Missing scalars at the cosmological collider

Light scalar fields typically develop spatially varying backgrounds during inflation. Very often they do not directly affect the density perturbations, but interact with other fields that do leave nontrivial signals in primordial perturbations. In this sense they become “missing scalars” at the cosmological collider. We study potentially observable signals of these missing scalars, focusing on a special example where a missing scalar distorts the usual oscillatory features in the squeezed bispectrum. The distortion is also a useful signal distinguishing the de Sitter background induced thermal mass from a constant intrinsic mass.

Regularization ambiguity and van der Waals black hole in 2 + 1 dimensions

Charged black holes in a ($$2+1$$ 2 + 1 )-dimensional anti-de Sitter space-time suffer from some limitations such as the ambiguity in the definition of the mass and the bad short distance behavior. In this paper we present a way to resolve such issues. By extending the parameter space of the BTZ geometry, we properly identify the integration constants in order to remove the conical singularity sitting at the origin. In such a way we obtain a well defined Minkowski limit and horizons also in the case of de Sitter background space. On the thermodynamic side, we obtain a proper internal energy, by invoking the consistency with the Area Law, even if the mass parameter does not appear in the metric coefficients. As a further improvement, we show that it is sufficient to assume a finite size of the electric charge to obtain a short scale regular geometry. The resulting solution, generalizing the charged BTZ metric, is dual to a van der Waals gas.

Three-dimensional DKP oscillator in a curved Snyder space

The Snyder–de Sitter model is an extension of the Snyder model to a de Sitter background. It is called triply special relativity (TSR) because it is based on three fundamental parameters: speed of light, Planck mass and cosmological constant. In this paper, we study the three-dimensional DKP oscillator for spin-0 and spin-1 in the framework of Snyder–de Sitter algebra in momentum space. By using the technique of vector spherical harmonics the energy spectrum and the corresponding eigenfunctions are obtained for the both cases.

Construction of the cosmological model with periodically distributed inhomogeneities with growing amplitude

We construct an approximate solution to the cosmological perturbation theory around Einstein–de Sitter background up to the fourth-order perturbations. This could be done with the help of the specific symmetry condition imposed on the metric, from which follows that the model density forms an infinite, cubic lattice. To verify the convergence of the perturbative construction, we express the resulting metric as a polynomial in the perturbative parameter and calculate the exact Einstein tensor. In our model, it seems that physical quantities averaged over large scales overlap with the respective Einstein–de Sitter prediction, while local observables could differ significantly from their background counterparts. As an example, we analyze the behavior of the local measurements of the Hubble constant and compare them with the Hubble constant of the homogeneous background model. A difference between these quantities is important in the context of a current Hubble tension problem.

Loops in dS/CFT

We consider the semi-classical expansion of the Bunch-Davies wavefunction with future boundary condition in position space for a real scalar field, conformally coupled to a classical de Sitter background in the expanding Poincaré patch with quartic selfinteraction. In the future boundary limit the wave function takes the form of the generating functional of a Euclidean conformal field theory for which we calculate the anomalous dimensions of the double trace deformations at one loop order using results obtained from Euclidean Anti de Sitter space. We find analytic expressions for some subleading twist operators and an algorithm to obtain expressions for general twist.

Soft de Sitter Effective Theory

Calculating the quantum evolution of a de Sitter universe on superhorizon scales is notoriously difficult. To address this challenge, we introduce the Soft de Sitter Effective Theory (SdSET). This framework holds for superhorizon modes whose comoving momentum is far below the UV scale, which is set by the inverse comoving horizon. The SdSET is formulated using the same approach that yields the Heavy Quark Effective Theory. The degrees of freedom that capture the long wavelength dynamics are identified with the growing and decaying solutions to the equations of motion. The operator expansion is organized using a power counting scheme, and loops can be regulated while respecting the low energy symmetries. For massive quantum fields in a fixed de Sitter background, power counting implies that all interactions beyond the horizon are irrelevant. Alternatively, if the fields are very light, the leading interactions are at most marginal, and resumming the associated logarithms using (dynamical) renormalization group techniques yields the evolution equation for canonical stochastic inflation. The SdSET is also applicable to models where gravity is dynamical, including inflation. In this case, diffeomorphism invariance ensures that all interactions are irrelevant, trivially implying the all-orders conservation of adiabatic density fluctuations and gravitational waves. We briefly touch on the application to slow-roll eternal inflation by identifying novel relevant operators. This work serves to demystify many aspects of perturbation theory outside the horizon, and has a variety of applications to problems of cosmological interest.