic field

Recently observational lower bounds on the strength of cosmic magnetic fields were reported, based on γ-ray flux from distant blazars. If inflation is responsible for the generation of such magnetic fields then the inflation energy scale is bounded from above as ρ{sub inf}{sup 1/4} < 2.5 × 10{sup −7}M{sub Pl} × (B{sub obs}/10{sup −15}G){sup −2} in a wide class of inflationary magnetogenesis models, where B{sub obs} is the observed strength of cosmic magnetic fields. The tensor-to-scalar ratio is correspondingly constrained as r < 10{sup −19} × (B{sub obs}/10{sup −15}G){sup −8}. Therefore, if the reported strength B{sub obs} ≥ 10{sup −15}G is confirmed and if any signatures of gravitational waves from inflation are detected in the near future, then our result indicates some tensions between inflationary magnetogenesis and observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Inflation from the Higgs field false vacuum with hybrid potential

We have recently suggested [1,2] that Inflation could have started in a local minimum of the Higgs potential at field values of about 10{sup 15}–10{sup 17} GeV, which exists for a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs masses and thus gives rise to a prediction on the Higgs mass to be in the range 123–129 GeV, together with a prediction on the the top mass and the cosmological tensor-to-scalar ratio r. Inflation can be achieved provided there is an additional degree of freedom which allows the transition to a radiation era. In [1] we had proposed such field to be a Brans-Dicke scalar. Here we present an alternative possibility with an additional subdominant scalar very weakly coupled to the Higgs, realizing an (inverted) hybrid Inflation scenario. Interestingly, we show that such model has an additional constraint m{sub H} < 125.3±3{sub th}, where 3{sub th} is the present theoretical uncertainty on the Standard Model RGEs. The tensor-to-scalar ratio has to be within the narrow range 10{sup −4}∼<r < 0.007, and values of the scalar spectral index compatible with the observed range can be obtained. Moreover, if we impose the model to have subplanckian field excursion, this selects a narrower range 10{sup −4}∼<r < 0.001 and an upper bound on the Higgs mass of about m{sub H} < 124±3{sub th}.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2013

General dissipation coefficient in low-temperature warm inflation

In generic particle physics models, the inflaton field is coupled to other bosonic and fermionic fields that acquire large masses during inflation and may decay into light degrees of freedom. This leads to dissipative effects that modify the inflationary dynamics and may generate a nearly-thermal radiation bath, such that inflation occurs in a warm rather than supercooled environment. In this work, we perform a numerical computation and obtain expressions for the associated dissipation coefficient in supersymmetric models, focusing on the regime where the radiation temperature is below the heavy mass threshold. The dissipation coefficient receives contributions from the decay of both on-shell and off-shell degrees of freedom, which are dominant for small and large couplings, respectively, taking into account the light field multiplicities. In particular, we find that the contribution from on-shell decays, although Boltzmann-suppressed, can be much larger than that of virtual modes, which is bounded by the validity of a perturbative analysis. This result opens up new possibilities for realizations of warm inflation in supersymmetric field theories.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Universality class in conformal inflation

We develop a new class of chaotic inflation models with spontaneously broken conformal invariance. Observational consequences of a broad class of such models are stable with respect to strong deformations of the scalar potential. This universality is a critical phenomenon near the point of enhanced symmetry, SO(1,1), in case of conformal inflation. It appears because of the exponential stretching of the moduli space and the resulting exponential flattening of scalar potentials upon switching from the Jordan frame to the Einstein frame in this class of models. This result resembles stretching and flattening of inhomogeneities during inflationary expansion. It has a simple interpretation in terms of velocity versus rapidity near the Kähler cone in the moduli space, similar to the light cone of special theory of relativity. This effect makes inflation possible even in the models with very steep potentials. We describe conformal and superconformal versions of this cosmological attractor mechanism.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2013

Constraints on single-field inflation with WMAP, SPT and ACT data — a last-minute stand before Planck

We constrain models of single field inflation with the pre-Planck CMB data. The data used here is the 9-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data, South Pole Telescope (SPT) data and Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data. By adding in running of spectral index parameter, we find that the χ{sup 2} is improved by a factor of Δχ{sup 2} = 8.44, which strongly indicates the preference of this parameter from current data. In addition, we find that the running of spectral index α{sub s} does not change very much even if we switch to different pivot scales, which suggests that the power law expansion of power spectrum is accurate enough till the 1st order term. Furthermore, we find that the joint constraints on r−n{sub s} give very tight constraints on single-field inflation models, and the models with power law potential φ{sup p} can only survive if 0.9∼<p∼<2.1, so a large class of inflation models have already been ruled out before Planck data. Finally, we use the f{sub NL} data to constrain the non-trivial sound speed c{sub s}. We find that the current constraint is dominated by the power spectrum constraints which have some inconsistency with the constraints from f{sub NL}. This poses important questions of consistency between power spectrum and bispectrum of WMAP data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Initial conditions and sampling for multifield inflation

We investigate the initial conditions problem for multifield inflation. In these scenarios the pre-inflationary dynamics can be chaotic, increasing the sensitivity of the onset of inflation to the initial data even in the homogeneous limit. To analyze physically equivalent scenarios we compare initial conditions at fixed energy. This ensures that each trajectory is counted once and only once, since the energy density decreases monotonically. We present a full analysis of hybrid inflation that reveals a greater degree of long range order in the set of ''successful'' initial conditions than was previously apparent. In addition, we explore the effective smoothing scale for the fractal set of successful initial conditions induced by the finite duration of the pre-inflationary phase. The role of the prior information used to specify the initial data is discussed in terms of Bayesian sampling.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