221 research outputs found
On Spin-driven inflation from fields in General Relativity and COBE data
Obukhov spin-driven inflation in General Relativity is extended to include
inflaton fields.A de Sitter phase solution is obtained and new slow-rolling
conditions for the spin potential are obtained.The spin potential reduces to
Obukhov result at the present epoch of the Universe where the spin density is
low with comparison to the Early Universe spin densities.A relation betwenn the
spin density energy and the temperature fluctuation can be obtained which allow
us to determine the spin density energy in terms of the COBE data for
temperature fluctuations.Comment: Latex file 8K
Standard Model Neutrinos as Warm Dark Matter
Standard Model neutrinos are not usually considered plausible dark matter
candidates because the usual treatment of their decoupling in the early
universe implies that their mass must be sufficiently small to make them
``hot'' dark matter. In this paper we show that decoupling of Standard Model
neutrinos in low reheat models may result in neutrino densities very much less
than usually assumed, and thus their mass may be in the keV range. Standard
Model neutrinos may therefore be warm dark matter candidates.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX file uses revtex packag
Newtonian versus relativistic nonlinear cosmology
Both for the background world model and its linear perturbations Newtonian
cosmology coincides with the zero-pressure limits of relativistic cosmology.
However, such successes in Newtonian cosmology are not purely based on Newton's
gravity, but are rather guided ones by previously known results in Einstein's
theory. The action-at-a-distance nature of Newton's gravity requires further
verification from Einstein's theory for its use in the large-scale nonlinear
regimes. We study the domain of validity of the Newtonian cosmology by
investigating weakly nonlinear regimes in relativistic cosmology assuming a
zero-pressure and irrotational fluid. We show that, first, if we ignore the
coupling with gravitational waves the Newtonian cosmology is exactly valid even
to the second order in perturbation. Second, the pure relativistic correction
terms start appearing from the third order. Third, the correction terms are
independent of the horizon scale and are quite small in the large-scale near
the horizon. These conclusions are based on our special (and proper) choice of
variables and gauge conditions. In a complementary situation where the system
is weakly relativistic but fully nonlinear (thus, far inside the horizon) we
can employ the post-Newtonian approximation. We also show that in the
large-scale structures the post-Newtonian effects are quite small. As a
consequence, now we can rely on the Newtonian gravity in analyzing the
evolution of nonlinear large-scale structures even near the horizon volume.Comment: 8 pages, no figur
Natural Inflation From Fermion Loops
``Natural'' inflationary theories are a class of models in which inflation is
driven by a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson. In this paper we consider two models,
one old and one new, in which the potential for inflation is generated by loop
effects from a fermion sector which explicitly breaks a global symmetry.
In both models, we retrieve the ``standard'' natural inflation potential,
, as a limiting case of the exact one-loop potential, but we
carry out a general analysis of the models including the limiting case.
Constraints from the COBE DMR observation and from theoretical consistency are
used to limit the parameters of the models, and successful inflation occurs
without the necessity of fine-tuning the parameters.Comment: (Revised) 15 pages, LaTeX (revTeX), 8 figures in uuencoded PostScript
format. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D 15. Corrected
definition of power spectrum and added three reference
Relic Gravitational Waves and Their Detection
The range of expected amplitudes and spectral slopes of relic (squeezed)
gravitational waves, predicted by theory and partially supported by
observations, is within the reach of sensitive gravity-wave detectors. In the
most favorable case, the detection of relic gravitational waves can be achieved
by the cross-correlation of outputs of the initial laser interferometers in
LIGO, VIRGO, GEO600. In the more realistic case, the sensitivity of advanced
ground-based and space-based laser interferometers will be needed. The specific
statistical signature of relic gravitational waves, associated with the
phenomenon of squeezing, is a potential reserve for further improvement of the
signal to noise ratio.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures included, revtex. Based on a talk given at
"Gyros, Clocks, and Interferometers: Testing General Relativity in Space"
(Germany, August 99
Probing Cosmic Strings with Satellite CMB measurements
We study the problem of searching for cosmic string signal patterns in the
present high resolution and high sensitivity observations of the Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB). This article discusses a technique capable of
recognizing Kaiser-Stebbins effect signatures in total intensity anisotropy
maps, and shows that the biggest factor that produces confusion is represented
