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DOE OSTI2015

A non-minimally coupled potential for inflation and dark energy after Planck 2015: a comprehensive study

In this work we introduce a new plateau-like inflationary model including a quadratic scalar potential coupled non-minimally to gravity. This potential has a dominant constant energy density at early times which can realize successful inflation. It also includes an infinitesimal non-zero term V{sub 0} responsible for explaining dark energy which causing the universe to expand accelerating at the late time. We show that this model predicts small tensor-to-scalar ratio of the order of r≈ 0.01 which is fully consistent with Planck constraints. Using the lower and upper bounds on reheating temperature, we provide additional constraints on the non-minimal coupling parameter ξ of the model. We also study the preheating stage predicted by this kind of potentials using numerical calculations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Thermalization process after inflation and effective potential of scalar field

We investigate the thermalization process of the Universe after inflation to determine the evolution of the effective temperature. The time scale of thermalization is found to be so long that it delays the evolution of the effective temperature, and the resulting maximal temperature of the Universe can be significantly lower than the one obtained in the literature. Our results clarify the finite density corrections to the effective potential of a scalar field and also processes of heavy particle production. In particular, we find that the maximum temperature of the Universe may be at most electroweak scale if the reheating temperature is as low as O (1) MeV, which implies that the electroweak symmetry may be marginally restored. In addition, it is noticeable that the dark matter may not be produced from thermal plasma in such a low reheating scenario, since the maximum temperature can be smaller than the conventional estimation by five orders of magnitude. We also give implications to the Peccei-Quinn mechanism and the Affleck-Dine baryogenesis.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Constraints on primordial magnetic fields from inflation

We present generic bounds on magnetic fields produced from cosmic inflation. By investigating field bounds on the vector potential, we constrain both the quantum mechanical production of magnetic fields and their classical growth in a model independent way. For classical growth, we show that only if the reheating temperature is as low as T{sub reh} ∼< 10{sup 2} MeV can magnetic fields of 10{sup −15} G be produced on Mpc scales in the present universe. For purely quantum mechanical scenarios, even stronger constraints are derived. Our bounds on classical and quantum mechanical scenarios apply to generic theories of inflationary magnetogenesis with a two-derivative time kinetic term for the vector potential. In both cases, the magnetic field strength is limited by the gravitational back-reaction of the electric fields that are produced simultaneously. As an example of quantum mechanical scenarios, we construct vector field theories whose time diffeomorphisms are spontaneously broken, and explore magnetic field generation in theories with a variable speed of light. Transitions of quantum vector field fluctuations into classical fluctuations are also analyzed in the examples.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

A no-go theorem for monodromy inflation

We study the embedding of the monodromy inflation mechanism by E. Silverstein and A. Westphal (2008) in a concrete compactification setting. To that end, we look for an appropriate vacuum of type IIA supergravity, corresponding to the minimum of the inflaton potential. We prove a no-go theorem on the existence of such a vacuum, using ten-dimensional equations of motion. Anti-de Sitter and Minkowski vacua are ruled out; de Sitter vacua are not excluded, but have a lower bound on their cosmological constant which is too high for phenomenology.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Platonic solids back in the sky: icosahedral inflation

We generalize the model of solid inflation to an anisotropic cosmic solid. Barring fine tunings, the observed isotropy of the cosmological background and of the scalar two-point function isolate the icosahedral group as the only possible symmetry group of such a solid. In such a case, higher-point correlation functions—starting with the three-point one—are naturally maximally anisotropic, which makes the standard detection strategies highly inefficient and calls for a dedicated analysis of CMB data. The tensor two-point function can also be highly anisotropic, but only in the presence of sizable higher-derivative couplings.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Quantum corrections in Higgs inflation: the Standard Model case

We compute the one-loop renormalization group equations for Standard Model Higgs inflation. The calculation is done in the Einstein frame, using a covariant formalism for the multi-field system. All counterterms, and thus the betafunctions, can be extracted from the radiative corrections to the two-point functions; the calculation of higher n-point functions then serves as a consistency check of the approach. We find that the theory is renormalizable in the effective field theory sense in the small, mid and large field regime. In the large field regime our results differ slightly from those found in the literature, due to a different treatment of the Goldstone bosons.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Starobinsky-type inflation with products of Kähler manifolds

