Future CMB experiments have the potential to probe the density of relativistic species at the sub-percent level. Sensitivity at this level allows light thermal relics to be detected up to arbitrarily high decoupling temperatures. Conversely, the absence of a detection would require extra light species never to have been in equilibrium with the Standard Model. In this paper, we exploit this feature to demonstrate the sensitivity of future cosmological observations to the couplings of axions to all of the Standard Model degrees of freedom. In many cases, the constraints achievable from cosmology will surpass existing bounds from laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations by orders of magnitude.
The nature of random errors in any data set that is Gaussian is a well established fact according to the Central Limit Theorem. Supernovae type Ia data have played a crucial role in major discoveries in cosmology. Unlike in laboratory experiments, astronomical measurements can not be performed in controlled situations. Thus, errors in astronomical data can be more severe in terms of systematics and non-Gaussianity compared to those of laboratory experiments. In this paper, we use the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic to test non-Gaussianity in high-z supernovae data. We apply this statistic to four data sets, i.e., Gold data(2004), Gold data(2007), Union2 catalogue and the Union2.1 data set for our analysis. Our results shows that in all four data sets the errors are consistent with the Gaussian distribution.
Efforts to understand and map the possible explanations for the late time acceleration of the universe have led to a broad range of suggestions, ranging from the cosmological constant and straightforward dark energy, to exotically coupled models, to infrared modifications of General Relativity. If we are to uncover which, if any, of these approaches might provide a serious answer to the problem, it is crucial to understand the constraints that theoretical consistency places on the models, and on the regimes in which they make predictions. In this talk, delivered as an invited plenary lecture at the Dark Side of the Universe conference in Kyoto, Japan, I briefly describe some modern attempts to carry out this program and some of the more interesting ideas that have emerged. As an example, I use the Galileon model, discussing how the Vainshtein mechanism occurs, and how a number of these theoretical problems arise around such backgrounds.
We study the impact of the often neglected lensing contribution to galaxy number counts on the $E_g$ statistics which is used to constrain deviations from GR. This contribution affects both the galaxy-galaxy and the convergence-galaxy spectra, while it is larger for the latter. At higher redshifts probed by upcoming surveys, neglecting this term induces a substantial error in the spectra and therefore on the $E_g$ statistics which is constructed from the combination of the two. Moreover, including it, renders the $E_g$ statistics scale and bias-dependent and hence puts into question its very objective.
Isotropy-violation statistics can highlight polarized galactic foregrounds that contaminate primordial $B$-modes in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We propose a particular isotropy-violation test and apply it to polarized Planck 353 GHz data, constructing an map that indicates $B$-mode foreground dust power over the sky. We build our main isotropy test in harmonic space via the bipolar spherical harmonic basis, and our method helps us to identify the least-contaminated directions. By this measure, there are regions of low foreground in and around the BICEP field, near the South Galactic Pole, and in the Northern Galactic Hemisphere. There is also a possible foreground feature in the BICEP field. We compare our results to those based on the local power spectrum, which is computed on discs using a version of the method of Planck Int.~XXX (2016). The discs method is closely related to our isotropy-violation diagnostic. We pay special care to the treatment of noise, including chance correlations with the foregrounds. Currently we use our isotropy tool to assess the cleanest portions of the sky, but in the future such methods will allow isotropy-based null tests for foreground contamination in maps purported to measure primordial $B$-modes, particularly in cases of limited frequency coverage.
In the context of Einstein gravity, if the null energy condition (NEC) is satisfied, the energy density in expanding space-times always decreases while in contracting space-times the energy density grows and the universe eventually collapses into a singularity. In particular, no non-singular bounce is possible. It is, though, an open question if this energy condition can be violated in a controlled way, i.e., without introducing pathologies, such as unstable negative-energy states or an imaginary speed of sound. In this paper, we will re-examine the claim that the recently proposed mimetic scenario can violate the NEC without pathologies. We show that mimetic cosmology is prone to gradient instabilities even in cases when the NEC is satisfied (except for trivial examples). Most interestingly, the source of the instability is always the Einstein-Hilbert term in the action. The matter stress-energy component does not contribute spatial gradient terms but instead makes the problematic curvature modes dynamical. We also show that mimetic cosmology can be understood as a singular limit of known, well-behaved theories involving higher-derivative kinetic terms and discuss ways of removing the instability.
Current observational evidence suggests that the star formation rate (SFR) efficiency of neutral atomic hydrogen gas measured in Damped Ly-alpha Systems (DLAs) at z~3 is more than 10 times lower than predicted by the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation. To understand the origin of this deficit, and to investigate possible evolution with redshift and galaxy properties, we measure the SFR efficiency of atomic gas at z~1, z~2, and z~3 around star-forming galaxies. We use new robust photometric redshifts in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field to create galaxy stacks in these three redshift bins, and measure the SFR efficiency by combining DLA absorber statistics with the observed rest-frame UV emission in the galaxies' outskirts. We find that the SFR efficiency of HI gas at z>1 is ~1-3% of that predicted by the KS relation. Contrary to simulations and models that predict a reduced SFR efficiency with decreasing metallicity and thus with increasing redshift, we find no significant evolution in the SFR efficiency with redshift. Our analysis instead suggests that the reduced SFR efficiency is driven by the low molecular content of this atomic-dominated phase, with metallicity playing a secondary effect in regulating the conversion between atomic and molecular gas. This interpretation is supported by the similarity between the observed SFR efficiency and that observed in local atomic-dominated gas, such as in the outskirts of local spiral galaxies and local dwarf galaxies.