by the acoustic oscillation features of the scale comparable to the size of
horizon at recombination. Simulations show that the distribution of null
signals for pure Gaussian maps converges to a distribution, with
detectability threshold corresponding to a string induced step signal with an
amplitude of about 100 \muK which corresponds to a limit of roughly . We study the statistics of spurious detections caused by
extra-Galactic and Galactic foregrounds. For diffuse Galactic foregrounds,
which represents the dominant source of contamination, we derive sky masks
outlining the available region of the sky where the Galactic confusion is
sub-dominant, specializing our analysis to the case represented by the
frequency coverage and nominal sensitivity and resolution of the Planck
experiment.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, to be published in JCA
Termination of the Phase of Quintessence by Gravitational Back-Reaction
We study the effects of gravitational back-reaction in models of
Quintessence. The effective energy-momentum tensor with which cosmological
fluctuations back-react on the background metric will in some cases lead to a
termination of the phase of acceleration. The fluctuations we make use of are
the perturbations in our present Universe. Their amplitude is normalized by
recent measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, their
slope is taken to be either scale-invariant, or characterized by a slightly
blue tilt. In the latter case, we find that the back-reaction effect of
fluctuations whose present wavelength is smaller than the Hubble radius but
which are stretched beyond the Hubble radius by the accelerated expansion
during the era of Quintessence domination can become large. Since the
back-reaction effects of these modes oppose the acceleration, back-reaction
will lead to a truncation of the period of Quintessence domination. This result
impacts on the recent discussions of the potential incompatibility between
string theory and Quintessence.Comment: 7 pages a few clarifying comments adde
Detecting a stochastic background of gravitational radiation: Signal processing strategies and sensitivities
We analyze the signal processing required for the optimal detection of a
stochastic background of gravitational radiation using laser interferometric
detectors. Starting with basic assumptions about the statistical properties of
a stochastic gravity-wave background, we derive expressions for the optimal
filter function and signal-to-noise ratio for the cross-correlation of the
outputs of two gravity-wave detectors. Sensitivity levels required for
detection are then calculated. Issues related to: (i) calculating the
signal-to-noise ratio for arbitrarily large stochastic backgrounds, (ii)
performing the data analysis in the presence of nonstationary detector noise,
(iii) combining data from multiple detector pairs to increase the sensitivity
of a stochastic background search, (iv) correlating the outputs of 4 or more
detectors, and (v) allowing for the possibility of correlated noise in the
outputs of two detectors are discussed. We briefly describe a computer
simulation which mimics the generation and detection of a simulated stochastic
gravity-wave signal in the presence of simulated detector noise. Numerous
graphs and tables of numerical data for the five major interferometers
(LIGO-WA, LIGO-LA, VIRGO, GEO-600, and TAMA-300) are also given. The treatment
given in this paper should be accessible to both theorists involved in data
analysis and experimentalists involved in detector design and data acquisition.Comment: 81 pages, 30 postscript figures, REVTE
The Imprint of Gravitational Waves on the Cosmic Microwave Background
Long-wavelength gravitational waves can induce significant temperature
anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Distinguishing this from
anisotropy induced by energy density fluctuations is critical for testing
inflationary cosmology and theories of large-scale structure formation. We
describe full radiative transport calculations of the two contributions and
show that they differ dramatically at angular scales below a few degrees. We
show how anisotropy experiments probing large- and small-angular scales can
combine to distinguish the imprint due to gravitational waves.Comment: 11 pages, Penn Preprint-UPR-
Stochastic optimization methods for extracting cosmological parameters from CMBR power spectra
The reconstruction of the CMBR power spectrum from a map represents a major
computational challenge to which much effort has been applied. However, once
the power spectrum has been recovered there still remains the problem of
extracting cosmological parameters from it. Doing this involves optimizing a
complicated function in a many dimensional parameter space. Therefore efficient
algorithms are necessary in order to make this feasible. We have tested several
different types of algorithms and found that the technique known as simulated
annealing is very effective for this purpose. It is shown that simulated
annealing is able to extract the correct cosmological parameters from a set of
simulated power spectra, but even with such fast optimization algorithms, a
substantial computational effort is needed.Comment: 7 pages revtex, 3 figures, to appear in PR
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