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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 955 records · Page 53
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DOE OSTI2016

Wormholes versus black holes: quasinormal ringing at early and late times

Recently it has been argued that the phantom thin-shell wormholes matched with the Schwarzschild space-time near the Schwarzschild radius ring like Schwarzschild black holes at early times, but differently at late times [1]. Here we consider perturbations of the wormhole which was constructed without thin-shells: the Bronnikov-Ellis wormhole supported by the phantom matter and electromagnetic field. This wormhole solution is known to be stable under specific equation of state of the phantom matter. We show that if one does not use the above thin-shell matching, the wormhole, depending on the values of its parameters, either rings as the black hole at all times or rings differently also at all times . The wormhole's spectrum, investigated here, posses a number of distinctive features. In the final part we have considered general properties of scattering around arbitrary rotating traversable wormholes. We have found that symmetric and non-symmetric (with respect to the throat) wormholes are qualitatively different in this respect: first, superradiance is allowed only if for those non-symmetric wormholes for which the asymptotic values of the rotation parameters are different on both sides from the throat. Second, the symmetric wormholes cannot mimic effectively the ringing of a black hole at a few various dominant multipoles at the same time, so that the future observations of various events should easily tell the symmetric wormhole from a black hole.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

A general theory of linear cosmological perturbations: bimetric theories

We implement the method developed in [1] to construct the most general parametrised action for linear cosmological perturbations of bimetric theories of gravity. Specifically, we consider perturbations around a homogeneous and isotropic background, and identify the complete form of the action invariant under diffeomorphism transformations, as well as the number of free parameters characterising this cosmological class of theories. We discuss, in detail, the case without derivative interactions, and compare our results with those found in massive bigravity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Galilean invariant resummation schemes of cosmological perturbations

Many of the methods proposed so far to go beyond Standard Perturbation Theory break invariance under time-dependent boosts (denoted here as extended Galilean Invariance, or GI). This gives rise to spurious large scale effects which spoil the small scale predictions of these approximation schemes. By using consistency relations we derive fully non-perturbative constraints that GI imposes on correlation functions. We then introduce a method to quantify the amount of GI breaking of a given scheme, and to correct it by properly tailored counterterms. Finally, we formulate resummation schemes which are manifestly GI, discuss their general features, and implement them in the so called Time-Flow, or TRG, equations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Random potentials and cosmological attractors

I show that the problem of realizing inflation in theories with random potentials of a limited number of fields can be solved, and agreement with the observational data can be naturally achieved if at least one of these fields has a non-minimal kinetic term of the type used in the theory of cosmological α-attractors.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Non-singular and cyclic universe from the modified GUP

In this paper, we investigate the effects of a new version of the generalized uncertainty principle (modified GUP) on the dynamics of the Universe. As the modified GUP will modify the relation between the entropy and area of the apparent horizon, it will also deform the Friedmann equations within Jacobson's approach. We explicitly find these deformed Friedmann equations governing the modified GUP-corrected dynamics of such a Universe. It is shown that the modified GUP-deformed Jacobson's approach implies an upper bound for the density of such a Universe. The Big Bang singularity can therefore also be avoided using the modified GUP-corrections to horizons' thermodynamics. In fact, we are able to analyze the pre Big Bang state of the Universe. Furthermore, the equations imply that the expansion of the Universe will come to a halt and then will immediately be followed by a contracting phase. When the equations are extrapolated beyond the maximum rate of contraction, a cyclic Universe scenario emerges.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Solid consistency

We argue that isotropic scalar fluctuations in solid inflation are adiabatic in the super-horizon limit. During the solid phase this adiabatic mode has peculiar features: constant energy-density slices and comoving slices do not coincide, and their curvatures, parameterized respectively by ζ and R, both evolve in time. The existence of this adiabatic mode implies that Maldacena's squeezed limit consistency relation holds after angular average over the long mode. The correlation functions of a long-wavelength spherical scalar mode with several short scalar or tensor modes is fixed by the scaling behavior of the correlators of short modes, independently of the solid inflation action or dynamics of reheating.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Resolving cosmological singularities

We find a simple modification of the longitudinal mode in General Relativity which incorporates the idea of limiting curvature. In this case the singularities in contracting Friedmann and Kasner universes are avoided, and instead, the universe has a regular bounce which takes place during the time inversely proportional to the square root of the limiting curvature. Away from the bounce, corrections to General Relativity are negligible. In addition the non-singluar modification of General Relativity delivers for free a realistic candidate for Dark Matter.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Effects of QCD equation of state on the stochastic gravitational wave background