When dark matter halos are accreted by massive host clusters, strong gravitational tidal forces begin stripping mass from the accreted subhalos. This stripping eventually removes all mass beyond a subhalo's tidal radius, but the unbound mass remains in the vicinity of the satellite for at least a dynamical time t_dynamical. The N-body subhalo study of Chamberlain et al. verified this picture and pointed out a useful observational consequence: measurements of subhalo correlations beyond the tidal radius are sensitive to the infall time, t_infall, of the subhalo onto its host. We perform this cross-correlation measurement using ~ 160,000 red satellite galaxies in SDSS redMaPPer clusters and find evidence that subhalo correlations do persist well beyond the tidal radius, suggesting that many of the observed satellites fell into their current host less than a dynamical time ago, t_infall < t_dyn. Combined with estimated dynamical times t_dynamical ~ 3-5 Gyr and SED fitting results for the time at which satellites stopped forming stars, t_quench ~ 6 Gyr, we infer that for a significant fraction of the satellites, star formation quenched before those satellites entered their current hosts. The result holds for red satellites over a large range of cluster-centric distances 0.1 - 0.6 Mpc/h. We discuss the implications of this result for models of galaxy formation.
In this work, we study the propagation of scalar fields in the gravitational background of a higher-dimensional Schwarzschild-de-Sitter black hole as well as on the projected-on-the-brane 4-dimensional background. The scalar fields have also a non-minimal coupling to the corresponding, bulk or brane, scalar curvature. We perform a comprehensive study by deriving exact numerical results for the greybody factors, and study their profile in terms of particle and spacetime properties. We then proceed to derive the Hawking radiation spectra for a higher-dimensional Schwarzschild-de-Sitter black hole, and we study both bulk and brane channels. We demonstrate that the non-minimal field coupling, that creates an effective mass term for the fields, suppresses the energy emission rates while the cosmological constant assumes a dual role. By computing the relative energy rates and the total emissivity ratio for bulk and brane emission, we demonstrate that the combined effect of a large number of extra dimensions and value of the field coupling gives to the bulk channel the clear domination in the bulk-brane energy balance.
Massive black-hole binaries (MBHBs) are thought to be the main source of gravitational waves (GWs) in the low-frequency domain surveyed by ongoing and forthcoming Pulsar Timing Array campaigns and future space-borne missions, such as {\it eLISA}. However, many low-redshift MBHBs in realistic astrophysical environments may not reach separations small enough to allow significant GW emission, but rather stall on (sub)pc-scale orbits. This "last-parsec problem" can be eased by the appearance of a third massive black hole (MBH) -- the "intruder" -- whose action can force, under certain conditions, the inner MBHB on a very eccentric orbit, hence allowing intense GW emission eventually leading to coalescence. A detailed assessment of the process, ultimately driven by the induced Kozai-Lidov oscillations of the MBHB orbit, requires a general relativistic treatment and the inclusion of external factors, such as the Newtonian precession of the intruder orbit in the galactic potential and its hardening by scattering off background stars. In order to tackle this problem, we developed a three-body Post-Newtonian (PN) code framed in a realistic galactic potential, including both non-dissipative 1PN and 2PN terms, and dissipative terms such as 2.5PN effects, orbital hardening of the outer binary, and the effect of the dynamical friction on the early stages of the intruder dynamics. In this first paper of a series devoted at studing the dynamics of MBH triplets from a cosmological perspective, we describe, test and validate our code.
The study of the evolution of the morphological distribution of galaxies in different environments can provide important information about the effects of the environment and the physical mechanisms responsible for the morphological transformations. As part of a complete analysis of the young cluster RXJ1257+4738 at z$\sim$0.9, we studied in this work the morphological properties of its galaxies. We used non-parametric methods of morphological classification, as implemented in the galSVM code. The classification with the applied method was possible even using ground-based observations: r'-band imaging from OSIRIS/GTC. We defined very conservative probability limits, taking into account the probability errors, in order to obtain a trustworthy classification. In this way we were able to classify about the 30% of all cluster members, and to separate between LT and ET galaxies. Additionally, when analysing the colour-magnitude diagram, we observed a significant population of blue ET galaxies between the classified ones. We discussed possible explanations for the finding of this population. Moreover, we studied different physical properties of LT, ET, and blue ET galaxies. They turn out to be comparable, with the exception of the stellar mass that shows that the red ET population is more massive. We also analysed the morphology-density and morphology-radius relations, observing that, only when considering the morphological separation between ET and LT galaxies, a mild classical behaviour is obtained. RXJ1257+4738 is a young galaxy cluster, showing a clumpy structure and being still in the process of formation, which could explain the lack of some of the standard morphological relations. This makes this cluster a very attractive case for obtaining the higher resolution data and for studying in more details the morphological properties of the entire cluster and relation with the environment.
We study production of light particles due to oscillation of the Hubble parameter or the scale factor. Any coherently oscillating scalar field, irrespective of its energy fraction in the universe, imprints such an oscillating feature on them. Not only the Einstein gravity but extended gravity models, such as models with non-minimal (derivative) coupling to gravity and $f(R)$ gravity, lead to oscillation of the scale factor. We present a convenient way to estimate the gravitational particle production rate in these circumstances. Cosmological implications of gravitational particle production, such as dark matter/radiation and moduli problem, are discussed. For example, if the theory is described solely by the standard model plus the Peccei-Quinn sector, the Starobinsky $R^2$ inflation may lead to observable amount of axion dark radiation.
Gravitational waves propagating through a stationary gauge field transform into gauge field waves and back again. When multiple families of flavor-space locked gauge fields are present, the gravitational and gauge field waves exhibit novel dynamics. At high frequencies, the system behaves like coupled oscillators in which the gravitational wave is the central pacemaker. Due to energy conservation and exchange among the oscillators, the wave amplitudes lie on a multi-dimensional sphere, reminiscent of neutrino flavor oscillations. This phenomenon has implications for cosmological scenarios based on flavor-space locked gauge fields.
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The possibility that part of the dark matter is made of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) remains poorly constrained over a wide range of masses, and especially in the $20-100\, M_\odot$ window. We show that strong gravitational lensing of extragalactic fast radio bursts (FRBs) by MACHOs of masses larger than $\sim20\,M_\odot$ would result in repeated FRBs with an observable time delay. Strong lensing of an FRB by a lens of mass $M_L$ induces two images, separated by a typical time delay $\sim$ few $\times(M_L/30\, M_\odot)$ milliseconds. Considering the expected FRB detection rate by upcoming experiments, such as CHIME, of $10^4$ FRBs per year, we should observe from tens to hundreds of repeated bursts yearly, if MACHOs in this window make up all the dark matter. A null search for echoes with just $10^4$ FRBs, would constrain the fraction $f_{\rm DM}$ of dark matter in MACHOs to $f_{\rm DM}\lesssim 0.08$ for $M_L\gtrsim 20\,M_\odot$.
