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At least 1,117 records · Page 62
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DOE OSTI2013

Global fits of the cMSSM and NUHM including the LHC Higgs discovery and new XENON100 constraints

We present global fits of the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cMSSM) and the Non-Universal Higgs Model (NUHM), including the most recent CMS constraint on the Higgs boson mass, 5.8 fb{sup −1} integrated luminosity null Supersymmetry searches by ATLAS, the new LHCb measurement of BR( B-bar {sub s} → μ{sup +}μ{sup −}) and the 7-year WMAP dark matter relic abundance determination. We include the latest dark matter constraints from the XENON100 experiment, marginalising over astrophysical and particle physics uncertainties. We present Bayesian posterior and profile likelihood maps of the highest resolution available today, obtained from up to 350M points. We find that the new constraint on the Higgs boson mass has a dramatic impact, ruling out large regions of previously favoured cMSSM and NUHM parameter space. In the cMSSM, light sparticles and predominantly gaugino-like dark matter with a mass of a few hundred GeV are favoured. The NUHM exhibits a strong preference for heavier sparticle masses and a Higgsino-like neutralino with a mass of 1 TeV. The future ton-scale XENON1T direct detection experiment will probe large portions of the currently favoured cMSSM and NUHM parameter space. The LHC operating at 14 TeV collision energy will explore the favoured regions in the cMSSM, while most of the regions favoured in the NUHM will remain inaccessible. Our best-fit points achieve a satisfactory quality-of-fit, with p-values ranging from 0.21 to 0.35, so that none of the two models studied can be presently excluded at any meaningful significance level.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Astrophysical tests of modified gravity: the morphology and kinematics of dwarf galaxies

This paper is the third in a series on tests of gravity using observations of stars and nearby dwarf galaxies. We carry out four distinct tests using published data on the kinematics and morphology of dwarf galaxies, motivated by the theoretical work of Hui et al. (2009) and Jain and Vanderplas (2011). In a wide class of gravity theories a scalar field couples to matter and provides an attractive fifth force. Due to their different self-gravity, stars and gas may respond differently to the scalar force leading to several observable deviations from standard gravity. HI gas, red giant stars and main sequence stars can be displaced relative to each other, and the stellar disk can display warps or asymmetric rotation curves aligned with external potential gradients. To distinguish the effects of modified gravity from standard astrophysical phenomena, we use a control sample of galaxies that are expected to be screened from the fifth force. In all cases we find no significant deviation from the null hypothesis of general relativity. The limits obtained from dwarf galaxies are not yet competitive with the limits from cepheids obtained in our first paper, but can be improved to probe regions of parameter space that are inaccessible using other tests. We discuss how our methodology can be applied to new radio and optical observations of nearby galaxies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

The small scale power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background

We investigate the hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background on small angular scales. We find an anomalously high asymmetry in the multipole range l = 601−2048, with a naive statistical significance of 6.5σ. However, we show that this extreme anomaly is simply a coincidence of three other effects, relativistic power modulation, edge effects from the mask applied, and inter-scale correlations. After correcting for all of these effects, the significance level drops to ∼ 1σ, i.e., there is no anomalous intrinsic asymmetry in the small angular scales. Using this null result, we derive a constraint on a potential dipolar modulation amplitude, A(k) < 0.0045 on the ∼ 10 Mpc-scale, at 95% C.L. This new constraint must be satisfied by any theoretical model attempting to explain the hemispherical asymmetry at large angular scales.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Can non-local or higher derivative theories provide alternatives to inflation?

The standard mechanism for producing the observed scale-invariant power spectrum from adiabatic vacuum fluctuations relies on first order derivative of fields in the action for curvature perturbations. It has been proven [1] that, under this ansatz, any theory of early universe that matches cosmological observations should include a phase of accelerated expansion (i.e. inflation) or it has to break at least one of the following tenets of classical general relativity: Null Energy Conditions (NEC), subluminal signal propagation, or sub-Planckian energy densities. We extend this proof to a large class of theories with higher (spatial) derivative or non-local terms in the action. Interestingly, only theories in the neighborhood of Lifshitz points with ω{sub k}∝k{sup 0} and k{sup 3} remain viable.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Anisotropic universe with anisotropic sources

