131 research outputs found
Open inflation in the landscape
Open inflation scenario is attracting a renewed interest in the context of
string landscape. Since there are a large number of metastable de Sitter vacua
in string landscape, tunneling transitions to lower metastable vacua through
the bubble nucleation occur quite naturally. Although the deviation of Omega_0
from unity is small by the observational bound, we argue that the effect of
this small deviation on the large angle CMB anisotropies can be significant for
tensor-type perturbation in open inflation scenario. We consider the situation
in which there is a large hierarchy between the energy scale of the quantum
tunneling and that of the slow-roll inflation in the nucleated bubble. If the
potential just after tunneling is steep enough, a rapid-roll phase appears
before the slow-roll inflation. In this case the power spectrum is basically
determined by the Hubble rate during the slow-roll inflation. If such
rapid-roll phase is absent, the power spectrum keeps the memory of the high
energy density there in the large angular components. The amplitude of large
angular components can be enhanced due to the effects of the wall fluctuation
mode if the bubble wall tension is small. Therefore, one can construct some
models in which the deviation of Omega_0 from unity is large enough to produce
measurable effects. We also consider a more general class of models, where the
false vacuum decay may occur due to Hawking-Moss tunneling, as well as the
models involving more than one scalar field. We discuss scalar perturbations in
these models and point out that a large set of such models is already ruled out
by observational data, unless there was a very long stage of slow-roll
inflation after the tunneling. These results show that observational data allow
us to test various assumptions concerning the structure of the string theory
potentials and the duration of the last stage of inflation.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, v2:minor corrections and a reference added,
v3:accepted for publication in PR
A general proof of the equivalence between the \delta N and covariant formalisms
Recently, the equivalence between the \delta N and covariant formalisms has
been shown (Suyama et al. 2012), but they essentially assumed Einstein gravity
in their proof. They showed that the evolution equation of the curvature
covector in the covariant formalism on uniform energy density slicings
coincides with that of the curvature perturbation in the \delta N formalism
assuming the coincidence of uniform energy and uniform expansion (Hubble)
slicings, which is the case on superhorizon scales in Einstein gravity. In this
short note, we explicitly show the equivalence between the \delta N and
covariant formalisms without specifying the slicing condition and the
associated slicing coincidence, in other words, regardless of the gravity
theory.Comment: 7 pages,a reference added, to be published in EP
Cosmological solutions of massive gravity on de Sitter
In the framework of the recently proposed models of massive gravity, defined
with respect to a de Sitter reference metric, we obtain new homogeneous and
isotropic solutions for arbitrary cosmological matter and arbitrary spatial
curvature. These solutions can be classified into three branches. In the first
two, the massive gravity terms behave like a cosmological constant. In the
third branch, the massive gravity effects can be described by a time evolving
effective fluid with rather remarkable features, including the property to
behave as a cosmological constant at late time.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure; discussion extended, a few references added,
improved analysis in Section
Curvature perturbation in multi-field inflation with non-minimal coupling
In this paper we discuss a multi-field model of inflation in which generally
all fields are non-minimally coupled to the Ricci scalar and have non-canonical
kinetic terms. The background evolution and first-order perturbations for the
model are evaluated in both the Jordan and Einstein frames, and the respective
curvature perturbations compared. We confirm that they are indeed not the same
- unlike in the single-field case - and also that the difference is a direct
consequence of the isocurvature perturbations inherent to multi-field models.