We present first results from radio observations with the Murchison Widefield Array seeking to constrain the power spectrum of 21 cm brightness temperature fluctuations between the redshifts of 11.6 and 17.9 (113 and 75 MHz). Three hours of observations were conducted over two nights with significantly different levels of ionospheric activity. We use these data to assess the impact of systematic errors at low frequency, including the ionosphere and radio-frequency interference, on a power spectrum measurement. We find that after the 1-3 hours of integration presented here, our measurements at the Murchison Radio Observatory are not limited by RFI, even within the FM band, and that the ionosphere does not appear to affect the level of power in the modes that we expect to be sensitive to cosmology. Power spectrum detections, inconsistent with noise, due to fine spectral structure imprinted on the foregrounds by reflections in the signal-chain, occupy the spatial Fourier modes where we would otherwise be most sensitive to the cosmological signal. We are able to reduce this contamination using calibration solutions derived from autocorrelations so that we achieve an sensitivity of $10^4$ mK on comoving scales $k\lesssim 0.5 h$Mpc$^{-1}$. This represents the first upper limits on the $21$ cm power spectrum fluctuations at redshifts $12\lesssim z \lesssim 18$ but is still limited by calibration systematics. While calibration improvements may allow us to further remove this contamination, our results emphasize that future experiments should consider carefully the existence of and their ability to calibrate out any spectral structure within the EoR window.
We use the recent observations of Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropies provided by the Planck satellite experiment to place constraints on the running $\alpha_\mathrm{s} = \mathrm{d}n_{\mathrm{s}} / \mathrm{d}\log k$ and the running of the running $\beta_{\mathrm{s}} = \mathrm{d}\alpha_{\mathrm{s}} / \mathrm{d}\log k$ of the spectral index $n_{\mathrm{s}}$ of primordial scalar fluctuations. We find $\alpha_\mathrm{s}=0.011\pm0.010$ and $\beta_\mathrm{s}=0.027\pm0.013$ at $68\%\,\mathrm{CL}$, suggesting the presence of a running of the running at the level of two standard deviations. We find no significant correlation between $\beta_{\mathrm{s}}$ and foregrounds parameters, with the exception of the point sources amplitude at $143\,\mathrm{GHz}$, $A^{PS}_{143}$, which shifts by half sigma when the running of the running is considered. We further study the cosmological implications of this anomaly by including in the analysis the lensing amplitude $A_L$, the curvature parameter $\Omega_k$, and the sum of neutrino masses $\sum m_{\nu}$. We find that when the running of the running is considered, Planck data are more compatible with the standard expectations of $A_L = 1$ and $\Omega_k = 0$ but still hint at possible deviations. The indication for $\beta_\mathrm{s} > 0$ survives at two standard deviations when external datasets such as BAO and CFHTLenS are included in the analysis, and persists at $\sim 1.7$ standard deviations when CMB lensing is considered. We discuss the possibility of constraining $\beta_\mathrm{s}$ with current and future measurements of CMB spectral distortions, showing that an experiment like PIXIE could provide strong constraints on $\alpha_\mathrm{s}$ and $\beta_\mathrm{s}$.
Using only Ia supernova (SN) observations, it is not possible to distinguish the evolution of the SN absolute magnitude M_B from an arbitrary evolution of the Hubble parameter H(z). Using Etherington's distance-duality relation, which relates the angular and luminosity distances, together with the observed angular baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale at any redshift z, one may calibrate M_B(z). This calibration involves a scale which depends on the cosmological model, however the evolution of M_B(z) between two redshifts with BAO observations is independent of this scale. The line of sight BAO scale can be used to extend this calibration to redshifts near z. As an application, using BOSS BAO at z=0.32 and 2.34, JLA supernova at low z and Hubble Space Telescope SN at z>1.7, we find that M_B(2.34)-M_B(0.32)=-0.11$\pm$ 0.16. This statistically insignificant downwards shift results from Malmquist bias and brighter than expected high z SN. Replacing BOSS data with the best fit Planck LCDM BAO expectations, we find a shift of -0.26$\pm$ 0.15. With the SN that will be observed by the James Webb Space Telescope, such a calibration at z=2.34 will be more precise, and it will serve as an anchor for cosmological analyses with the SN that it will observe at yet higher z.
We study inflation in the Brans-Dicke gravity as a special model of the scalar-tensor gravity. We obtain the inflationary observables containing the scalar spectral index, the tensor-to-scalar ratio, the running of the scalar spectral index and the equilateral non-Gaussianity parameter in terms of the general form of the potential in the Jordan frame. Then, we compare the results for various inflationary potentials in light of the Planck 2015 data. Our study shows that in the Brans-Dicke gravity, the power-law, inverse power-law and exponential potentials are ruled out by the Planck 2015 data. But, the hilltop, Higgs, Coleman-Weinberg and natural potentials can be compatible with Planck 2015 TT,TE,EE+lowP data at 95\% CL. Moreover, the D-brane, SB SUSY and displaced quadratic potentials can be in well agreement with the observational data since their results can lie inside the 68\% CL region of Planck 2015 TT,TE,EE+lowP data.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will survey the southern sky from 2022-2032 with unprecedented detail. Given that survey observational strategy can lead to artifacts in the observed data, we investigate the effects of telescope-pointing offsets (called dithers) on the $r$-band coadded 5$\sigma$ depth yielded after the 10-year survey. We analyze this survey depth for several geometric patterns of dithers (e.g., random, hexagonal lattice, spiral) with amplitude as large as the radius of the LSST field-of-view, implemented on different timescales (per season, per night, per visit). Our results illustrate that per night and per visit dither assignments are more effective than per season. Also, we find that some dither geometries (e.g. hexagonal lattice) are particularly sensitive to the timescale on which the dithers are implemented, while others like random dithers perform well on all timescales. We then model the propagation of depth variations to artificial fluctuations in galaxy counts, which are a systematic for large-scale structure studies. We calculate the bias in galaxy counts induced due to the observing strategy, accounting for photometric calibration uncertainties, dust extinction, and magnitude cuts; uncertainties in this bias limit our ability to account for structure induced by the survey strategy. We find that after 10 years of the LSST survey, the best observing strategies lead to uncertainties in the bias smaller than the minimum statistical floor for a galaxy catalog as deep as $r$$<$27.5; of these, a few bring the uncertainties close to the floor for $r$$<$25.7 after only one year of survey.
