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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Fermion-Induced Electroweak Symmetry Non-Restoration Via Temperature-Dependent Masses, Yu Hang Ng Aug 2022

Fermion-Induced Electroweak Symmetry Non-Restoration Via Temperature-Dependent Masses, Yu Hang Ng

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Standard Model (SM) and many extensions of SM predict that the electroweak (EW) symmetry was restored in the early universe when the temperature was around 160 GeV. However, recent studies showed that the interactions between some new scalars and SU(2)_L Higgs doublet(s) can cause the EW symmetry to remain broken at temperatures well above the EW scale in certain renormalizable extensions of SM. In this study, we found that new fermions from renormalizable models can also induce this EW symmetry non-restoration effect, provided that they have the appropriate temperature-dependent masses. These masses can arise naturally from the interactions between the …


Perturbative Unitarity And Nec Violation In Genesis Cosmology, Yong Cai, Ji Xu, Shuai Zhao, Siyi Zhou Jan 2022

Perturbative Unitarity And Nec Violation In Genesis Cosmology, Yong Cai, Ji Xu, Shuai Zhao, Siyi Zhou

Physics Faculty Publications

Explorations of the violation of null energy condition (NEC) in cosmology could enrich our understanding of the very early universe and the related gravity theories. Although a fully stable NEC violation can be realized in the “beyond Horndeski” theory, it remains an open question whether a violation of the NEC is allowed by some fundamental properties of UV-complete theories or the consistency requirements of effective field theory (EFT). We investigate the tree-level perturbative unitarity for stable NEC violations in the contexts of both Galileon and “beyond Horndeski” genesis cosmology, in which the universe is asymptotically Minkowskian in the past. We …


Gravitational-Wave Mediated Preheating, Stephon Alexander, Sam Cormack, Antonino Marcianò, Nicolás Yunes Apr 2015

Gravitational-Wave Mediated Preheating, Stephon Alexander, Sam Cormack, Antonino Marcianò, Nicolás Yunes

Dartmouth Scholarship

We propose a new preheating mechanism through the coupling of the gravitational field to both the inflaton and matter fields, without direct inflaton–matter couplings. The inflaton transfers power to the matter fields through interactions with gravitational waves, which are exponentially enhanced due to an inflation–graviton coupling. One such coupling is the product of the inflaton to the Pontryagin density, as in dynamical Chern–Simons gravity. The energy scales involved are constrained by requiring that preheating happens fast during matter domination.


Laser Frequency Stabilization For Lisa, Andrew B. Parker, Andrew J. Sutton, Glenn De Vine Aug 2014

Laser Frequency Stabilization For Lisa, Andrew B. Parker, Andrew J. Sutton, Glenn De Vine

STAR Program Research Presentations

This research focuses on laser ranging developments for LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), a planned NASA-ESA gravitational wave detector in space. LISA will utilize precision laser interferometry to track the changes in separation between three satellites orbiting 5 million kilometers apart. Specifically, our goal is to investigate options for laser frequency stabilization. Previous research has shown that an optical cavity system can meet LISA's stability requirements, but these units are large and heavy, adding cost to the implementation. A heterodyne Mach-Zehnder interferometer could be integrated onto LISA’s existing optical bench, greatly reducing the weight, provided the interferometer meets the stability …


Constraining The Black Hole Mass Spectrum With Gravitational Wave Observations – I. The Error Kernel, Danny C. Jacobs, Joseph E. Plowman, Ronald W. Hellings, Sachiko Tsuruta, Shane L. Larson Feb 2010

Constraining The Black Hole Mass Spectrum With Gravitational Wave Observations – I. The Error Kernel, Danny C. Jacobs, Joseph E. Plowman, Ronald W. Hellings, Sachiko Tsuruta, Shane L. Larson

All Physics Faculty Publications

Many scenarios have been proposed for the origin of the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that are found in the centres of most galaxies. Many of these formation scenarios predict a high-redshift population of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses M in the range 102M≲ 105 M. A powerful way to observe these IMBHs is via gravitational waves the black holes emit as they merge. The statistics of the observed black hole population should, in principle, allow us to discriminate between competing astrophysical scenarios for the origin and formation of SMBHs. However, …