We present a novel realization of Starobinsky-type inflation within Supergravity using two chiral superfields. The proposed superpotential is inspired by induced-gravity models. The Kähler potential contains two logarithmic terms, one for the inflaton T and one for the matter-like field S, parameterizing the SU(1,1)/U(1)×SU(2)/U(1) Kähler manifold. The two factors have constant curvatures −m/n and 2/n{sub 2}, where n, m are the exponents of T in the superpotential and Kähler potential respectively, and 0<n{sub 2}≤6. The inflationary observables depend on the ratio 2n/m only. Essentially they coincide with the observables of the original Starobinsky model. Moreover, the inflaton mass is predicted to be 3⋅10{sup 13} GeV.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

New model of axion monodromy inflation and its cosmological implications

We propose a new realization of axion monodromy inflation in which axion monodromy arises from torsional cycles in a type IIB compactification. A class of monomial potentials is obtained with specific values for the power index. Moreover, the inflaton mass changes profile due to the couplings between various fields after compactification. Consequently, the potential obtains a step-like profile at some critical scale. We study the cosmological implications of one concrete realization of this model. At the background level, it realizes a sufficiently long inflationary stage, which allows for the violation of the slow-roll conditions for a short period of time when the inflaton is close to the critical scale. Accordingly, the Hubble horizon is perturbed and affects the dynamics of primordial cosmological perturbations. In particular, we analyze the angular power spectrum of B-mode polarization and find a boost on very large scales. We also find that the amplitude of scalar perturbations is suppressed near the critical scale. Thus our model provides an interpretation for the low-ℓ suppression of temperature anisotropies in the CMB power spectrum. We examine these effects and confront the model to observations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Realization of power law inflation & variants via variation of the strong coupling constant

We present a model of power law inflation generated by variation of the strong coupling constant. We then extend the model to two varying coupling constants which leads to a potential consisting of a linear combination of exponential terms. Some variants of the latter may be self-consistent and can accommodate the experimental data of the Planck 2015 and other recent experiments.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Primordial fluctuations from inflation in dRGT bimetric theory of gravity

We investigate primordial gravitational waves and curvature perturbations in de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) bimetric gravity. We evaluate the power-spectra in the leading order in slow roll. Taking into account the decay of massive graviton, we find that the action up to the second order reduces to the Einstein theory with a non-minimally coupled scalar field, which is simplified to a minimally coupled model by conformal transformation. We also find that the tensor to scalar ratio for large field inflation with power law potential is larger than the general relativity counterpart for any choice of parameters in dRGT bimetric gravity. In addition, we confirm that the usual consistency relation holds and we have a steeper spectrum for gravitational waves.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

General sGoldstino inflation

We prove that all inflationary models, including those with dark energy after the end of inflation, can be embedded in minimal supergravity with a single chiral superfield. Moreover, the amount of supersymmetry breaking is independently tunable due to a degeneracy in the choice for the superpotential. The inflaton is a scalar partner of the Goldstino in this set-up. We illustrate our general procedure with two examples that are favoured by the Planck data.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Sneutrino Inflation with α-attractors

Sneutrino inflation employs the fermionic partners of the inflaton and stabilizer field as right-handed neutrinos to realize the seesaw mechanism for light neutrino masses. We show that one can improve the latest version of this scenario and its consistency with the Planck data by embedding it in the theory of cosmological α-attractors.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Consistency relation and non-Gaussianity in a Galileon inflation

We study a particular Galileon inflation in the light of Planck2015 observational data in order to constraint the model parameter space. We study the spectrum of the primordial modes of the density perturbations by expanding the action up to the second order in perturbations. Then we pursue by expanding the action up to the third order and find the three point correlation functions to find the amplitude of the non-Gaussianity of the primordial perturbations in this setup. We study the amplitude of the non-Gaussianity both in equilateral and orthogonal configurations and test the model with recent observational data. Our analysis shows that for some ranges of the non-minimal coupling parameter, the model is consistent with observation and it is also possible to have large non-Gaussianity which would be observable by future improvements in experiments. Moreover, we obtain the tilt of the tensor power spectrum and test the standard inflationary consistency relation ( r = −8 n {sub T} ) against the latest bounds from the Planck2015 dataset. We find a slight deviation from the standard consistency relation in this setup. Nevertheless, such a deviation seems not to be sufficiently remarkable to be detected confidently.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Effects on the CMB from compactification before inflation