We show that inflation can naturally occur at a finite temperature T>H that is sustained by dissipative effects, when the inflaton field corresponds to a pseudo-Nambu Goldstone boson of a broken gauge symmetry. Similarly to "Little Higgs" scenarios for electroweak symmetry breaking, the flatness of the inflaton potential is protected against both quadratic divergences and the leading thermal corrections. We show that, nevertheless, non-local dissipative effects are naturally present and are able to sustain a nearly-thermal bath of light particles despite the accelerated expansion of the Universe. As an example, we discuss the dynamics of chaotic warm inflation with a quartic potential and show that the associated observational predictions are in very good agreement with the latest Planck results. This model constitutes the first realization of warm inflation where the inflaton is directly coupled to only two light fields.
In this paper cosmological dynamics in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with a perfect fluid source in arbitrary dimension is studied. A systematic analysis is performed for the case that the theory does not admit maximally symmetric solutions. Considering two independent scale factors, namely one for the three dimensional space and one for the extra dimensional space, is found that a regime exists where the two scale factors tend to a constant value via damped oscillations for not too negative pressure of the fluid, so that asymptotically the evolution of the $(3+1)$-dimensional Friedmann model with perfect fluid is recovered. At last, it is worth emphasizing that the present numerical results strongly support a 't Hooft-like interpretation of the parameter $1/D$ (where $D$ is the number of extra dimensions) as a small expansion parameter in very much the same way as it happens in the large $N$ expansion of gauge theories with $1/N$. Indeed, the dependence on $D$ of many of the relevant physical quantities computed here manifests a clear WKB-like pattern, as expected on the basis of large $N$ arguments.
Warm inflationary universe models in the context of generalized chaplygin gas, modified chaplygin gas, generalized cosmic chaplygin gas are being studied. The dissipative coefficient of the form $\Gamma\propto T$, weak and strong dissipative regimes are being considered. We use quartic potential $\frac{\lambda_{*}\phi^{4}}{4}$, which is ruled out by current data in cold inflation but in our models it is analyzed that it is in agreement with the WMAP$9$ and latest Planck data. In these scenarios, the power spectrum, spectral index, and tensor to scalar ratio are being examined under the slow roll approximation. We show the dependence of tensor scalar ratio $r$ on spectral index $n_{s}$ and observe that the range of tensor scalar ratio is $r<0.05$ in generalized chaplygin gas, $r<0.15$ in modified chaplygin gas, and $r<0.12$ in generalized cosmic chaplygin gas models. Our results are in agreement with recent observational data like WMAP$9$ and latest Planck data.
It is shown that, $(a \Lambda^2 + b |H|^2)R$ in a spacetime of curvature $R$ is a natural ultraviolet $(U\!V)$ completion of $(a \Lambda^4 + b \Lambda^2 |H|^2)$ in the flat-spacetime Standard Model $(S\!M)$ with Higgs field $H$, $U\!V$ scale $\Lambda$ and loop factors $a$, $b$. This curvature completion rests on the fact that a $\Lambda$-mass gauge theory in flat spacetime turns, on the cut-view $R = 4 \Lambda^2$, into a massless gauge theory in curved spacetime. It provides a symmetry reason for curved spacetime, wherein gravity and matter are both low-energy effective phenomena. Gravity arises correctly if new physics exists with at least 63 more bosons than fermions, with no need to interact with the $S\!M$ and with dark matter as a natural harbinger. It can source various cosmological, astrophysical and collider phenomena depending on its spectrum and couplings to the $S\!M$.
This article reviews the concept of Lorentz invariant relative velocity that is often misunderstood or unknown in high energy physics literature. The properties of the relative velocity allow to formulate the invariant flux and cross section without recurring to non--physical velocities or any assumption about the reference frame. Applications such as the luminosity of a collider, the use as kinematic variable, and the statistical theory of collisions in a relativistic classical gas are reviewed. It is emphasized how the hyperbolic properties of the velocity space explain the peculiarities of relativistic scattering.
In this brief note we investigate the conditions under which a Schwarzschild de Sitter black hole spacetime is a solution of the mimetic $F(R)$ gravity with Lagrange multiplier and potential. As we demonstrate, the resulting mimetic $F(R)$ gravity is a slight modification of the ordinary $F(R)$ gravity case, however the resulting perturbation equations are not in all cases identical to the ordinary $F(R)$ gravity case. In the latter case, the perturbation equations are identical to the ones corresponding to the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m anti-de Sitter black hole.
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The Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model, wherein the dark matter is treated as a pressureless perfect fluid, provides a good fit to galactic and cosmological data. With the advent of precision cosmology, it should be asked whether this simplest model needs to be extended, and whether doing so could improve our understanding of the properties of dark matter. One established parameterisation for generalising the CDM fluid is the Generalised Dark Matter (GDM) model, in which dark matter is an imperfect fluid with pressure and shear viscosity that fulfill certain closure equations. We investigate these closure equations and the three new parametric functions they contain: the background equation of state w, the speed of sound c_s^2 and the viscosity c_{vis}^2. Taking these functions to be constant parameters, we analyse an exact solution of the perturbed Einstein equations in a GDM-dominated universe and discuss the main effects of the three parameters on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Our analysis suggests that the CMB alone is not able to distinguish between the GDM sound speed and viscosity parameters, but that other observables, such as the matter power spectrum, are required to break this degeneracy. We also consider other descriptions of imperfect fluids that have a non-perturbative definition and relate these to the GDM model. In particular, we consider scalar fields, an effective field theory (EFT) of fluids, an EFT of Large Scale Structure, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and tightly-coupled fluids. These descriptions could be used to extend the GDM model into the nonlinear regime of structure formation, which is necessary if the wealth of data available on those scales is to be employed in constraining the model. We also derive the initial conditions for adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations and provide the result in a form ready for implementation in Einstein-Boltzmann solvers.
