Constraints on Inflationary Solutions in the Presence of Shear and Bulk Viscosity

Inflationary models and their claim to solve many of the outstanding problems in cosmology have been the subject of a great deal of debate over the last few years. A major sticking point has been the lack of both good observational and theoretical arguments to single out one particular model out of the many that solve these problems. Here we examine the degree of restrictiveness on the dynamical relationship between the cosmological scale factor and the inflation driving self-interaction potential of a minimally coupled scalar field, imposed by the condition that the scalar field is required to be real during a classical regime (the reality condition). We systema\-tically look at the effects of this constraint on many of the inflationary models found in the literature within the FLRW framework, and also look at what happens when physically motivated perturbations such as shear and bulk viscosity are introduced. We find that in many cases, either the models are totally excluded or the reality condition gives rise to constraints on the scale factor and on the various parameters of the model.Comment: 21 pages, LaTe

Dynamics of Inflationary Universes with Positive Spatial Curvature

If the spatial curvature of the universe is positive, then the curvature term will always dominate at early enough times in a slow-rolling inflationary epoch. This enhances inflationary effects and hence puts limits on the possible number of e-foldings that can have occurred, independently of what happened before inflation began and in particular without regard for what may have happened in the Planck era. We use a simple multi-stage model to examine this limit as a function of the present density parameter $\Omega_0$ and the epoch when inflation ends.Comment: 9 Pages RevTex4. Revised and update

Consistency of dust solutions with div H=0

One of the necessary covariant conditions for gravitational radiation is the vanishing of the divergence of the magnetic Weyl tensor H_{ab}, while H_{ab} itself is nonzero. We complete a recent analysis by showing that in irrotational dust spacetimes, the condition div H=0 evolves consistently in the exact nonlinear theory.Comment: 3 pages Revte

A Note on Infinities in Eternal Inflation

In some well-known scenarios of open-universe eternal inflation, developed by Vilenkin and co-workers, a large number of universes nucleate and thermalize within the eternally inflating mega-universe. According to the proposal, each universe nucleates at a point, and therefore the boundary of the nucleated universe is a space-like surface nearly coincident with the future light cone emanating from the point of nucleation, all points of which have the same proper-time. This leads the authors to conclude that at the proper-time t = t_{nuc} at which any such nucleation occurs, an infinite open universe comes into existence. We point out that this is due entirely to the supposition of the nucleation occurring at a single point, which in light of quantum cosmology seems difficult to support. Even an infinitesimal space-like length at the moment of nucleation gives a rather different result -- the boundary of the nucleating universe evolves in proper-time and becomes infinite only in an infinite time. The alleged infinity is never attained at any finite time.Comment: 13 pages and 6 figure

Vorticity production and survival in viscous and magnetized cosmologies

We study the role of viscosity and the effects of a magnetic field on a rotating, self-gravitating fluid, using Newtonian theory and adopting the ideal magnetohydrodynamic approximation. Our results confirm that viscosity can generate vorticity in inhomogeneous environments, while the magnetic tension can produce vorticity even in the absence of fluid pressure and density gradients. Linearizing our equations around an Einstein-de Sitter cosmology, we find that viscosity adds to the diluting effect of the universal expansion. Typically, however, the dissipative viscous effects are confined to relatively small scales. We also identify the characteristic length bellow which the viscous dissipation is strong and beyond which viscosity is essentially negligible. In contrast, magnetism seems to favor cosmic rotation. The magnetic presence is found to slow down the standard decay-rate of linear vortices, thus leading to universes with more residual rotation than generally anticipated.Comment: Minor changes. References added and updated. Published versio

Exact non-equilibrium solutions of the Einstein-Boltzmann equations. II

We find exact solutions of the Einstein-Boltzmann equations with relaxational collision term in FRW and Bianchi I spacetimes. The kinematic and thermodynamic properties of the solutions are investigated. We give an exact expression for the bulk viscous pressure of an FRW distribution that relaxes towards collision-dominated equilibrium. If the relaxation is toward collision-free equilibrium, the bulk viscosity vanishes - but there is still entropy production. The Bianchi I solutions have zero heat flux and bulk viscosity, but nonzero shear viscosity. The solutions are used to construct a realisation of the Weyl Curvature Hypothesis.Comment: 16 pages LaTex, CQG documentstyle (ioplppt

Exploring CP Violation in the MSSM

We explore the prospects for observing CP violation in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) with six CP-violating parameters, three gaugino mass phases and three phases in trilinear soft supersymmetry-breaking parameters, using the CPsuperH code combined with a geometric approach to maximize CP-violating observables subject to the experimental upper bounds on electric dipole moments. We also implement CP-conserving constraints from Higgs physics, flavour physics and the upper limits on the cosmological dark matter density and spin-independent scattering. We study possible values of observables within the constrained MSSM (CMSSM), the non-universal Higgs model (NUHM), the CPX scenario and a variant of the phenomenological MSSM (pMSSM). We find values of the CP-violating asymmetry A_CP in b -> s gamma decay that may be as large as 3%, so future measurements of A_CP may provide independent information about CP violation in the MSSM. We find that CP-violating MSSM contributions to the B_s meson mass mixing term Delta M_Bs are in general below the present upper limit, which is dominated by theoretical uncertainties. If these could be reduced, Delta M_Bs could also provide an interesting and complementary constraint on the six CP-violating MSSM phases, enabling them all to be determined experimentally, in principle. We also find that CP violation in the h_{2,3} tau+ tau- and h_{2,3} tbar t couplings can be quite large, and so may offer interesting prospects for future pp, e+ e-, mu+ mu- and gamma gamma colliders.Comment: 36 pages, 32 figure

Integrability of irrotational silent cosmological models

We revisit the issue of integrability conditions for the irrotational silent cosmological models. We formulate the problem both in 1+3 covariant and 1+3 orthonormal frame notation, and show there exists a series of constraint equations that need to be satisfied. These conditions hold identically for FLRW-linearised silent models, but not in the general exact non-linear case. Thus there is a linearisation instability, and it is highly unlikely that there is a large class of silent models. We conjecture that there are no spatially inhomogeneous solutions with Weyl curvature of Petrov type I, and indicate further issues that await clarification.Comment: Minor corrections and improvements; 1 new reference; to appear Class. Quantum Grav.; 16 pages Ioplpp