Cosmological phase transitions can be a source of Stochastic Gravitational Wave (SGW) background. Apart from the dynamics of the phase transition, the characteristic frequency and the fractional energy density Ω{sub gw} of the SGW depends upon the temperature of the transition. In this article, we compute the SGW spectrum in the light of QCD equation of state provided by the lattice results. We find that the inclusion of trace anomaly from lattice QCD, enhances the SGW signal generated during QCD phase transition by ∼ 50% and the peak frequency of the QCD era SGW are shifted higher by ∼ 25% as compared to the earlier estimates without trace anomaly. This result is extremely significant for testing the phase transition dynamics near QCD epoch.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Constraints on vacuum energy from structure formation and Nucleosynthesis

This paper derives an upper limit on the density ρ{sub Λ} of dark energy based on the requirement that cosmological structure forms before being frozen out by the eventual acceleration of the universe. By allowing for variations in both the cosmological parameters and the strength of gravity, the resulting constraint is a generalization of previous limits. The specific parameters under consideration include the amplitude Q of the primordial density fluctuations, the Planck mass M {sub pl}, the baryon-to-photon ratio η, and the density ratio Ω {sub M} /Ω {sub b} . In addition to structure formation, we use considerations from stellar structure and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) to constrain these quantities. The resulting upper limit on the dimensionless density of dark energy becomes ρ{sub Λ}/ M {sub pl}{sup 4} < 10{sup −90}, which is ∼30 orders of magnitude larger than the value in our universe ρ{sub Λ}/ M {sub pl}4 ∼ 10{sup −120}. This new limit is much less restrictive than previous constraints because additional parameters are allowed to vary. With these generalizations, a much wider range of universes can develop cosmic structure and support observers. To constrain the constituent parameters, new BBN calculations are carried out in the regime where η and G = M {sub pl}{sup −2} are much larger than in our universe. If the BBN epoch were to process all of the protons into heavier elements, no hydrogen would be left behind to make water, and the universe would not be viable. However, our results show that some hydrogen is always left over, even under conditions of extremely large η and G , so that a wide range of alternate universes are potentially habitable.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

A full picture of large lepton number asymmetries of the Universe

A large lepton number asymmetry of O(0.1−1) at present Universe might not only be allowed but also necessary for consistency among cosmological data. We show that, if a sizeable lepton number asymmetry were produced before the electroweak phase transition, the requirement for not producing too much baryon number asymmetry through sphalerons processes, forces the high scale lepton number asymmetry to be larger than about 03. Therefore a mild entropy release causing O(10-100) suppression of pre-existing particle density should take place, when the background temperature of the Universe is around T = O(10{sup −2}-10{sup 2}) GeV for a large but experimentally consistent asymmetry to be present today. We also show that such a mild entropy production can be obtained by the late-time decays of the saxion, constraining the parameters of the Peccei-Quinn sector such as the mass and the vacuum expectation value of the saxion field to be m {sub φ} ∼> O(10) TeV and φ{sub 0} ∼> O(10{sup 14}) GeV, respectively.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Primordial black hole and wormhole formation by domain walls

In theories with a broken discrete symmetry, Hubble sized spherical domain walls may spontaneously nucleate during inflation. These objects are subsequently stretched by the inflationary expansion, resulting in a broad distribution of sizes. The fate of the walls after inflation depends on their radius. Walls smaller than a critical radius fall within the cosmological horizon early on and collapse due to their own tension, forming ordinary black holes. But if a wall is large enough, its repulsive gravitational field becomes dominant much before the wall can fall within the cosmological horizon. In this ''supercritical'' case, a wormhole throat develops, connecting the ambient exterior FRW universe with an interior baby universe, where the exponential growth of the wall radius takes place. The wormhole pinches off in a time-scale comparable to its light-crossing time, and black holes are formed at its two mouths. As discussed in previous work, the resulting black hole population has a wide distribution of masses and can have significant astrophysical effects. The mechanism of black hole formation has been previously studied for a dust-dominated universe. Here we investigate the case of a radiation-dominated universe, which is more relevant cosmologically, by using numerical simulations in order to find the initial mass of a black hole as a function of the wall size at the end of inflation. For large supercritical domain walls, this mass nearly saturates the upper bound according to which the black hole cannot be larger than the cosmological horizon. We also find that the subsequent accretion of radiation satisfies a scaling relation, resulting in a mass increase by about a factor of 2.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

When the universe expands too fast: relentless dark matter

Here we consider a modification to the standard cosmological history consisting of introducing a new species φ whose energy density red-shifts with the scale factor a like ρ φ ∝ a -(4+n) . For 0n>, such a red-shift is faster than radiation, hence the new species dominates the energy budget of the universe at early times while it is completely negligible at late times. If equality with the radiation energy density is achieved at low enough temperatures, dark matter can be produced as a thermal relic during the new cosmological phase. Dark matter freeze-out then occurs at higher temperatures compared to the standard case, implying that reproducing the observed abundance requires significantly larger annihilation rates. Here, we point out a completely new phenomenon, which we refer to as relentless dark matter: for large enough n, unlike the standard case where annihilation ends shortly after the departure from thermal equilibrium, dark matter particles keep annihilating long after leaving chemical equilibrium, with a significant depletion of the final relic abundance. Relentless annihilation occurs for n ≥ 2 and n ≥ 4 for s-wave and p-wave annihilation, respectively, and it thus occurs in well motivated scenarios such as a quintessence with a kination phase. We discuss a few microscopic realizations for the new cosmological component and highlight the phenomenological consequences of our calculations for dark matter searches.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Cosmological imprints of frozen-in light sterile neutrinos