We present a suite of cosmological N-body simulations describing the "Running Friedmann-Lema{\"i}tre-Robertson-Walker" (R-FLRW) cosmological model. This model is based on quantum field theory in a curved space-time and extends {\Lambda}CDM with a time-evolving vacuum density, {\Lambda}(z), and time-evolving gravitational Newton's coupling, G(z). In this paper we review the model and introduce the necessary analytical treatment needed to adapt a reference N-body code. Our resulting simulations represent the first realisation of the full growth history of structure in the R-FLRW cosmology into the non-linear regime, and our normalisation choice makes them fully consistent with the latest cosmic microwave background data. The post-processing data products also allow, for the first time, an analysis of the properties of the halo and sub-halo populations. We explore the degeneracies of many statistical observables and discuss the steps needed to break them. Furthermore, we provide a quantitative description of the deviations of R-FLRW from {\Lambda}CDM, which could be readily exploited by future cosmological observations to test and further constrain the model.
We consider a model of two-field inflation, containing an ordinary scalar field and a DBI field. We work beyond the slow-roll approximation, but we assume a separable Hubble parameter. We then derive the form of potential in this framework and study the spectrum of the primordial perturbations in details. We also study the amplitude of the non-Gaussianity of the primordial perturbations both in equilateral and orthogonal configurations in this setup. We test the model with recent observational data and find some constraints on the model parameters. Our study shows that for some ranges of the DBI 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.
The physics of cosmic rays (CR) is a promising candidate for explaining the driving of galactic winds and outflows. Recent galaxy formation simulations have demonstrated the need for active CR transport either in the form of diffusion or streaming to successfully launch winds in galaxies. However, due to computational limitations, most previous simulations have modeled CR transport isotropically. Here, we discuss high resolution simulations of isolated disk galaxies in a $10^{11}\rm{M_\odot}$ halo with the moving mesh code {\sc Arepo} that include injection of CRs from supernovae, advective transport, CR cooling, and CR transport through isotropic or anisotropic diffusion. We show that either mode of diffusion leads to the formation of strong bipolar outflows. However, they develop significantly later in the simulation with anisotropic diffusion compared to the simulation with isotropic diffusion. Moreover, we find that isotropic diffusion allows most of the CRs to quickly diffuse out of the disk, while in the simulation with anisotropic diffusion, most CRs remain in the disk once the magnetic field becomes dominated by its azimuthal component, which occurs after $\sim 300\,{\rm Myrs}$. This has important consequences for the gas dynamics in the disk. In particular, we show that isotropic diffusion strongly suppresses the amplification of the magnetic field in the disk compared to anisotropic or no diffusion models. We therefore conclude that reliable simulations which include CR transport inevitably need to account for anisotropic diffusion.
We investigate cosmological aspects of spontaneous baryogenesis driven by a scalar field, and present general constraints that are independent of the particle physics model. The relevant constraints are obtained by studying the backreaction of the produced baryons on the scalar field, the cosmological expansion history after baryogenesis, and the baryon isocurvature perturbations. We show that cosmological considerations alone provide powerful constraints, especially for the minimal scenario with a quadratic scalar potential. Intriguingly, we find that for a given inflation scale, the other parameters including the reheat temperature, decoupling temperature of the baryon violating interactions, and the mass and decay constant of the scalar are restricted to lie within ranges of at most a few orders of magnitude. We also discuss possible extensions to the minimal setup, and propose two ideas for evading constraints on isocurvature perturbations: one is to suppress the baryon isocurvature with nonquadratic scalar potentials, another is to compensate the baryon isocurvature with CDM isocurvature by making the scalar survive until the present.
Cosmology in Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity is investigated using a scalar Born-Infeld field (eg. tachyon condensate) as matter. In this way, both in the gravity and matter sectors we have Born-Infeld-like structures characterised by their actions and via two separate constants, $\kappa$ and $\alpha_T^2$ respectively. With a particular choice of the form of $\dot{\phi}$ (time derivative of the Born-Infeld scalar), analytical cosmological solutions are found. Thereafter, we explore some of the unique features of the corresponding cosmological spacetimes. For $\kappa>0$, our solution has a de Sitter-like expansion both at early and late times, with an intermediate deceleration sandwiched between the accelerating phases. On the other hand, when $\kappa<0$, the initial de Sitter phase is replaced by a bounce. Our solutions fit well with available supernova data-- a fact we demonstrate explicitly. The estimated properties of the Universe obtained from the fitting of the $\kappa>0$ solution, are as good as in $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. However, the $\kappa<0$ solution has to be discarded due to the occurrence of a bounce at an unacceptably low redshift.
Recently LIGO collaboration discovered gravitational waves \cite{Abbott_16} predicted 100 years ago by A. Einstein. Moreover, in the key paper reporting about the discovery, the joint LIGO \& VIRGO team presented an upper limit on graviton mass such as $m_g < 1.2 \times 10^{-22} eV$ (Abbott et al. (LIGO collaboration) PRL 116 (2016) 061102). Since the graviton mass limit is so small the authors concluded that their observational data do not show violations of classical general relativity. We consider another opportunity to evaluate a graviton mass from phenomenological consequences of massive gravity and show that an analysis of bright star trajectories could bound graviton mass with a comparable accuracy with accuracies reached with gravitational wave interferometers and expected with forthcoming pulsar timing observations for gravitational wave detection. It gives an opportunity to treat observations of bright stars near the Galactic Center as a wonderful tool not only for an evaluation specific parameters of the black hole but also to obtain constraints on the fundamental gravity law such as a modifications of Newton gravity law in a weak field approximation. In particular, we obtain bounds on a graviton mass based on a potential reconstruction at the Galactic Center.