We analyze the state space of a Bianchi-I universe with anisotropic sources. Here we consider an extended state space which includes null geodesics in this background. The evolution equations for all the state observables are derived. Dynamical systems approach is used to study the evolution of these equations. The asymptotic stable fixed points for all the evolution equations are found. We also check our analytic results with numerical analysis of these dynamical equations. The evolution of the state observables are studied both in cosmic time and using a dimensionless time variable. Then we repeat the same analysis with a more realistic scenario, adding the isotropic (dust like dark) matter and a cosmological constant (dark energy) to our anisotropic sources, to study their co-evolution. The universe now approaches a de Sitter space asymptotically dominated by the cosmological constant. The cosmic microwave background anisotropy maps due to shear are also generated in this scenario, assuming that the universe contains anisotropic matter along with the usual (dark) matter and vacuum (dark) energy since decoupling. We find that they contribute dominantly to the CMB quadrupole. We also constrain the current level of anisotropy and also search for any cosmic preferred axis present in the data. We use the Union 2 Supernovae data to this extent. An anisotropy axis close to the mirror symmetry axis seen in the cosmic microwave background data from Planck probe is found.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Exploring scalar field dynamics with Gaussian processes

The origin of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains an unsolved mystery in Cosmology. In this work we consider a spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) Universe with non-relativistic matter and a single scalar field contributing to the energy density of the Universe. Properties of this scalar field, like potential, kinetic energy, equation of state etc. are reconstructed from Supernovae and BAO data using Gaussian processes. We also reconstruct energy conditions and kinematic variables of expansion, such as the jerk and the slow roll parameter. We find that the reconstructed scalar field variables and the kinematic quantities are consistent with a flat ΛCDM Universe. Further, we find that the null energy condition is satisfied for the redshift range of the Supernovae data considered in the paper, but the strong energy condition is violated.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

What's inside the cone? Numerically reconstructing the metric from observations

We investigate the possibility of using Gaussian process regression to smooth data on the current past null-cone for use as the input to a relativistic integration scheme. The algorithm we present is designed to reconstruct the metric of spacetime within the class of spherically symmetric dust universes, with or without a cosmological constant. Assuming that gravity is well described by General Relativity, we demonstrate how the algorithm can be employed to test the Copernican principle based on currently available observations. It is shown that currently available data is not sufficient for a conclusive result. The intrinsic noise present in realistic data presents a challenge for our smoothing algorithm and we discuss some of its limitations as well as possible extensions to it. We conclude by demonstrating how a direct determination of the cosmological constant is possible using redshift drift data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Detection of thermal SZ-CMB lensing cross-correlation in Planck nominal mission data

The nominal mission maps from the Planck satellite contain a wealth of information about secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), including those induced by the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect and gravitational lensing. As both the tSZ and CMB lensing signals trace the large-scale matter density field, the anisotropies sourced by these processes are expected to be correlated. We report the first detection of this cross-correlation signal, which we measure at 6.2σ significance using the Planck data. We take advantage of Planck's multifrequency coverage to construct a tSZ map using internal linear combination techniques, which we subsequently cross-correlate with the publicly-released Planck CMB lensing potential map. The cross-correlation is subject to contamination from the cosmic infrared background (CIB), which is known to correlate strongly with CMB lensing. We correct for this contamination via cross-correlating our tSZ map with the Planck 857 GHz map and confirm the robustness of our measurement using several null tests. We interpret the signal using halo model calculations, which indicate that the tSZ-CMB lensing cross-correlation is a unique probe of the physics of intracluster gas in high-redshift, low-mass groups and clusters. Our results are consistent with extrapolations of existing gas physics models to this previously unexplored regime and show clear evidence for contributions from both the one- and two-halo terms, but no statistically significant evidence for contributions from diffuse, unbound gas outside of collapsed halos. We also show that the amplitude of the signal depends rather sensitively on the amplitude of fluctuations (σ{sub 8}) and the matter density (Ω{sub m}), scaling as σ{sub 8}{sup 6.1}Ω{sub m}{sup 1.5} at ℓ = 1000. We constrain the degenerate combination σ{sub 8}(Ω{sub m}/0.282){sup 0.26} = 0.824±0.029, a result that is in less tension with primordial CMB constraints than some recent tSZ analyses. We also combine our measurement with the Planck measurement of the tSZ auto-power spectrum to demonstrate a technique that can in principle constrain both cosmology and the physics of intracluster gas simultaneously. Our detection is a direct confirmation that hot, ionized gas traces the dark matter distribution over a wide range of scales in the universe ( ∼ 0.1–50 Mpc/h)

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Cosmological matching conditions and galilean genesis in Horndeski's theory

