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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Fermi-Bounce Cosmology And Scale-Invariant Power Spectrum, Stephon Alexander, Cosimo Bambi, Antonino Marcianò, Leonardo Modesto
Fermi-Bounce Cosmology And Scale-Invariant Power Spectrum, Stephon Alexander, Cosimo Bambi, Antonino Marcianò, Leonardo Modesto
Dartmouth Scholarship
We develop a non-singular bouncing cosmology using a non-trivial coupling of general relativity to fermionic fields. The usual Big Bang singularity is avoided thanks to a negative energy density contribution from the fermions. Our theory is ghost-free since the fermionic operator that generates the bounce is equivalent to torsion, which has no kinetic terms. The physical system consists of standard general relativity plus a topological sector for gravity, and fermionic matter described by Dirac fields with a non-minimal coupling. We show that a scale invariant power-spectrum generated in the contracting phase can be recovered by suitable choice s of fermion …
Gravitational Wave–Gauge Field Oscillations, R. R. Caldwell, C. Devulder, N. A. Maksimova
Gravitational Wave–Gauge Field Oscillations, R. R. Caldwell, C. Devulder, N. A. Maksimova
Dartmouth Scholarship
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 multidimensional sphere, reminiscent of neutrino flavor oscillations. This phenomenon has implications for cosmological scenarios based on flavor-space locked gauge fields.
Gravitational-Wave Cosmology Across 29 Decades In Frequency, Paul D. Lasky, Chiara `. Mingarelli, Tristan L. Smith, John T. Giblin, Eric Thrane, Daniel J. Reardon, Robert Caldwell
Gravitational-Wave Cosmology Across 29 Decades In Frequency, Paul D. Lasky, Chiara `. Mingarelli, Tristan L. Smith, John T. Giblin, Eric Thrane, Daniel J. Reardon, Robert Caldwell
Dartmouth Scholarship
Quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field in the early Universe, amplified by inflation, produce a primordial gravitational-wave background across a broad frequency band. We derive constraints on the spectrum of this gravitational radiation, and hence on theories of the early Universe, by combining experiments that cover 29 orders of magnitude in frequency. These include Planck observations of cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization power spectra and lensing, together with baryon acoustic oscillations and big bang nucleosynthesis measurements, as well as new pulsar timing array and ground-based interferometer limits. While individual experiments constrain the gravitational-wave energy density in specific frequency bands, …
Comparative Analysis Of Sn 2012dn Optical Spectra:Days −14 To +114, J. T. Parrent, D. A. Howell, R. A. Fesen, S. Parker
Comparative Analysis Of Sn 2012dn Optical Spectra:Days −14 To +114, J. T. Parrent, D. A. Howell, R. A. Fesen, S. Parker
Dartmouth Scholarship
SN 2012dn is a super-Chandrasekhar mass candidate in a purportedly normal spiral (SAcd) galaxy, and poses a challenge for theories of type Ia supernova diversity. Here we utilize the fast and highly parametrized spectrum synthesis tool, SYNAPPS, to estimate relative expansion velocities of species inferred from optical spectra obtained with six facilities. As with previous studies of normal SN Ia, we find that both unburned carbon and intermediate-mass elements are spatially coincident within the ejecta near and below 14 000 km s−1. Although the upper limit on SN 2012dn's peak luminosity is comparable to some of the most …
Chiral Imprint Of A Cosmic Gauge Field On Primordial Gravitational Waves, Jannis Bielefeld, Robert R. Caldwell
Chiral Imprint Of A Cosmic Gauge Field On Primordial Gravitational Waves, Jannis Bielefeld, Robert R. Caldwell
Dartmouth Scholarship
A cosmological gauge field with isotropic stress-energy introduces parity violation into the behavior of gravitational waves. We show that a primordial spectrum of inflationary gravitational waves develops a preferred handedness, left or right circularly polarized, depending on the abundance and coupling of the gauge field during the radiation era. A modest abundance of the gauge field would induce parity-violating correlations of the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization patterns that could be detected by current and future experiments.
