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Full-Text Articles in Astrophysics and Astronomy
Phenomenology Of Fermion Production During Axion Inflation, Michael Roberts
Phenomenology Of Fermion Production During Axion Inflation, Michael Roberts
Doctoral Dissertations
We study the production of fermions through a derivative coupling to an axion inflaton and the effects of the produced fermions on the scalar and tensor metric perturbations. We show how such a coupling can arise naturally from supergravity with an axion-like field driving large-field inflation and small instanton-like corrections. We present analytic results for the scalar and tensor power spectra, and estimate the amplitude of the non-Gaussianties in the equilateral regime. The scalar spectrum is found to have a red-tilted spectral index, small non-Gaussianities, and can be dominant over the vacuum contribution. In contrast, the tensor power spectrum from …
The Impact Of Terrestrial Noise On The Detectability And Reconstruction Of Gravitational Wave Signals From Core-Collapse Supernovae, Jessica Mciver
The Impact Of Terrestrial Noise On The Detectability And Reconstruction Of Gravitational Wave Signals From Core-Collapse Supernovae, Jessica Mciver
Doctoral Dissertations
Among of the wide range of potentially interesting astrophysical sources for gravitational wave detectors Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are galactic core-collapse supernovae. Although detectable core-collapse supernovae have a low expected rate (a few per century, or less) these signals would yield a wealth of new physics. Of particular interest is the insight into the explosion mechanism driving core-collapse supernovae that can be gleaned from the reconstructed gravitational wave signal. A well-reconstructed waveform will allow us to assess the likelihood of different explosion models, perform model selection, and potentially map unexpected features to new physics. This dissertation presents a series …
Gravitational Wave Astrophysics: Instrumentation, Detector Characterization, And A Search For Gravitational Signals From Gamma-Ray Bursts, Daniel Hoak
Doctoral Dissertations
In the coming years, the second generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors are widely expected to observe the gravitational radiation emitted by compact, energetic events in the nearby universe. The field of gravitational wave astrophysics has grown into a large international endeavor with a global network of kilometer-scale observatories. The work presented in this thesis spans the field, from optical metrology, to instrument commissioning, to detector characterization and data analysis. The principal results are a method for the precise characterization of optical cavities, the commissioning of the advanced LIGO Output Mode Cleaner at the Hanford observatory, and a search for …