This result leads us to conclude that the notion of adiabaticity is not
invariant under conformal transformations. Using a two-field example we show
that even if in one frame the evolution is adiabatic, meaning that the
curvature perturbation is conserved on super-horizon scales, in general in the
other frame isocurvature perturbations continue to source the curvature
perturbation. We also find that it is possible to realise a particular model in
which curvature perturbations in both frames are conserved but with each being
of different magnitude. These examples highlight that the curvature
perturbation itself, despite being gauge-invariant, does not correspond
directly to an observable. The non-equivalence of the two curvature
perturbations would also be important when considering the addition of Standard
Model matter into the system.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, references added, typos corrected, version to
appear in JCA
Conditions for large non-Gaussianity in two-field slow-roll inflation
We study the level of primordial non-Gaussianity in slow-roll two-field
inflation. Using an analytic formula for the nonlinear parameter f_nl in the
case of a sum or product separable potential, we find that it is possible to
generate significant non-Gaussianity even during slow-roll inflation with
Gaussian perturbations at Hubble exit. In this paper we give the general
conditions to obtain large non-Gaussianity and calculate the level of
fine-tuning required to obtain this. We present explicit models in which the
non-Gaussianity at the end of inflation can exceed the current observational
bound of |f_nl|<100.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, v2: typos corrected and references
added, matches version accepted by JCA
Cosmological constraints on extended Galileon models
The extended Galileon models possess tracker solutions with de Sitter
attractors along which the dark energy equation of state is constant during the
matter-dominated epoch, i.e. w_DE = -1-s, where s is a positive constant. Even
with this phantom equation of state there are viable parameter spaces in which
the ghosts and Laplacian instabilities are absent. Using the observational data
of the supernovae type Ia, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and baryon
acoustic oscillations, we place constraints on the tracker solutions at the
background level and find that the parameter s is constrained to be s=0.034
(-0.034,+0.327) (95% CL) in the flat Universe. In order to break the degeneracy
between the models we also study the evolution of cosmological density
perturbations relevant to the large-scale structure (LSS) and the
Integrated-Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect in CMB. We show that, depending on the
model parameters, the LSS and the ISW effect is either positively or negatively
correlated. It is then possible to constrain viable parameter spaces further
from the observational data of the ISW-LSS cross-correlation as well as from
the matter power spectrum.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, uses RevTeX4-
Potential-driven Galileon inflation
For the models of inflation driven by the potential energy of an inflaton
field , the covariant Galileon Lagrangian
generally works to slow down the evolution of the field. On the other hand, if
the Galileon self-interaction is dominant relative to the standard kinetic
term, we show that there is no oscillatory regime of inflaton after the end of
inflation. This is typically accompanied by the appearance of the negative
propagation speed squared of a scalar mode, which leads to the
instability of small-scale perturbations. For chaotic inflation and natural
inflation we clarify the parameter space in which inflaton oscillates
coherently during reheating. Using the WMAP constraints of the scalar spectral
index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio as well, we find that the self coupling
of the potential is constrained to be very
much smaller than 1 and that the symmetry breaking scale of natural
inflation cannot be less than the reduced Planck mass . We also
show that, in the presence of other covariant Galileon Lagrangians, there are
some cases in which inflaton oscillates coherently even for the self coupling
of the order of 0.1, but still the instability associated with
negative is generally present.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figure
Nonlinear superhorizon perturbations of non-canonical scalar field
We develop a theory of non-linear cosmological perturbations at superhorizon
scales for a scalar field with a Lagrangian of the form , where
and is the scalar field. We
employ the ADM formalism and the spatial gradient expansion approach to obtain
general solutions valid up to the second order in the gradient expansion. This
formulation can be applied to, for example, DBI inflation models to investigate
superhorizon evolution of non-Gaussianities. With slight modification, we also
obtain general solutions valid up to the same order for a perfect fluid with a
general equation of state .Comment: 14 page
Evolution of fNL to the adiabatic limit
We study inflationary perturbations in multiple-field models, for which zeta
typically evolves until all isocurvature modes decay--the "adiabatic limit". We
use numerical methods to explore the sensitivity of the nonlinear parameter fNL
to the process by which this limit is achieved, finding an appreciable
dependence on model-specific data such as the time at which slow-roll breaks
down or the timescale of reheating. In models with a sum-separable potential
where the isocurvature modes decay before the end of the slow-roll phase we
give an analytic criterion for the asymptotic value of fNL to be large. Other
examples can be constructed using a waterfall field to terminate inflation
while fNL is transiently large, caused by descent from a ridge or convergence
into a valley. We show that these two types of evolution are distinguished by
the sign of the bispectrum, and give approximate expressions for the peak fNL.Comment: v1: 25 pages, plus Appendix and bibliography, 6 figures. v2: minor
edits to match published version in JCA
The Imperfect Fluid behind Kinetic Gravity Braiding
We present a standard hydrodynamical description for non-canonical scalar
field theories with kinetic gravity braiding. In particular, this picture
applies to the simplest galileons and k-essence. The fluid variables not only
have a clear physical meaning but also drastically simplify the analysis of the
system. The fluid carries charges corresponding to shifts in field space. This
shift-charge current contains a spatial part responsible for diffusion of the
charges. Moreover, in the incompressible limit, the equation of motion becomes
the standard diffusion equation. The fluid is indeed imperfect because the
energy flows neither along the field gradient nor along the shift current. The
fluid has zero vorticity and is not dissipative: there is no entropy
production, the energy-momentum is exactly conserved, the temperature vanishes
and there is no shear viscosity. Still, in an expansion around a perfect fluid
one can identify terms which correct the pressure in the manner of bulk
viscosity. We close by formulating the non-trivial conditions for the
thermodynamic equilibrium of this imperfect fluid.Comment: 23 pages plus appendices. New version includes extended discussion on
diffusion and dynamics in alternative frames, as well as additional
references. v3 reflects version accepted for publication in JHEP: minor
comments added regarding suitability to numerical approache
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