Fermi-Bounce Cosmology And The Fermion Curvaton Mechanism, Stephon Alexander, Yi-Fu Cai, Antonino Marcianò
Fermi-Bounce Cosmology And The Fermion Curvaton Mechanism, Stephon Alexander, Yi-Fu Cai, Antonino Marcianò
Dartmouth Scholarship
A nonsingular bouncing cosmology can be achieved by introducing a fermion field with BCS condensation occurring at high energy scales. In this paper we are able to dilute the anisotropic stress near the bounce by means of releasing the gap energy density near the phase transition between the radiation and condensate states. In order to explain the nearly scale-invariant CMB spectrum, another fermion field is required. We investigate one possible curvaton mechanism by involving one another fermion field without condensation where the mass is lighter than the background field. We show that, by virtue of the fermion curvaton mechanism, our …
Dark Energy Scaling From Dark Matter To Acceleration, Jannis Bielefeld, Robert R. Caldwell, Eric Linder
Dark Energy Scaling From Dark Matter To Acceleration, Jannis Bielefeld, Robert R. Caldwell, Eric Linder
Dartmouth Scholarship
The dark sector of the Universe need not be completely separable into distinct dark matter and dark energy components. We consider a model of early dark energy in which the dark energy mimics a dark matter component in both evolution and perturbations at early times. Barotropic aether dark energy scales as a fixed fraction, possibly greater than one, of the dark matter density and has vanishing sound speed at early times before undergoing a transition. This gives signatures not only in cosmic expansion but in sound speed and inhomogeneities, and in number of effective neutrino species. Model parameters describe the …
Transition To Order After Hilltop Inflation, Marcelo Gleiser, Noah Graham
Transition To Order After Hilltop Inflation, Marcelo Gleiser, Noah Graham
Dartmouth Scholarship
We investigate the rich nonlinear dynamics during the end of hilltop inflation by numerically solving the coupled Klein-Gordon-Friedmann equations in an expanding universe. In particular, we search for coherent, nonperturbative configurations that may emerge due to the combination of nontrivial couplings between the fields and resonant effects from the cosmological expansion. We couple a massless field to the inflaton to investigate its effect on the existence and stability of coherent configurations and the effective equation of state at reheating. For parameters consistent with data from the Planck and WMAP satellites, and for a wide range of couplings between the inflaton …
Freezing Out Early Dark Energy, Jannis Bielefeld, W. L. Kimmy Wu, Robert R. Caldwell, Olivier Doré
Freezing Out Early Dark Energy, Jannis Bielefeld, W. L. Kimmy Wu, Robert R. Caldwell, Olivier Doré
Dartmouth Scholarship
A phenomenological model of dark energy that tracks the baryonic and cold dark matter at early times but resembles a cosmological constant at late times is explored. In the transition between these two regimes, the dark energy density drops rapidly as if it were a relic species that freezes out, during which time the equation of state peaks at +1. Such an adjustment in the dark energy density, as it shifts from scaling to potential domination, could be the signature of a trigger mechanism that helps explain the late-time cosmic acceleration. We show that the non-negligible dark energy density at …
Spectral Distortion In A Radially Inhomogeneous Cosmology, R. R. Caldwell, N. A. Maksimova
Spectral Distortion In A Radially Inhomogeneous Cosmology, R. R. Caldwell, N. A. Maksimova
Dartmouth Scholarship
The spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background blackbody spectrum in a radially inhomogeneous space-time, designed to exactly reproduce a ΛCDM expansion history along the past light cone, is shown to exceed the upper bound established by COBE-FIRAS by a factor of approximately 3700. This simple observational test helps uncover a slew of pathological features that lie hidden inside the past light cone, including a radially contracting phase at decoupling and, if followed to its logical extreme, a naked singularity at the radially inhomogeneous big bang.
