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At least 1,171 records · Page 65

Primordial black-hole dark matter via warm natural inflation

We report on a study of the natural warm inflationary paradigm (WNI). We show two important new results arise in this model. One is that the observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be satisfied without going beyond the Planck scale of the effective field theory. The second is that WNI can inevitably provide perfect conditions for the production of primordial black holes (PBHs) in the golden window of black-hole mass range (10 -16 - 10 -11 M ⊙ ) where it can account for all of the dark matter content of the universe while satisfying observational constraints.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

HATS-3b: AN INFLATED HOT JUPITER TRANSITING AN F-TYPE STAR

We report the discovery by the HATSouth survey of HATS-3b, a transiting extrasolar planet orbiting a V = 12.4 F dwarf star. HATS-3b has a period of P = 3.5479 days, mass of M{sub p} = 1.07 M {sub J}, and radius of R{sub p} = 1.38 R {sub J}. Given the radius of the planet, the brightness of the host star, and the stellar rotational velocity (vsin i = 9.0 km s{sup –1}), this system will make an interesting target for future observations to measure the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect and determine its spin-orbit alignment. We detail the low-/medium-resolution reconnaissance spectroscopy that we are now using to deal with large numbers of transiting planet candidates produced by the HATSouth survey. We show that this important step in discovering planets produces log g and T {sub eff} parameters at a precision suitable for efficient candidate vetting, as well as efficiently identifying stellar mass eclipsing binaries with radial velocity semi-amplitudes as low as 1 km s{sup –1}.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Inflation alternative via the gravitational field of a singularity

Abstract We explore the scenario that the observable Universe emerged from the vicinity of a negative mass ring singularity, and all content of the Universe travels at the same group velocity close to the speed of light on a geodesic trajectory along the axis of rotation of the singularity. In appropriate coordinate parametrization and evaluated on the trajectory, we find that the metric tensor in the vicinity of the trajectory exhibits a conformal scale factor a ( η ) with contraction and subsequent expansion properties that solve the horizon problem. We then introduce a static flow of gravitating radiation along the trajectory (perturbatively with respect to the mass scale of the singularity) to model a homogeneous radiation dominated Universe. Solving the Einstein field equations with a physically motivated ansatz of metric perturbation then reveals that the effective conformal scale factor indeed grows asymptotically with the same power law as expected in a conventional radiation dominated Universe.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Curvature perturbations in anisotropic inflation with symmetry breaking

We study curvature perturbations in the anisotropic inflationary model with a complex scalar field charged under a U(1) gauge field in Bianchi I universe. Due to Abelian Higgs mechanism, the gauge field receives an additional longitudinal mode. We verify that the dominant contributions into statistical anisotropies come from matter fields perturbations and one can neglect the contributions from the metric perturbations. It is shown that the contribution of longitudinal mode into the statistical anisotropy power spectrum, though exponentially small, has an opposite sign compared to the corresponding contribution from the transverse mode. We obtain an upper bound on gauge coupling in order to satisfy the observational constraints on curvature perturbations anisotropy.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

String inflation after Planck 2013

We briefly summarize the impact of the recent Planck measurements for string inflationary models, and outline what might be expected to be learned in the near future from the expected improvement in sensitivity to the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio. We comment on whether these models provide sufficient added value to compensate for their complexity, and ask how they fare in the face of the new constraints on non-gaussianity and dark radiation. We argue that as a group the predictions made before Planck agree well with what has been seen, and draw conclusions from this about what is likely to mean as sensitivity to primordial gravitational waves improves.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

On the trispectrum of Galileon inflation

We present a detailed study of the trispectrum of the curvature perturbation generated within a stable, well defined and predictive theory which comprises an inflationary phase. In this model the usual shift symmetry is enhanced up to the so-called Galileon symmetry. The appeal of this type of theories rests on being unitary and stable under quantum corrections. Furthermore, in the specific model under consideration here, these properties have been shown to approximately hold in realistic scenarios which account for curved spacetime and the coupling with gravity. In the literature, the analysis of the bispectrum of the curvature perturbation for this theory revealed non-Gaussian features which are shared by a number of inflationary models, including stable ones. It is therefore both timely and useful to investigate further and turn to observables such as the trispectrum. We find that, in a number of specific momenta configurations, the trispectrum shape-functions present strikingly different features as compared to, for example, the entire class of the so-called P(X,φ) inflationary models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Inflation in the generalized inverse power law scenario