We present maps of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds from combined South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Planck data. Both instruments are designed to make measurements of the cosmic microwave background but are sensitive to any source of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) emission. The Planck satellite observes in nine mm-wave bands, while the SPT data used in this work were taken with the three-band SPT-SZ camera. The SPT-SZ bands correspond closely to three of the nine Planck bands, namely those centered at 1.4, 2.1, and 3.0 mm. The angular resolution of the Planck data in these bands ranges from 5 to 10 arcmin, while the SPT resolution in these bands ranges from 1.0 to 1.7 arcmin. The combined maps take advantage of the high resolution of the SPT data and the long-timescale stability of the space-based Planck observations to deliver high signal-to-noise and robust brightness measurements on scales from the size of the maps down to ~1 arcmin. In each of the three bands, we first calibrate and color-correct the SPT data to match the Planck data, then we use noise estimates from each instrument and knowledge of each instrument's beam, or point-spread function, to make the inverse-variance-weighted combination of the two instruments' data as a function of angular scale. We create maps assuming a range of underlying emission spectra (for the color correction) and at a range of final resolutions. We perform several consistency tests on the combined maps and estimate the expected noise in measurements of features in the maps. We compare the maps of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) from this work to maps from the Herschel HERITAGE survey, finding general consistency between the datasets. The broad wavelength coverage provides evidence of different emission mechanisms at work in different environments in the LMC. [Abridged]
We propose a covariant ghost-free unimodular $F(R)$ gravity theory, which contains a three-form field and study its structure using the analogy of the proposed theory with a quantum system which describes a charged particle in uniform magnetic field. Newton's law in non-covariant unimodular $F(R)$ gravity as well as in unimodular Einstein gravity is derived and it is shown to be just the same as in General Relativity. The derivation of Newton's law in covariant unimodular $F(R)$ gravity shows that it is modified precisely in the same way as in the ordinary $F(R)$ theory. We also demonstrate that the cosmology of a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background, is equivalent in the non-covariant and covariant formulations of unimodular $F(R)$ theory.
We discuss how to formulate a quantum field theory of dark energy interacting with dark matter. We show that the proposals based on the assumption that dark matter is made up of heavy particles with masses which are very sensitive to the value of dark energy are strongly constrained. Quintessence-generated long range forces and radiative stability of the quintessence potential require that such dark matter and dark energy are completely decoupled. However, if dark energy and a fraction of dark matter are very light axions, they can have significant mixings which are radiatively stable and perfectly consistent with quantum field theory. Such models can naturally occur in multi-axion realizations of monodromies. The mixings yield interesting signatures which are observable and are within current cosmological limits but could be constrained further by future observations.
We consider the effects of entanglement in the initial quantum state of scalar and tensor fluctuations during inflation. We allow the gauge-invariant scalar and tensor fluctuations to be entangled in the initial state and compute modifications to the various cosmological power spectra. We compute the angular power spectra ($C_l$'s) for some specific cases of our entangled state and discuss what signals one might expect to find in CMB data. This entanglement also can break rotational invariance, allowing for the possibility that some of the large scale anomalies in the CMB power spectrum might be explained by this mechanism.
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We present new tests to identify stationary position-dependent additive shear biases in weak gravitational lensing data sets. These tests are important diagnostics for currently ongoing and planned cosmic shear surveys, as such biases induce coherent shear patterns that can mimic and potentially bias the cosmic shear signal. The central idea of these tests is to determine the average ellipticity of all galaxies with shape measurements in a grid in the pixel plane. The distribution of the absolute values of these averaged ellipticities can be compared to randomized catalogues; a difference points to systematics in the data. In addition, we introduce a method to quantify the spatial correlation of the additive bias, which suppresses the contribution from cosmic shear and therefore eases the identification of a position-dependent additive shear bias in the data. We apply these tests to the publicly available shear catalogues from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) and the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) and find evidence for a small but non-negligible residual additive bias at small scales. As this residual bias is smaller than the error on the shear correlation signal at those scales, it is highly unlikely that it causes a significant bias in the published cosmic shear results of CFHTLenS. In CFHTLenS, the amplitude of this systematic signal is consistent with zero in fields where the number of stars used to model the PSF is higher than average, suggesting that the position-dependent additive shear bias originates from undersampled PSF variations across the image.
Weak gravitational lensing is becoming a mature technique for constraining cosmological parameters, and future surveys will be able to constrain the dark energy equation of state $w$. When analyzing galaxy surveys, redshift information has proven to be a valuable addition to angular shear correlations. We forecast parameter constraints on the triplet $(\Omega_m,w,\sigma_8)$ for an LSST-like photometric galaxy survey, using tomography of the shear-shear power spectrum, convergence peak counts and higher convergence moments. We find that redshift tomography with the power spectrum reduces the area of the $1\sigma$ confidence interval in $(\Omega_m,w)$ space by a factor of 8 with respect to the case of the single highest redshift bin. We also find that adding non-Gaussian information from the peak counts and higher-order moments of the convergence field and its spatial derivatives further reduces the constrained area in $(\Omega_m,w)$ by a factor of 3 and 4, respectively. When we add cosmic microwave background parameter priors from Planck to our analysis, tomography improves power spectrum constraints by a factor of 3. Adding moments yields an improvement by an additional factor of 2, and adding both moments and peaks improves by almost a factor of 3, over power spectrum tomography alone. We evaluate the effect of uncorrected systematic photometric redshift errors on the parameter constraints. We find that different statistics lead to different bias directions in parameter space, suggesting the possibility of eliminating this bias via self-calibration.
In this paper, it is proposed a cosmological model independent method to constrain the cosmic opacity. As an approach never seen before in literature, we use the ages of 32 old passive galaxies distributed over the redshift interval $0.11 < z < 1.84$ and of 9 extremely old globular clusters in M31 galaxy to obtain opacity free luminosity distance. By comparing them to the 580 distance moduli of supernovae from the so-called Union 2.1 compilation we put limits on the cosmic opacity parametrized by $\tau(z) = \epsilon z/(1+z)$ (for $\epsilon =0$ the transparent universe is recovered). Considering the cosmic background radiation constraints on the spatial curvature of the Universe no significant deviation from transparency is verified.
