Cosmological particle production and pairwise hotspots on the CMB

Heavy particles with masses much bigger than the inflationary Hubble scale H*, can get non-adiabatically pair produced during inflation through their couplings to the inflaton. If such couplings give rise to time-dependent masses for the heavy particles, then following their production, the heavy particles modify the curvature perturbation around their locations in a time-dependent and scale non-invariant manner. This results into a non-trivial spatial profile of the curvature perturbation that is preserved on superhorizon scales and eventually generates localized hot or cold spots on the CMB. We explore this phenomenon by studying the inflationary production of heavy scalars and derive the final temperature profile of the spots on the CMB by taking into account the subhorizon evolution, focusing in particular on the parameter space where pairwise hot spots (PHS) arise. When the heavy scalar has an $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (1) coupling to the inflaton, we show that for an idealized situation where the dominant background to the PHS signal comes from the standard CMB fluctuations themselves, a simple position space search based on applying a temperature cut, can be sensitive to heavy particle masses M0/H* ∼ $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (100). The corresponding PHS signal also modifies the CMB power spectra and bispectra, although the corrections are below (outside) the sensitivity of current measurements (searches).

Constraints on General Relativity Geodesics by a Covariant Geometric Uncertainty Principle

General relativity is a theory for gravitation based on Riemannian geometry, difficult to compatibilize with quantum mechanics. This is evident in relativistic problems in which quantum effects cannot be discarded. For example in quantum gravity, gravitation of zero-point energy or events close to a black hole singularity. Here, we set up a mathematical model to select general relativity geodesics according to compatibility with the uncertainty principle. To achieve this, we derived a geometric expression of the uncertainty principle (GeUP). This formulation identified proper space-time length with Planck length by a geodesic-derived scalar. GeUP imposed a minimum allowed value for the interval of proper space-time which depended on the particular space-time geometry. GeUP forced the introduction of a “zero-point” curvature perturbation over flat Minkowski space, caused exclusively by quantum uncertainty but not to gravitation. When applied to the Schwarzschild metric and choosing radial-dependent geodesics, our mathematical model identified a particle exclusion zone close to the singularity, similar to calculations by loop quantum gravity. For a 2 black hole merger, this exclusion zone was shown to have a radius that cannot go below a value proportional to the energy/mass of the incoming black hole multiplied by Planck length.

Constraints on General Relativity Geodesics by a Covariant Geometric Uncertainty Principle

General relativity is a theory for gravitation based on Riemannian geometry, difficult to compatibilize with quantum mechanics. This is evident in relativistic problems in which quantum effects cannot be discarded. For example in quantum gravity, gravitation of zero-point energy or events close to a black hole singularity. Here, we set up a mathematical model to select general relativity geodesics according to compatibility with the uncertainty principle. To achieve this, we derived a geometric expression of the uncertainty principle (GUP). This formulation identified proper space-time length with Planck length by a geodesic-derived scalar. GUP imposed a minimum allowed value for the interval of proper space-time which depended on the particular space-time geometry. GUP forced the introduction of a “zero-point” curvature perturbation over flat Minkowski space, caused exclusively by quantum uncertainty but not to gravitation. When applied to the Schwarzschild metric and choosing radial-dependent geodesics, our mathematical model identified a particle exclusion zone close to the singularity, similar to calculations by loop quantum gravity. For a 2 black hole merger, this exclusion zone was shown to have a radius that cannot go below a value proportional to the energy/mass of the incoming black hole multiplied by Planck length.

On the coupling of vector fields to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant

Inflationary models including vector fields have attracted a great deal of attention over the past decade. Such an interest owes to the fact that they might contribute to, or even be fully responsible for, the curvature perturbation imprinted in the cosmic microwave background. However, the necessary breaking of the vector fields conformal invariance during inflation is not without problems. In recent years, it has been realized that a number of instabilities endangering the consistency of the theory arise when the conformal invariance is broken by means of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. In this paper, we consider a massive vector field non-minimally coupled to gravity through the Gauss-Bonnet invariant, and investigate whether the vector can play the role of a curvaton while evading the emergence of instabilities and preserves the large-scale isotropy.