We derive the cosmological matching conditions for the homogeneous and isotropic background and for linear perturbations in Horndeski's most general second-order scalar-tensor theory. In general relativity, the matching is done in such a way that the extrinsic curvature is continuous across the transition hypersurface. This procedure is generalized so as to incorporate the mixing of scalar and gravity kinetic terms in the field equations of Horndeski's theory. Our matching conditions have a wide range of applications including the galilean genesis and the bounce scenarios, in which stable, null energy condition violating solutions play a central role. We demonstrate how our matching conditions are used in the galilean genesis scenario. In doing so, we extend the previous genesis models and provide a unified description of the theory admitting the solution that starts expanding from the Minkowski spacetime.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

The Raychaudhuri equation in homogeneous cosmologies

In this work we address the issue of studying the conditions required to guarantee the Focusing Theorem for both null and timelike geodesic congruences by using the Raychaudhuri equation. In particular we study the case of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker as well as more general Bianchi Type I spacetimes. The fulfillment of the Focusing Theorem is mandatory in small scales since it accounts for the attractive character of gravity. However, the Focusing Theorem is not satisfied at cosmological scales due to the measured negative deceleration parameter. The study of the conditions needed for congruences convergence is not only relevant at the fundamental level but also to derive the viability conditions to be imposed on extended theories of gravity describing the different expansion regimes of the universe. We illustrate this idea for f(R) gravity theories.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Fermi Bubbles under Dark Matter Scrutiny Part II: Particle Physics Analysis

The analysis of the gamma-ray photons collected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope reveals, after removal of astrophysical background, the existence of an excess towards the Galactic center. This excess peaks around few GeV, and its origin is compatible with the gamma-ray flux originating from Dark Matter annihilation. In this work we take a closer look on this interpretation; we investigate which kind of Dark Matter, and which type of interactions with the Standard Model fields are able to reproduce the observed signal. The structure of the paper is twofold. In the first part, we follow an effective field theory approach considering both fermionic and scalar Dark Matter. The computation of the relic density, the constraint imposed from the null result of direct searches, and the reliability of the effective field theory description allow us to single out only two viable dim-6 operators in the case of fermionic Dark Matter. In the second part, we analyze some concrete models. In particular, we find that the scalar Higgs portal can provide a simple, concrete and realistic scenario able to explain the GeV excess under scrutiny.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Phenomenology of dark energy: exploring the space of theories with future redshift surveys

We use the effective field theory of dark energy to explore the space of modified gravity models which are capable of driving the present cosmic acceleration. We identify five universal functions of cosmic time that are enough to describe a wide range of theories containing a single scalar degree of freedom in addition to the metric. The first function (the effective equation of state) uniquely controls the expansion history of the universe. The remaining four functions appear in the linear cosmological perturbation equations, but only three of them regulate the growth history of large scale structures. We propose a specific parameterization of such functions in terms of characteristic coefficients that serve as coordinates in the space of modified gravity theories and can be effectively constrained by the next generation of cosmological experiments. We address in full generality the problem of the soundness of the theory against ghost-like and gradient instabilities and show how the space of non-pathological models shrinks when a more negative equation of state parameter is considered. This analysis allows us to locate a large class of stable theories that violate the null energy condition (i.e. super-acceleration models) and to recover, as particular subsets, various models considered so far. Finally, under the assumption that the true underlying cosmological model is the Λ Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) scenario, and relying on the figure of merit of EUCLID-like observations, we demonstrate that the theoretical requirement of stability significantly narrows the empirical likelihood, increasing the discriminatory power of data. We also find that the vast majority of these non-pathological theories generating the same expansion history as the ΛCDM model predict a different, lower, growth rate of cosmic structures.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Taylor expansion of luminosity distance in Szekeres cosmological models: effects of local structures evolution on cosmographic parameters

We consider the Goode-Wainwright representation of the Szekeres cosmological models and calculate the Taylor expansion of the luminosity distance in order to study the effects of the inhomogeneities on cosmographic parameters. Without making a particular choice for the arbitrary functions defining the metric, we Taylor expand up to the second order in redshift for Family I and up to the third order for Family II Szekeres metrics under the hypotesis, based on observation, that local structure formation is over. In a conservative fashion, we also allow for the existence of a non null cosmological constant.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Accelerated expansion of the universe à la the Stueckelberg mechanism

We investigate a cosmological model in which the Stueckelberg fields are non-minimally coupled to the scalar curvature in a gauge invariant manner. We present not only a solution that can be considered in the context of the late time acceleration of the universe but also a solution compatible with the inflationary cosmology. Distinct behaviors of the scalar and vector fields together with the real valued mass gained by the Stueckelberg mechanism lead the universe to go through the two different accelerated expansion phases with a decelerated expansion phase between them. On the other hand, in the solutions we present, if the mass is null then the universe is either static or exhibits a simple power law expansion due to the vector field potential.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Global fits of the dark matter-nucleon effective interactions