We propose a single field inflationary model by generalizing the inverse power law potential from the intermediate model. We study the implication of our model on the primordial anisotropy of cosmological microwave background radiation. Specifically, we apply the slow-roll approximation to calculate the scalar spectral tilt n{sub s} and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r. The results are compared with the recent data measured by the Planck satellite. We find that by choosing proper values for the parameters, our model can well describe the Planck data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Getting leverage on inflation with a large photometric redshift survey

We assess the potential of a future large-volume photometric redshift survey to constrain observational inflationary parameters using three large-scale structure observables: the angular shear and galaxy power spectra, and the cluster mass function measured through weak lensing. When used in combination with Planck-like CMB measurements, we find that the spectral index n{sub s} can be constrained to a 1 σ precision of up to 0.0025. The sensitivity to the running of the spectral index can potentially improve to 0.0017, roughly a factor of five better than the present 1σ constraint from Planck and auxiliary CMB data, allowing us to test the assumptions of the slow-roll scenario with unprecedented accuracy. Interestingly, neither CMB+shear nor CMB+galaxy nor CMB+clusters alone can achieve this level of sensitivity; it is the combined power of all three probes that conspires to break the different parameter degeneracies inherent in each type of observations. We make our forecast software publicly available via download or upon request from the authors.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Preheating and entropy perturbations in axion monodromy inflation

We study the preheating of gauge fields in a simple axion monodromy model and compute the induced entropy perturbations and their effect on the curvature fluctuations. We find that the correction to the spectrum of curvature perturbations has a blue spectrum with index n{sub s}=5/2. Hence, these induced modes are harmless for the observed structure of the universe. Since the spectrum is blue, there is the danger of overproduction of primordial black holes. However, we show that the observational constraints are easily satisfied.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Cosmic variance in inflation with two light scalars

We examine the squeezed limit of the bispectrum when a light scalar with arbitrary non-derivative self-interactions is coupled to the inflaton. We find that when the hidden sector scalar is sufficiently light ( m ∼< 0.1 H ), the coupling between long and short wavelength modes from the series of higher order correlation functions (from arbitrary order contact diagrams) causes the statistics of the fluctuations to vary in sub-volumes. This means that observations of primordial non-Gaussianity cannot be used to uniquely reconstruct the potential of the hidden field. However, the local bispectrum induced by mode-coupling from these diagrams always has the same squeezed limit, so the field's locally determined mass is not affected by this cosmic variance.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Cosmic microwave background and inflation in multi-fractional spacetimes

We use FIRAS and Planck 2015 data to place observational bounds on inflationary scenarios in multi-fractional spacetimes with q-derivatives. While a power-law expansion in the geometric time coordinate is subject to the usual constraints from the tensor-to-scalar ratio, model-independent best fits of the black-body and scalar spectra yield upper limits on the free parameters of the multi-fractal measure of the theory. When the measure describing the fractal spacetime geometry is non-oscillating, information on the CMB black-body spectrum places constraints on the theory independent from but weaker than those obtained from the Standard Model, astrophysical gravitational waves and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). When log oscillations are included and the measure describes a discrete fractal spacetime at microscopic scales, we obtain the first observational constraints on the amplitudes of such oscillations and find, in general, strong constraints on the multi-scale geometry and on the dimension of space. These results complete the scan and reduction of the parameter space of the theory. Black-body bounds are obtained also for the theory with weighted derivatives.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Asymptotically safe non-minimal inflation

We study the constraints imposed by the requirement of Asymptotic Safety on a class of inflationary models with an inflaton field non-minimally coupled to the Ricci scalar. The critical surface in the space of theories is determined by the improved renormalization group flow which takes into account quantum corrections beyond the one loop approximation. The combination of constraints deriving from Planck observations and those from theory puts severe bounds on the values of the parameters of the model and predicts a quite large tensor to scalar ratio. We finally comment on the dependence of the results on the definition of the infrared energy scale which parametrises the running on the critical surface.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Testing non-minimally coupled inflation with CMB data: a Bayesian analysis

We use the most recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) data to perform a Bayesian statistical analysis and discuss the observational viability of inflationary models with a non-minimal coupling, ξ, between the inflaton field and the Ricci scalar. We particularize our analysis to two examples of small and large field inflationary models, namely, the Coleman-Weinberg and the chaotic quartic potentials. We find that ( i ) the ξ parameter is closely correlated with the primordial amplitude ; ( ii ) although improving the agreement with the CMB data in the r − n {sub s} plane, where r is the tensor-to-scalar ratio and n {sub s} the primordial spectral index, a non-null coupling is strongly disfavoured with respect to the minimally coupled standard ΛCDM model, since the upper bounds of the Bayes factor (odds) for ξ parameter are greater than 150:1.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