Gravitational waves from oscillons after inflation

We investigate the production of gravitational waves during preheating after inflation in the common case of field potentials that are asymmetric around the minimum. In particular, we study the impact of oscillons, comparatively long lived and spatially localized regions where a scalar field (e.g. the inflaton) oscillates with large amplitude. Contrary to a previous study, which considered a symmetric potential, we find that oscillons in asymmetric potentials associated with a phase transition can generate a pronounced peak in the spectrum of gravitational waves, that largely exceeds the linear preheating spectrum. We discuss the possible implications of this enhanced amplitude of gravitational waves. For instance, for low scale inflation models, the contribution from the oscillons can strongly enhance the observation prospects at current and future gravitational wave detectors.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; v2: version published in PRL; v3: includes Erratum (submitted to PRL

What can we learn from the stochastic gravitational wave background produced by oscillons?

The stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background provides a fascinating window to the physics of the very early universe. Beyond the nearly scale-invariant primordial GW spectrum produced during inflation, a spectrum with a much richer structure is typically generated during the preheating phase after inflation (or after some other phase transition at lower energies). This raises the question of what one can learn from a future observation of the stochastic gravitational wave background spectrum about the underlying physics during preheating. Recently, it has been shown that during preheating non-perturbative quasi-stable objects like oscillons can act as strong sources for GW, leading to characteristic features such as distinct peaks in the spectrum. In this paper, we study the GW production from oscillons using semi-analytical techniques. In particular, we discuss how the GW spectrum is affected by the parameters that characterise a given oscillon system, e.g. by the background cosmology, the asymmetry of the oscillons and the evolution of the number density of the oscillons. We compare our semi-analytic results with numerical lattice simulations for a hilltop inflation model and a KKLT scenario, which differ strongly in some of these characteristics, and find very good agreement.Comment: 25 pages + Appendix, 16 figure

False vacuum energy dominated inflation with large rr and the importance of κs\kappa_s

We investigate to which extent and under which circumstances false vacuum energy ($V_0$) dominated slow-roll inflation is compatible with a large tensor-to-scalar ratio $r = O(0.1)$, as indicated by the recent BICEP2 measurement. With $V_0$ we refer to a constant contribution to the inflaton potential, present before a phase transition takes place and absent in the true vacuum of the theory, like e.g. in hybrid inflation. Based on model-independent considerations, we derive an upper bound on the possible amount of $V_0$ domination and highlight the importance of higher-order runnings of the scalar spectral index (beyond $\alpha_s$) in order to realise scenarios of $V_0$ dominated inflation. We study the conditions for $V_0$ domination explicitly with an inflaton potential reconstruction around the inflaton field value 50 e-folds before the end of inflation, taking into account the present observational data. To this end, we provide the up-to-date parameter constraints within $\Lambda$CDM + $r$ + $\alpha_s$ + $\kappa_s$ using the cosmological parameter estimation code Monte Python together with the Boltzmann code CLASS.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures; v2: matches publication in JCA

Oscillons from String Moduli

A generic feature of string compactifications is the presence of many scalar fields, called moduli. Moduli are usually displaced from their post-inflationary minimum during inflation. Their relaxation to the minimum could lead to the production of oscillons: localised, long-lived, non-linear excitations of the scalar fields. Here we discuss under which conditions oscillons can be produced in string cosmology and illustrate their production and potential phenomenology with two explicit examples: the case of an initially displaced volume modulus in the KKLT scenario and the case of a displaced blow-up Kaehler modulus in the Large Volume Scenario (LVS). One, in principle, observable consequence of oscillon dynamics is the production of gravitational waves which, contrary to those produced from preheating after high scale inflation, could have lower frequencies, closer to the currently observable range. We also show that, for the considered parameter ranges, oscillating fibre and volume moduli do not develop any significant non-perturbative dynamics. Furthermore, we find that the vacua in the LVS and the KKLT scenario are stable against local overshootings of the field into the decompatification region, which provides an additional check on the longevity of these metastable configurations.Comment: 32 pages + appendix, 23 figures, for videos of the simulations see https://particlesandcosmology.unibas.ch/downloads/oscillons-from-string-moduli-movies.htm

Properties of Oscillons in Hilltop Potentials: energies, shapes, and lifetimes

Oscillons are spatially localised strong fluctuations of a scalar field. They can e.g. form after inflation when the scalar field potential is shallower than quadratic away from the minimum. Although oscillons are not protected by topology, they can be remarkably stable and have a significant impact on the (p)reheating phase. In this work we investigate the properties of oscillons in hilltop-shaped potentials, in particular the typical energies, shapes and lifetimes. In the first part of the paper, we simulate oscillon creation and stabilization with (3+1)-dimensional classical lattice simulations, and extract the typical energies, radii and amplitudes of the oscillons. In the second part we approximate the oscillons as spherically symmetric, and simulate single oscillons until their decay. We find that typical oscillons live up to about 10(4)-10(5) field oscillations, with the individual lifetime of the oscillons depending mainly on the initial shape of the oscillon and the power-law coefficient characterising the particular hilltop model. We also observe a breathing mode in the oscillon radii and amplitudes, and find that stronger breathing implies shorter lifetimes

Parametric resonance after hilltop inflation caused by an inhomogeneous inflaton field

We study preheating after hilltop inflation where the inflaton couples to another scalar field, e.g. a right-handed sneutrino, which provides a mechanism for generating the correct initial conditions for inflation and also a decay channel for the inflaton that allows for reheating and non-thermal leptogenesis. In the presence of such a coupling, we find that after the phases of tachyonic preheating and tachyonic oscillations, during which the inflaton field becomes inhomogeneous, there can be a subsequent preheating phase where the fluctuations of the other field get resonantly enhanced, from initial vacuum fluctuations up to amplitudes of the same order (and even larger) as the ones of the inflaton field. This resonant enhancement differs from the usual parametric resonance as the inflaton field is inhomogeneous at the time the enhancement takes place. We study this effect using lattice simulations as well as semi-analytically with a generalized Floquet analysis for inhomogeneous background fields