The effective theory of isoscalar dark matter-nucleon interactions mediated by heavy spin-one or spin-zero particles depends on 10 coupling constants besides the dark matter particle mass. Here we compare this 11-dimensional effective theory to current observations in a comprehensive statistical analysis of several direct detection experiments, including the recent LUX, SuperCDMS and CDMSlite results. From a multidimensional scan with about 3 million likelihood evaluations, we extract the marginalized posterior probability density functions (a Bayesian approach) and the profile likelihoods (a frequentist approach), as well as the associated credible regions and confidence levels, for each coupling constant vs dark matter mass and for each pair of coupling constants. We compare the Bayesian and frequentist approach in the light of the currently limited amount of data. We find that current direct detection data contain sufficient information to simultaneously constrain not only the familiar spin-independent and spin-dependent interactions, but also the remaining velocity and momentum dependent couplings predicted by the dark matter-nucleon effective theory. For current experiments associated with a null result, we find strong correlations between some pairs of coupling constants. For experiments that claim a signal (i.e., CoGeNT and DAMA), we find that pairs of coupling constants produce degenerate results.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

A joint analysis of Planck and BICEP2 B modes including dust polarization uncertainty

We analyze BICEP2 and Planck data using a model that includes CMB lensing, gravity waves, and polarized dust. Recently published Planck dust polarization maps have highlighted the difficulty of estimating the amount of dust polarization in low intensity regions, suggesting that the polarization fractions have considerable uncertainties and may be significantly higher than previous predictions. In this paper, we start by assuming nothing about the dust polarization except for the power spectrum shape, which we take to be C{sub l}{sup BB,dust} ∝ l{sup -2.42}. The resulting joint BICEP2+Planck analysis favors solutions without gravity waves, and the upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio is r<0.11, a slight improvement relative to the Planck analysis alone which gives r<0.13 (95% c.l.). The estimated amplitude of the dust polarization power spectrum agrees with expectations for this field based on both HI column density and Planck polarization measurements at 353 GHz in the BICEP2 field. Including the latter constraint on the dust spectrum amplitude in our analysis improves the limit further to r < 0.09, placing strong constraints on theories of inflation (e.g., models with r>0.14 are excluded with 99.5% confidence). We address the cross-correlation analysis of BICEP2 at 150 GHz with BICEP1 at 100 GHz as a test of foreground contamination. We find that the null hypothesis of dust and lensing with 0r= gives Δ χ{sup 2} < 2 relative to the hypothesis of no dust, so the frequency analysis does not strongly favor either model over the other. We also discuss how more accurate dust polarization maps may improve our constraints. If the dust polarization is measured perfectly, the limit can reach r < 0.05 (or the corresponding detection significance if the observed dust signal plus the expected lensing signal is below the BICEP2 observations), but this degrades quickly to almost no improvement if the dust calibration error is 20% or larger or if the dust maps are not processed through the BICEP2 pipeline, inducing sampling variance noise.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Massive gravitational waves in Chern-Simons modified gravity

We consider the nondynamical Chern-Simons (nCS) modified gravity, which is regarded as a parity-odd theory of massive gravity in four dimensions. We first find polarization modes of gravitational waves for θ=x/μ in nCS modified gravity by using the Newman-Penrose formalism where the null complex tetrad is necessary to specify gravitational waves. We show that in the Newman–Penrose formalism, the number of polarization modes is one in addition to an unspecified Ψ{sub 4}, implying three degrees of freedom for θ=x/μ. This compares with two for a canonical embedding of θ=t/μ. Also, if one introduces the Ricci tensor formalism to describe a massive graviton arising from the nCS modified gravity, one finds one massive mode after making second-order wave equations, which is compared to five found from the parity-even Einstein–Weyl gravity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Inflation and alternatives with blue tensor spectra

We study the tilt of the primordial gravitational waves spectrum. A hint of blue tilt is shown from analyzing the BICEP2 and POLARBEAR data. Motivated by this, we explore the possibilities of blue tensor spectra from the very early universe cosmology models, including null energy condition violating inflation, inflation with general initial conditions, and string gas cosmology, etc. For the simplest G-inflation, blue tensor spectrum also implies blue scalar spectrum. In general, the inflation models with blue tensor spectra indicate large non-Gaussianities. On the other hand, string gas cosmology predicts blue tensor spectrum with highly Gaussian fluctuations. If further experiments do confirm the blue tensor spectrum, non-Gaussianity becomes a distinguishing test between inflation and alternatives.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