We investigate observable cosmological aspects of sterile neutrino dark matter produced via the freeze-in mechanism. The study is performed in a framework that admits many cosmologically interesting variations: high temperature production via annihilation processes from higher dimensional operators or low temperature production from decays of a scalar, with the decaying scalar in or out of equilibrium with the thermal bath, in supersymmetric or non-supersymmetric setups, thus allowing us to both extract generic properties and highlight features unique to particular variations. We find that while such sterile neutrinos are generally compatible with all cosmological constraints, interesting scenarios can arise where dark matter is cold, warm, or hot, has nontrivial momentum distributions, or provides contributions to the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom N {sub eff} during Big Bang nucleosynthesis large enough to be probed by future measurements.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Weyl metrics and wormholes

We study solutions obtained via applying dualities and complexifications to the vacuum Weyl metrics generated by massive rods and by point masses. Rescaling them and extending to complex parameter values yields axially symmetric vacuum solutions containing singularities along circles that can be viewed as singular matter sources. These solutions have wormhole topology with several asymptotic regions interconnected by throats and their sources can be viewed as thin rings of negative tension encircling the throats. For a particular value of the ring tension the geometry becomes exactly flat although the topology remains non-trivial, so that the rings literally produce holes in flat space. To create a single ring wormhole of one metre radius one needs a negative energy equivalent to the mass of Jupiter. Further duality transformations dress the rings with the scalar field, either conventional or phantom. This gives rise to large classes of static, axially symmetric solutions, presumably including all previously known solutions for a gravity-coupled massless scalar field, as for example the spherically symmetric Bronnikov-Ellis wormholes with phantom scalar. The multi-wormholes contain infinite struts everywhere at the symmetry axes, apart from solutions with locally flat geometry.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Fuzzy Euclidean wormholes in de Sitter space

Here, we investigate Euclidean wormholes in Einstein gravity with a massless scalar field in de Sitter space. Euclidean wormholes are possible due to the analytic continuation of the time as well as complexification of fields, where we need to impose the classicality after the Wick-rotation to the Lorentzian signatures. Furthermore, we prefer wormholes for some parameters, rather than Hawking-Moss instantons, and hence wormholes can be more fundamental than Hawking-Moss type instantons. Euclidean wormholes can be interpreted in three ways: (1) classical big bounce, (2) either tunneling from a small to a large universe or a creation of a collapsing and an expanding universe from nothing, and (3) either a transition from a contracting to a bouncing phase or a creation of two expanding universes from nothing. These various interpretations shed some light on challenges of singularities. In addition, these will help to understand tensions between various kinds of quantum gravity theories.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Analytical general solutions for static wormholes in f ( R , T ) gravity

Originally proposed as a tool for teaching the general theory of relativity, wormholes are today approached in many different ways and are seeing as an efficient alternative for interstellar and time travel. Attempts to achieve observational signatures of wormholes have been growing as the subject has become more and more popular. In this article we investigate some f ( R , T ) theoretical predictions for static wormholes, i.e., wormholes whose throat radius can be considered a constant. Since the T -dependence in f ( R , T ) gravity is due to the consideration of quantum effects, a further investigation of wormholes in such a theory is well motivated. We obtain the energy conditions of static wormholes in f ( R , T ) gravity and apply an analytical approach to find their physical and geometrical solutions. We highlight that our results are in agreement with previous solutions and assumptions presented in the literature.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Instabilities in mimetic matter perturbations

We study cosmological perturbations in mimetic matter scenario with a general higher derivative function. We calculate the quadratic action and show that both the kinetic term and the gradient term have the wrong sings. We perform the analysis in both comoving and Newtonian gauges and confirm that the Hamiltonians and the associated instabilities are consistent with each other in both gauges. The existence of instabilities is independent of the specific form of higher derivative function which generates gradients for mimetic field perturbations. It is verified that the ghost instability in mimetic perturbations is not associated with the higher derivative instabilities such as the Ostrogradsky ghost.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

On the inflationary perturbations of massive higher-spin fields

Cosmological perturbations of massive higher-spin fields are generated during inflation, but they decay on scales larger than the Hubble radius as a consequence of the Higuchi bound. By introducing suitable couplings to the inflaton field, we show that one can obtain statistical correlators of massive higher-spin fields which remain constant or decay very slowly outside the Hubble radius. This opens up the possibility of new observational signatures from inflation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