Brief History Of Curvature, Robert R. Caldwell, Steven S. Gubser
Brief History Of Curvature, Robert R. Caldwell, Steven S. Gubser
Dartmouth Scholarship
The trace of the stress-energy tensor of the cosmological fluid, proportional to the Ricci scalar curvature in general relativity, is determined on cosmic scales for times ranging from the inflationary epoch to the present day in the expanding Universe. The post-inflationary epoch and the thermal history of the relativistic fluid, in particular the QCD transition from asymptotic freedom to confinement and the electroweak phase transition, leave significant imprints on the scalar curvature. These imprints can be of either sign and are orders of magnitude larger than the values that would be obtained by naively extrapolating the pressureless matter of the …
Gauge Field Preheating At The End Of Inflation, J. Tate Deskins, John T. Giblin Jr., Robert R. Caldwell
Gauge Field Preheating At The End Of Inflation, J. Tate Deskins, John T. Giblin Jr., Robert R. Caldwell
Dartmouth Scholarship
Here we consider the possibility of preheating the Universe via the parametric amplification of a massless, U(1) abelian gauge field. We assume that the gauge field is coupled to the inflaton via a conformal factor with one free parameter. We present the results of high-resolution three-dimensional simulations of this model and show this mechanism efficiently preheats the Universe to a radiation-dominated final state.
Information Content Of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Marcelo Gleiser, Nikitas Stamatopoulos
Information Content Of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Marcelo Gleiser, Nikitas Stamatopoulos
Dartmouth Scholarship
We propose a measure of order in the context of nonequilibrium field theory and argue that this measure, which we call relative configurational entropy (RCE), may be used to quantify the emergence of coherent low-entropy configurations, such as time-dependent or time-independent topological and nontopological spatially extended structures. As an illustration, we investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking in three spatial dimensions. In particular, we focus on a model where a real scalar field, prepared initially in a symmetric thermal state, is quenched to a broken-symmetric state. For a certain range of initial temperatures, spatially localized, long-lived structures known …
Non-Gaussian Features Of Primordial Magnetic Fields In Power-Law Inflation, Leonardo Motta, Robert R. Caldwell
Non-Gaussian Features Of Primordial Magnetic Fields In Power-Law Inflation, Leonardo Motta, Robert R. Caldwell
Dartmouth Scholarship
We show that a conformal-invariance–violating coupling of the inflaton to electromagnetism produces a cross correlation between curvature fluctuations and a spectrum of primordial magnetic fields. According to this model, in the case of power-law inflation, a primordial magnetic field is generated with a nearly flat power spectrum and rms amplitude ranging from nG to pG. We study the cross correlation, a three-point function of the curvature perturbation, and two powers of the magnetic field, in real and momentum space. The cross-correlation coefficient, a dimensionless ratio of the three-point function with the curvature-perturbation and magnetic-field power spectra, can be several orders …
Correlation Of Inflation-Produced Magnetic Fields With Scalar Fluctuations, Robert R. Caldwell, Leonardo Motta, Marc Kamionkowski
Correlation Of Inflation-Produced Magnetic Fields With Scalar Fluctuations, Robert R. Caldwell, Leonardo Motta, Marc Kamionkowski
Dartmouth Scholarship
If the conformal invariance of electromagnetism is broken during inflation, then primordial magnetic fields may be produced. If this symmetry breaking is generated by the coupling between electromagnetism and a scalar field—e.g. the inflaton, curvaton, or Ricci scalar—then these magnetic fields may be correlated with primordial density perturbations, opening a new window to the study of non-Gaussianity in cosmology. In order to illustrate, we couple electromagnetism to an auxiliary scalar field in a de Sitter background. We calculate the power spectra for scalar-field perturbations and magnetic fields, showing how a scale-free magnetic-field spectrum with rms amplitude of ∼nG at Mpc …