The rapidly improving precision of measurements of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) also requires a corresponding increase in the precision of theoretical modeling. A commonly made approximation is to model the CMB deflection angle or lensing potential as a Gaussian random field. In this paper, however, we analytically quantify the influence of the non-Gaussianity of large-scale structure lenses, arising from nonlinear structure formation, on CMB lensing measurements. In particular, evaluating the impact of the non-zero bispectrum of large-scale structure on the relevant CMB four-point correlation functions, we find that there is a bias to estimates of the CMB lensing power spectrum. For temperature-based lensing reconstruction with CMB Stage-III and Stage-IV experiments, we find that this lensing power spectrum bias is negative and is of order one percent of the signal. This corresponds to a shift of multiple standard deviations for these upcoming experiments. We caution, however, that our numerical calculation only evaluates two of the largest bias terms and thus only provides an approximate estimate of the full bias. We conclude that further investigation into lensing biases from nonlinear structure formation is required and that these biases should be accounted for in future lensing analyses.
The shapes of cluster central galaxies are not randomly oriented, but rather exhibit coherent alignments with the shapes of their parent clusters as well as with large-scale structure. In this work, we undertake a comprehensive study of the alignments of central galaxies at low redshift. Based on a sample of 8237 clusters and 94817 members in the redMaPPer cluster catalog with 0.1 < z < 0.35, we first quantify the alignment between the projected central galaxy shapes and the distribution of member satellites, to understand what central galaxy and cluster properties most strongly correlate with these alignments. Next, we investigate the angular segregation of satellites with respect to their central galaxy major axis directions, to identify the satellite properties that most strongly predict their angular segregation. We find that central galaxies are more aligned with their member galaxy distributions in clusters that are more elongated and have higher richness, and for central galaxies with larger physical size, higher luminosity and centering probability, and redder color. Satellites with redder color, higher luminosity, located closer to the central galaxy, and with smaller ellipticity show a stronger angular segregation toward their central galaxy major axes. Finally, we provide physical explanations for some of the identified correlations, and discuss the connection to theories of central galaxy alignments, the impact of primordial alignments with tidal fields, and the importance of anisotropic accretion.
We present the numerical code PRECESSION: a new open-source python module to study the dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries in the post-Newtonian regime. The code provides a comprehensive toolbox to (i) study the evolution of the black-hole spins along their precession cycles, (ii) perform gravitational-wave driven binary inspirals using both orbit-averaged and precession-averaged integrations, and (iii) predict the properties of the merger remnant through fitting formulae obtained from numerical-relativity simulations. PRECESSION is a ready-to-use tool to add the black-hole spin dynamics to larger-scale numerical studies such as gravitational-wave parameter estimation codes, population synthesis models to predict gravitational-wave event rates, galaxy merger trees and cosmological simulations of structure formation. PRECESSION provides fast and reliable integration methods to propagate statistical samples of black-hole binaries from/to large separations where they form to/from small separations where they become detectable, thus linking gravitational-wave observations of spinning black-hole binaries to their astrophysical formation history. The code is also a useful tool to compute initial parameters for numerical-relativity simulations targeting specific precessing systems. PRECESSION can be installed from the Python Package Index and it is freely distributed under version control on Github, where further documentation is provided.
The gravitational memory effect leads to a net displacement in the relative positions of test particles. This memory is related to the change in the strain of the gravitational radiation field between infinite past and infinite future retarded times. There are three known sources of the memory effect: (i) the loss of energy to future null infinity by massless fields or particles, (ii) the ejection of massive particles to infinity from a bound system and (iii) homogeneous, source-free gravitational waves. In the context of linearized theory, we show that asymptotic conditions controlling these known sources of the gravitational memory effect rule out any other possible sources with physically reasonable stress-energy tensors. Except for the source-free gravitational waves, the two other known sources produce gravitational memory with E-mode radiation strain, characterized by a certain curl-free sky pattern of their polarization. Thus our results show that the only known source of B-mode gravitational memory is of primordial origin, corresponding in the linearized theory to a homogeneous wave entering from past null infinity.
We present a minimal framework of $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge extension of the Standard Model explaining dark matter abundance and matter-antimatter asymmetry simultaneously through an attractive mechanism of TeV scale WIMPy leptogenesis, testable at the current and next generation of colliders. This framework can also explain small neutrino masses via a radiative mechanism. One of the key predictions of this model is an enhanced rate for lepton flavor violating decay $\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$ within the sensitivity reach of next generation experiments.
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We present new tests to identify stationary position-dependent additive shear biases in weak gravitational lensing data sets. These tests are important diagnostics for currently ongoing and planned cosmic shear surveys, as such biases induce coherent shear patterns that can mimic and potentially bias the cosmic shear signal. The central idea of these tests is to determine the average ellipticity of all galaxies with shape measurements in a grid in the pixel plane. The distribution of the absolute values of these averaged ellipticities can be compared to randomized catalogues; a difference points to systematics in the data. In addition, we introduce a method to quantify the spatial correlation of the additive bias, which suppresses the contribution from cosmic shear and therefore eases the identification of a position-dependent additive shear bias in the data. We apply these tests to the publicly available shear catalogues from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) and the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) and find evidence for a small but non-negligible residual additive bias at small scales. As this residual bias is smaller than the error on the shear correlation signal at those scales, it is highly unlikely that it causes a significant bias in the published cosmic shear results of CFHTLenS. In CFHTLenS, the amplitude of this systematic signal is consistent with zero in fields where the number of stars used to model the PSF is higher than average, suggesting that the position-dependent additive shear bias originates from undersampled PSF variations across the image.
