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At least 1,153 records · Page 64
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

The Simons Observatory: Combining cross-spectral foreground cleaning with multitracer B -mode delensing for improved constraints on inflation

The Simons Observatory (SO), due to start full science operations in early 2025, aims to set tight constraints on inflationary physics by inferring the tensor-to-scalar ratio r from measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization B-modes. Its nominal design including three small-aperture telescopes (SATs) targets a precision σ⁡(r = 0) ≤ 0.003 without delensing. Achieving this goal and further reducing uncertainties requires a thorough understanding and mitigation of other large-scale B-mode sources such as Galactic foregrounds and weak gravitational lensing. We present an analysis pipeline aiming to estimate r by including delensing within a cross-spectral likelihood, and demonstrate it for the first time on SO-like simulations accounting for various levels of foreground complexity, inhomogeneous noise and partial sky coverage. As introduced in an earlier SO delensing paper, lensing B-modes are synthesized using internal CMB lensing reconstructions as well as Planck-like cosmic infrared background maps and LSST-like galaxy density maps. We then extend SO’s power-spectrum-based foreground-cleaning algorithm to include all auto- and cross-spectra between the lensing template and the SAT B-modes in the likelihood function. This allows us to constrain r and the parameters of our foreground model simultaneously. Within this framework, we demonstrate the equivalence of map-based and cross-spectral delensing and use it to motivate an optimized pixel-weighting scheme for power spectrum estimation. We start by validating our pipeline in the simplistic case of uniform foreground spectral energy distributions. In the absence of primordial B-modes, we find that the 1⁢σ statistical uncertainty on r, σ⁡(r), decreases by 37% as a result of delensing. Tensor modes at the level of r = 0.01 are successfully detected by our pipeline. Even when using more realistic foreground models including spatial variations in the dust and synchrotron spectral properties, we obtain unbiased estimates of r both with and without delensing by employing the moment-expansion method. In this case, uncertainties are increased due to the higher number of model parameters, and delensing-related improvements range between 27% and 31%. These results constitute the first realistic assessment of the delensing performance at SO’s nominal sensitivity level.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Preheating after multifield inflation with nonminimal couplings. II. Resonance structure

This is the second in a series of papers on preheating in inflationary models comprised of multiple scalar fields coupled nonminimally to gravity. We work in the rigid-spacetime approximation and consider field trajectories within the single-field attractor, which is a generic feature of these models. We construct the Floquet charts to find regions of parameter space in which particle production is efficient for both the adiabatic and isocurvature modes, and analyze the resonance structure using analytic and semianalytic techniques. Particle production in the adiabatic direction is characterized by the existence of an asymptotic scaling solution at large values of the nonminimal couplings, ${{\xi}}_{I}{\gg}1$, in which the dominant instability band arises in the long-wavelength limit, for comoving wave numbers $k{\rightarrow}0$. However, the large-${{\xi}}_{I}$ regime is not reached until ${{\xi}}_{I}{\ge}\mathcal{O}(100)$. In the intermediate regime, with ${{\xi}}_{I}{\sim}\mathcal{O}(1-10)$, the resonance structure depends strongly on wave number and couplings. The resonance structure for isocurvature perturbations is distinct and more complicated than its adiabatic counterpart. An intermediate regime, for ${{\xi}}_{I}{\sim}\mathcal{O}(1-10)$, is again evident. For large values of ${{\xi}}_{I}$, the Floquet chart consists of densely spaced, nearly parallel instability bands, suggesting a very efficient preheating behavior. The increased efficiency arises from features of the nontrivial field-space manifold in the Einstein frame, which itself arises from the fields’ nonminimal couplings in the Jordan frame, and has no analog in models with minimal couplings. Quantitatively, the approach to the large-${{\xi}}_{I}$ asymptotic solution for isocurvature modes is slower than in the case of the adiabatic modes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Inflation of the early cold Universe filled with a nonlinear scalar field and a nonideal relativistic Fermi gas

We consider a possible scenario for the evolution of the early cold Universe born from a fairly large quantum fluctuation in a vacuum with a size a{sub 0} ≫ l{sub P} (where l{sub P} is the Planck length) and filled with both a nonlinear scalar field φ, whose potential energy density U(φ) determines the vacuum energy density λ, and a nonideal Fermi gas with short-range repulsion between particles, whose equation of state is characterized by the ratio of pressure P(n{sub F}) to energy density ε(n{sub F}) dependent on the number density of fermions n{sub F}. As the early Universe expands, the dimensionless quantity ν(n{sub F}) = P(n{sub F})/ε(n{sub F}) decreases with decreasing n{sub F} from its maximum value ν{sub max} = 1 for n{sub F} → ∞ to zero for n{sub F} → 0. The interaction of the scalar and gravitational fields, which is characterized by a dimensionless constant ξ, is proportional to the scalar curvature of four-dimensional space R = κ[3P(n{sub F})–ε(n{sub F})–4λ] (where κ is Einstein’s gravitational constant), and contains terms both quadratic and linear in φ. As a result, the expanding early Universe reaches the point of first-order phase transition in a finite time interval at critical values of the scalar curvature R = R{sub c} =–μ{sup 2}/ξ and radius a{sub c} ≫ a{sub 0}. Thereafter, the early closed Universe “rolls down” from the flat inflection point of the potential U(φ) to the zero potential minimum in a finite time. The release of the total potential energy of the scalar field in the entire volume of the expanding Universe as it “rolls down” must be accompanied by the production of a large number of massive particles and antiparticles of various kinds, whose annihilation plays the role of the Big Bang. We also discuss the fundamental nature of Newton’ gravitational constant G{sub N}.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