Many theories beyond the Standard Model include extra dimensions, though these have yet to be directly observed. In this work we consider the possibility of a compactification mechanism which both allows extra dimensions and is compatible with current observations. This compactification is predicted to leave a signature on the CMB by altering the amplitude of the low l multipoles, dependent on the amount of inflation. Recently discovered CMB anomalies at low multipoles may be evidence for this. In our model we assume the spacetime is the product of a four-dimensional spacetime and flat extra dimensions. Before the compactification, both the four-dimensional spacetime and the extra dimensions can either be expanding or contracting independently. Taking into account physical constraints, we explore the observational consequences and the plausibility of these different models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Perturbatively including inhomogeneities in axion inflation

Axion inflation, i.e. an axion-like inflaton coupled to an Abelian gauge field through a Chern-Simons interaction, comes with a rich and testable phenomenology. This is particularly true in the strong backreaction regime, where the gauge field production heavily impacts the axion dynamics. Lattice simulations have recently demonstrated the importance of accounting for inhomogeneities of the axion field in this regime. We propose a perturbative scheme to account for these inhomogeneities while maintaining high computational efficiency. Our goal is to accurately capture deviations from the homogeneous axion field approximation within the perturbative regime as well as self-consistently determine the onset of the nonperturbative regime.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Power sector impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

Abstract The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is regarded as the most prominent piece of federal climate legislation in the U.S. thus far. This paper investigates potential impacts of IRA on the power sector, which is the focus of many core IRA provisions. We summarize a multi-model comparison of IRA to identify robust findings and variation in power sector investments, emissions, and costs across 11 models of the U.S. energy system and electricity sector. Our results project that IRA incentives accelerate the deployment of low-emitting capacity, increasing average annual additions by up to 3.2 times current levels through 2035. CO 2 emissions reductions from electricity generation across models range from 47%–83% below 2005 in 2030 (68% average) and 66%–87% in 2035 (78% average). Our higher clean electricity deployment and lower emissions under IRA, compared with earlier U.S. modeling, change the baseline for future policymaking and analysis. IRA helps to bring projected U.S. power sector and economy-wide emissions closer to near-term climate targets; however, no models indicate that these targets will be met with IRA alone, which suggests that additional policies, incentives, and private sector actions are needed.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Numerically modeling stochastic inflation in slow-roll and beyond

In this work, we present a complete numerical treatment of inflationary dynamics under the influence of stochastic corrections from sub-Hubble modes. We discuss how to exactly model the stochastic noise terms arising from the sub-Hubble quantum modes that give rise to the coarse-grained inflaton dynamics in the form of stochastic differential equations. The stochastic differential equations are solved event by event on a discrete time grid. We then compute the power spectrum of curvature perturbations that can be compared with the power spectrum computed in the traditional fashion using the Mukhanov-Sasaki equation by canonically quantizing the inflaton fluctuations. Our numerical procedure helps us to easily extend the formalism to ultra slow-roll inflation and study the possibility of primordial black hole formation.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Results and forecasts on cosmic inflation from weak lensing

Here, we highlight the role of weak lensing measurements from current and upcoming stage-IV imaging surveys in the search for cosmic inflation, specifically in measuring the scalar spectral index n s . To do so, we combine the Dark Energy Survey 3 years of observation weak lensing and clustering data with Bicep/Keck, Planck, and Sloan Digital Sky Survey data in r⁢Λ⁢ CDM (cold dark matter) where r is the tensor-to-scalar ratio. While there is no significant improvement in constraining power, we obtain a 1⁢σ shift on n s . Additionally, we forecast a weak lensing and clustering data vector from the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and show its combination with current data would improve their n s constraints by 25% in r⁢Λ⁢ CDM.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