Dark matter dilution scenarios in the early universe

When the vacuum like energy of the Higgs potential within the standard model undergoes electroweak phase transition, an influx of entropy into the primordial plasma can lead to a significant dilution of frozen out dark matter density that was already present before the onset of the phase transition. The same effect can take place if the early universe was dominated by primordial black holes of small mass, evaporating before the period of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. In this paper, we calculate the dilution factor for the above-mentioned scenarios.

LISA Sensitivity to Gravitational Waves from Sound Waves

Gravitational waves (GWs) produced by sound waves in the primordial plasma during a strong first-order phase transition in the early Universe are going to be a main target of the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) experiment. In this short note, I draw a global picture of LISA’s expected sensitivity to this type of GW signal, based on the concept of peak-integrated sensitivity curves (PISCs) recently introduced in two previous papers. In particular, I use LISA’s PISC to perform a systematic comparison of several thousands of benchmark points in ten different particle physics models in a compact fashion. The presented analysis (i) retains the complete information on the optimal signal-to-noise ratio, (ii) allows for different power-law indices describing the spectral shape of the signal, (iii) accounts for galactic confusion noise from compact binaries, and (iv) exhibits the dependence of the expected sensitivity on the collected amount of data. An important outcome of this analysis is that, for the considered set of models, galactic confusion noise typically reduces the number of observable scenarios by roughly a factor of two, more or less independent of the observing time. The numerical results presented in this paper are also available in the online repository Zenodo.

Possible formation of ring galaxies by torus-shaped magnetic wormholes

We present the hypothesis that some of ring galaxies were formed by relic magnetic torus-shaped wormholes. In the primordial plasma before the recombination magnetic fields of wormholes trap baryons whose energy is smaller than a threshold energy. They work as the Maxwell’s demons collecting baryons from the nearest (horizon size) region and thus forming clumps of baryonic matter which have the same torus-like shapes as wormhole throats. Such clumps may serve as seeds for the formation of ring galaxies and smaller objects having the ring form. Upon the recombination torus-like clumps may decay and merge. Unlike galaxies, such objects may contain less or even no dark matter in halos. However the most stringent feature of such objects is the presence of a large-scale toroidal magnetic field. We show that there are threshold values of magnetic fields which give the upper and lower boundary values for the baryon clumps in such protogalaxies.

Electromagnetic instability induced by neutrino interaction

We consider the generation and evolution of magnetic field in a primordial plasma at temperature [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]MeV in the presence of asymmetric neutrino background, i.e. the number densities of right-handed and left-handed neutrinos are not the same. Semi-classical equations of motion of a charged fermion are derived using the effective low-energy Lagrangian. We show that the spin degree of freedom of the charged fermion couples with the neutrino background. Using this kinetic equation, we study the collective modes of the plasma. We find that there exist an unstable mode. This instability is closely related with the instability induced by chiral-anomaly in high temperature [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]TeV plasma where right and left-handed electrons are out of equilibrium. We find that at the temperatures below the neutrino decoupling this instability can produce magnetic field in the universe. We discuss cosmological implications of the results.

Dark matter annihilation in the universe

The astronomical dark matter is an essential component of the Universe and yet its nature is still unresolved. It could be made of neutral and massive elementary particles which are their own antimatter partners. These dark matter species undergo mutual annihilations whose effects are briefly reviewed in this article. Dark matter annihilation plays a key role at early times as it sets the relic abundance of the particles once they have decoupled from the primordial plasma. A weak annihilation cross section naturally leads to a cosmological abundance in agreement with observations. Dark matter species subsequently annihilate — or decay — during Big Bang nucleosynthesis and could play havoc with the light element abundances unless they offer a possible solution to the 7 Li problem. They could also reionize the intergalactic medium after recombination and leave visible imprints in the cosmic microwave background. But one of the most exciting aspects of the question lies in the possibility to indirectly detect the dark matter species through the rare antimatter particles — antiprotons, positrons and antideuterons — which they produce as they currently annihilate inside the galactic halo. Finally, the effects of dark matter annihilation on stars is discussed.

GENERATION OF LARGE-SCALE MAGNETIC FIELDS FROM PRIMORDIAL DENSITY FLUCTUATIONS

We investigate a generation of magnetic fields from cosmological density perturbations. In the primordial plasma before cosmological recombination, all of the materials except dark matter in the universe exist in the form of photons, electrons, and protons (and a small number of light elements). Due to the different scattering nature of photons off electrons and protons, electric currents and electric fields are inevitably induced, and thus magnetic fields are generated. We numerically obtain the power spectrum of magnetic fields over a wide range of scales, from k ~ 10−5 Mpc −1 to k ~ 109 Mpc −1. Implications of these cosmologically generated magnetic fields are discussed.