Scalar cosmological perturbations in M-theory with higher-derivative corrections

We investigate the inflationary expansion of the universe induced by higher-curvature corrections in M-theory. The inflationary evolution of the geometry is discussed in K. Hiraga and Y. Hyakutake, Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2018, 113B03 (2018), which we follow to analyze metric perturbations around the background. We especially focus on scalar perturbations and analyze linearized equations of motion for the scalar perturbations. By solving these equations explicitly, we evaluate the power spectrum of the curvature perturbation. The scalar spectrum index is estimated under some assumptions, and we show that it becomes close to 1.

Abundance of Primordial Black Holes in Peak Theory for an Arbitrary Power Spectrum

We modify the procedure to estimate PBH abundance proposed in Ref. [1] so that it can be applied to a broad power spectrum such as the scale-invariant flat power spectrum. In the new procedure, we focus on peaks of the Laplacian of the curvature perturbation △ ζ and use the values of △ ζ and △ △ ζ at each peak to specify the profile of ζ as a function of the radial coordinate while the values of ζ and △ ζ are used in Ref. [1]. The new procedure decouples the larger-scale environmental effect from the estimate of PBH abundance. Because the redundant variance due to the environmental effect is eliminated, we obtain a narrower shape of the mass spectrum compared to the previous procedure in Ref. [1]. Furthermore, the new procedure allows us to estimate PBH abundance for the scale-invariant flat power spectrum by introducing a window function. Although the final result depends on the choice of the window function, we show that the k-space tophat window minimizes the extra reduction of the mass spectrum due to the window function. That is, the k-space tophat window has the minimum required property in the theoretical PBH estimation. Our procedure makes it possible to calculate the PBH mass spectrum for an arbitrary power spectrum by using a plausible PBH formation criterion with the nonlinear relation taken into account.

Inflation from f(R) theories in gravity’s rainbow

In this work, we study the f(R) models of inflation in the context of gravity’s rainbow theory. We choose three types of f(R) models: $$f(R)=R+\alpha (R/M)^{n},\,f(R)=R+\alpha R^{2}+\beta R^{2}\log (R/M^{2})$$ f ( R ) = R + α ( R / M ) n , f ( R ) = R + α R 2 + β R 2 log ( R / M 2 ) and the Einstein–Hu–Sawicki model with $$n,\,\alpha ,\,\beta $$ n , α , β being arbitrary real constants. Here R and M are the Ricci scalar and mass scale, respectively. For all models, the rainbow function is written in the power-law form of the Hubble parameter. We present a detailed derivation of the spectral index of curvature perturbation and the tensor-to-scalar ratio and compare the predictions of our results with the latest Planck 2018 data. With the sizeable number of e-foldings and proper choices of parameters, we discover that the predictions of all f(R) models present in this work are in excellent agreement with the Planck analysis.

Reconstruction of warm Chaplygin gas inflationary models

By assuming the specific Chaplygin gas model, we study the reconstruction of warm inflation model with the help of tensor-to-scalar ratio [Formula: see text] and scalar spectral index [Formula: see text]. In this regard, we take flat Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) metric and discuss the general forms of dissipative coefficient [Formula: see text] as well as effective potential [Formula: see text] for two dissipative regimes i.e., the weak and strong. We use inflationary parameters such as slow-roll parameters, power spectrum of the curvature perturbation, tensor spectrum, spectral index, scalar-to-tensor ratio and Hubble parameter to find the generalized form of dissipative coefficient and effective potential. We discuss the results of dissipative coefficient and reconstructed potential in detail for the specific choice of tensor-to-scalar ratio [Formula: see text] and scalar spectral index [Formula: see text].