Gravitational Wave Bursts From The Galactic Massive Black Hole, Clovis Hopman, Marc Freitag, Shane L. Larson Jun 2007

Gravitational Wave Bursts From The Galactic Massive Black Hole, Clovis Hopman, Marc Freitag, Shane L. Larson

All Physics Faculty Publications

The Galactic massive black hole (MBH), with a mass of M= 3.6 × 106 M, is the closest known MBH, at a distance of only 8 kpc. The proximity of this MBH makes it possible to observe gravitational waves (GWs) from stars with periapse in the observational frequency window of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This is possible even if the orbit of the star is very eccentric, so that the orbital frequency is many orders of magnitude below the LISA frequency window, as suggested by Rubbo, Holley-Bockelmann & Finn (2006). …


Lisa Time-Delay Interferometry Zero-Signal Solution: Geometrical Properties, Massimo Tinto, Shane L. Larson Jan 2004

Lisa Time-Delay Interferometry Zero-Signal Solution: Geometrical Properties, Massimo Tinto, Shane L. Larson

All Physics Faculty Publications

Time-delay interferometry (TDI) is the data processing technique needed for generating interferometric combinations of data measured by the multiple Doppler readouts available onboard the three Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) spacecraft. Within the space of all possible interferometric combinations TDI can generate, we have derived a specific combination that has zero response to the gravitational wave signal, and called it the zero-signal solution (ZSS). This is a two-parameter family of linear combinations of the generators of the TDI space, and its response to a gravitational wave becomes null when these two parameters coincide with the values of the angles of …


Lisa, Binary Stars, And The Mass Of The Graviton, Curt Cutler, William A. Hiscock, Shane L. Larson Jan 2003

Lisa, Binary Stars, And The Mass Of The Graviton, Curt Cutler, William A. Hiscock, Shane L. Larson

All Physics Faculty Publications

We extend and improve earlier estimates of the ability of the proposed LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) gravitational wave detector to place upper bounds on the graviton mass mg by comparing the arrival times of gravitational and electromagnetic signals from binary star systems. We show that the best possible limit on mg obtainable this way is ∼50 times better than the current limit set by solar system measurements. Among currently known, well-understood binaries, 4U1820-30 is the best for this purpose; LISA observations of 4U1820-30 should yield a limit ≈3-4 times better than the present solar system bound. AM …


Using Binary Star Observations To Bound The Mass Of The Graviton, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock Jan 2000

Using Binary Star Observations To Bound The Mass Of The Graviton, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock

All Physics Faculty Publications

Interacting white dwarf binary star systems, including helium cataclysmic variable (HeCV) systems, are expected to be strong sources of gravitational radiation, and should be detectable by proposed space-based laser interferometer gravitational wave observatories such as LISA. Several HeCV star systems are presently known and can be studied optically, which will allow electromagnetic and gravitational wave observations to be correlated. Comparisons of the phases of a gravitational wave signal and the orbital light curve from an interacting binary white dwarf star system can be used to bound the mass of the graviton. Observations of typical HeCV systems by LISA could potentially …


Sensitivity Curves For Spaceborne Gravitational Wave Interferometers, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock, Ronald W. Hellings Jan 2000

Sensitivity Curves For Spaceborne Gravitational Wave Interferometers, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock, Ronald W. Hellings

All Physics Faculty Publications

To determine whether particular sources of gravitational radiation will be detectable by a specific gravitational wave detector, it is necessary to know the sensitivity limits of the instrument. These instrumental sensitivities are often depicted (after averaging over source position and polarization) by graphing the minimal values of the gravitational wave amplitude detectable by the instrument versus the frequency of the gravitational wave. This paper describes in detail how to compute such a sensitivity curve given a set of specifications for a spaceborne laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory. Minor errors in the prior literature are corrected, and the first (mostly) analytic …