Weak gravitational lensing is becoming a mature technique for constraining cosmological parameters, and future surveys will be able to constrain the dark energy equation of state $w$. When analyzing galaxy surveys, redshift information has proven to be a valuable addition to angular shear correlations. We forecast parameter constraints on the triplet $(\Omega_m,w,\sigma_8)$ for an LSST-like photometric galaxy survey, using tomography of the shear-shear power spectrum, convergence peak counts and higher convergence moments. We find that redshift tomography with the power spectrum reduces the area of the $1\sigma$ confidence interval in $(\Omega_m,w)$ space by a factor of 8 with respect to the case of the single highest redshift bin. We also find that adding non-Gaussian information from the peak counts and higher-order moments of the convergence field and its spatial derivatives further reduces the constrained area in $(\Omega_m,w)$ by a factor of 3 and 4, respectively. When we add cosmic microwave background parameter priors from Planck to our analysis, tomography improves power spectrum constraints by a factor of 3. Adding moments yields an improvement by an additional factor of 2, and adding both moments and peaks improves by almost a factor of 3, over power spectrum tomography alone. We evaluate the effect of uncorrected systematic photometric redshift errors on the parameter constraints. We find that different statistics lead to different bias directions in parameter space, suggesting the possibility of eliminating this bias via self-calibration.
In this paper, it is proposed a cosmological model independent method to constrain the cosmic opacity. As an approach never seen before in literature, we use the ages of 32 old passive galaxies distributed over the redshift interval $0.11 < z < 1.84$ and of 9 extremely old globular clusters in M31 galaxy to obtain opacity free luminosity distance. By comparing them to the 580 distance moduli of supernovae from the so-called Union 2.1 compilation we put limits on the cosmic opacity parametrized by $\tau(z) = \epsilon z/(1+z)$ (for $\epsilon =0$ the transparent universe is recovered). Considering the cosmic background radiation constraints on the spatial curvature of the Universe no significant deviation from transparency is verified.
The rapidly improving precision of measurements of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) also requires a corresponding increase in the precision of theoretical modeling. A commonly made approximation is to model the CMB deflection angle or lensing potential as a Gaussian random field. In this paper, however, we analytically quantify the influence of the non-Gaussianity of large-scale structure lenses, arising from nonlinear structure formation, on CMB lensing measurements. In particular, evaluating the impact of the non-zero bispectrum of large-scale structure on the relevant CMB four-point correlation functions, we find that there is a bias to estimates of the CMB lensing power spectrum. For temperature-based lensing reconstruction with CMB Stage-III and Stage-IV experiments, we find that this lensing power spectrum bias is negative and is of order one percent of the signal. This corresponds to a shift of multiple standard deviations for these upcoming experiments. We caution, however, that our numerical calculation only evaluates two of the largest bias terms and thus only provides an approximate estimate of the full bias. We conclude that further investigation into lensing biases from nonlinear structure formation is required and that these biases should be accounted for in future lensing analyses.
The shapes of cluster central galaxies are not randomly oriented, but rather exhibit coherent alignments with the shapes of their parent clusters as well as with large-scale structure. In this work, we undertake a comprehensive study of the alignments of central galaxies at low redshift. Based on a sample of 8237 clusters and 94817 members in the redMaPPer cluster catalog with 0.1 < z < 0.35, we first quantify the alignment between the projected central galaxy shapes and the distribution of member satellites, to understand what central galaxy and cluster properties most strongly correlate with these alignments. Next, we investigate the angular segregation of satellites with respect to their central galaxy major axis directions, to identify the satellite properties that most strongly predict their angular segregation. We find that central galaxies are more aligned with their member galaxy distributions in clusters that are more elongated and have higher richness, and for central galaxies with larger physical size, higher luminosity and centering probability, and redder color. Satellites with redder color, higher luminosity, located closer to the central galaxy, and with smaller ellipticity show a stronger angular segregation toward their central galaxy major axes. Finally, we provide physical explanations for some of the identified correlations, and discuss the connection to theories of central galaxy alignments, the impact of primordial alignments with tidal fields, and the importance of anisotropic accretion.
We present the numerical code PRECESSION: a new open-source python module to study the dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries in the post-Newtonian regime. The code provides a comprehensive toolbox to (i) study the evolution of the black-hole spins along their precession cycles, (ii) perform gravitational-wave driven binary inspirals using both orbit-averaged and precession-averaged integrations, and (iii) predict the properties of the merger remnant through fitting formulae obtained from numerical-relativity simulations. PRECESSION is a ready-to-use tool to add the black-hole spin dynamics to larger-scale numerical studies such as gravitational-wave parameter estimation codes, population synthesis models to predict gravitational-wave event rates, galaxy merger trees and cosmological simulations of structure formation. PRECESSION provides fast and reliable integration methods to propagate statistical samples of black-hole binaries from/to large separations where they form to/from small separations where they become detectable, thus linking gravitational-wave observations of spinning black-hole binaries to their astrophysical formation history. The code is also a useful tool to compute initial parameters for numerical-relativity simulations targeting specific precessing systems. PRECESSION can be installed from the Python Package Index and it is freely distributed under version control on Github, where further documentation is provided.
The gravitational memory effect leads to a net displacement in the relative positions of test particles. This memory is related to the change in the strain of the gravitational radiation field between infinite past and infinite future retarded times. There are three known sources of the memory effect: (i) the loss of energy to future null infinity by massless fields or particles, (ii) the ejection of massive particles to infinity from a bound system and (iii) homogeneous, source-free gravitational waves. In the context of linearized theory, we show that asymptotic conditions controlling these known sources of the gravitational memory effect rule out any other possible sources with physically reasonable stress-energy tensors. Except for the source-free gravitational waves, the two other known sources produce gravitational memory with E-mode radiation strain, characterized by a certain curl-free sky pattern of their polarization. Thus our results show that the only known source of B-mode gravitational memory is of primordial origin, corresponding in the linearized theory to a homogeneous wave entering from past null infinity.
We present a minimal framework of $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge extension of the Standard Model explaining dark matter abundance and matter-antimatter asymmetry simultaneously through an attractive mechanism of TeV scale WIMPy leptogenesis, testable at the current and next generation of colliders. This framework can also explain small neutrino masses via a radiative mechanism. One of the key predictions of this model is an enhanced rate for lepton flavor violating decay $\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$ within the sensitivity reach of next generation experiments.
Links to: arXiv, form interface, find, astro-ph, recent, 1605, contact, help (Access key information)