1,516 research outputs found
Radiation can never again dominate Matter in a Vacuum Dominated Universe
We demonstrate that in a vacuum-energy-dominated expansion phase,
surprisingly neither the decay of matter nor matter-antimatter annihilation
into relativistic particles can ever cause radiation to once again dominate
over matter in the future history of the universe.Comment: updated version, as it will appear in Phys. Rev D. Title change, and
some other minor alteration
Supersymmetry without a Light Higgs Boson
Motivated by the absence, so far, of any direct signal of conventional
low-energy supersymmetry, we explore the consequences of making the lightest
Higgs boson in supersymmetry relatively heavy, up to about 300 GeV, in the most
straightforward way, i.e. via the introduction of a chiral singlet S with a
superpotential interaction with the Higgs doublets, \lambda S H_1 H_2. The
coupling \lambda dominates over all the other couplings and, to maintain the
successful perturbative analysis of the ElectroWeak Precision Tests, is only
restricted to remain perturbative up to about 10 TeV. The general features of
this "\lambda SUSY" framework, which deviates significantly from the MSSM or
the standard NMSSM, are analyzed in different areas: ElectroWeak Precision
Tests, Dark Matter, naturalness bounds on superparticle masses, and LHC
signals. There is a rich Higgs/Higgsino sector in the (200-700)GeV mass region,
which may include LSP Higgsino dark matter. All other superpartners, apart from
the top squarks, may naturally be heavier than 1-2 TeV. This picture can be
made consistent with gauge coupling unification.Comment: 27 page
Landscape Predictions for the Higgs Boson and Top Quark Masses
If the Standard Model is valid up to scales near the Planck mass, and if the
cosmological constant and Higgs mass parameters scan on a landscape of vacua,
it is well known that the observed orders of magnitude of these quantities can
be understood from environmental selection for large-scale structure and atoms.
If in addition the Higgs quartic coupling scans, with a probability
distribution peaked at low values, environmental selection for a phase having a
scale of electroweak symmetry breaking much less than the Planck scale leads to
a most probable Higgs mass of 106 GeV. While fluctuations below this are
negligible, the upward fluctuation is 25/p GeV, where p measures the strength
of the peaking of the a priori distribution of the quartic coupling. If the top
Yukawa coupling also scans, the most probable top quark mass is predicted to
lie in the range (174--178) GeV, providing the standard model is valid to at
least 10^{17} GeV. The downward fluctuation is 35 GeV/ \sqrt{p}, suggesting
that p is sufficiently large to give a very precise Higgs mass prediction.
While a high reheat temperature after inflation could raise the most probable
value of the Higgs mass to 118 GeV, maintaining the successful top prediction
suggests that reheating is limited to about 10^8 GeV, and that the most
probable value of the Higgs mass remains at 106 GeV. If all Yukawa couplings
scan, then the e,u,d and t masses are understood to be outliers having extreme
values induced by the pressures of strong environmental selection, while the s,
\mu, c, b, \tau Yukawa couplings span only two orders of magnitude, reflecting
an a priori distribution peaked around 10^{-3}. Extensions of these ideas allow
order of magnitude predictions for neutrino masses, the baryon asymmetry and
important parameters of cosmological inflation.Comment: 41 pages; v4: threshold corrrections for top Yukawa are correcte
Ecological Implications of Dimethyl Mercury in an Aquatic Food Chain
Laboratory studies indicate dimethyl mercury may be a major product of microbial methylation of inorganic mercury. Although another methylation product, monomethyl mercury, has been extensively studied, the physical, chemical, and biologicl factors affecting the transport and food chain distribution of dimethyl mercury have remained unclear. This report presents results of laboratory studies of volatilization rates from water as a function of temperature and mixing conditions, uptake kinetics and equilibrium concentrations in algae
Density Perturbations and the Cosmological Constant from Inflationary Landscapes
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the
vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If
the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the
universe acquire exponentially differing volumes. In a generic landscape with
slow-roll inflation, we find that this gives a steeply varying probability
distribution for the normalization of the primordial density perturbations,
resulting in an exponentially small fraction of observers measuring the COBE
value of 10^-5. Inflationary landscapes should avoid this "\sigma problem", and
we explore features that can allow them to do that. One possibility is that,
prior to slow-roll inflation, the probability distribution for vacua is
extremely sharply peaked, selecting essentially a single anthropically allowed
vacuum. Such a selection could occur in theories of eternal inflation. A second
possibility is that the inflationary landscape has a special property: although
scanning leads to patches with volumes that differ exponentially, the value of
the density perturbation does not vary under this scanning. This second case is
preferred over the first, partly because a flat inflaton potential can result
from anthropic selection, and partly because the anthropic selection of a small
cosmological constant is more successful.Comment: 23 page
A New Perspective on Cosmic Coincidence Problems
Cosmological data suggest that we live in an interesting period in the
history of the universe when \rho_\Lambda \sim \rho_M \sim \rho_R. The
occurence of any epoch with such a "triple coincidence" is puzzling, while the
question of why we happen to live during this special epoch is the "Why now?"
problem. We introduce a framework which makes the triple coincidence
inevitable; furthermore, the ``Why now?'' problem is transformed and greatly
ameliorated. The framework assumes that the only relevant mass scales are the
electroweak scale, M_{EW}, and the Planck scale, M_{Pl}, and requires
\rho_\Lambda^{1/4} \sim M_{EW}^2/M_{Pl} parametrically. Assuming that the true
vacuum energy vanishes, we present a simple model where a false vacuum energy
yields a cosmological constant of this form.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, uses psfig. Refs added, slightly enhance
Origins of Hidden Sector Dark Matter I: Cosmology
We present a systematic cosmological study of a universe in which the visible
sector is coupled, albeit very weakly, to a hidden sector comprised of its own
set of particles and interactions. Assuming that dark matter (DM) resides in
the hidden sector and is charged under a stabilizing symmetry shared by both
sectors, we determine all possible origins of weak-scale DM allowed within this
broad framework. We show that DM can arise only through a handful of
mechanisms, lending particular focus to Freeze-Out and Decay and Freeze-In, as
well as their variations involving late time re-annihilations of DM and DM
particle anti-particle asymmetries. Much like standard Freeze-Out, where the
abundance of DM depends only on the annihilation cross-section of the DM
particle, these mechanisms depend only on a very small subset of physical
parameters, many of which may be measured directly at the LHC. In particular,
we show that each DM production mechanism is associated with a distinctive
window in lifetimes and cross-sections for particles which may be produced in
the near future. We evaluate prospects for employing the LHC to definitively
reconstruct the origin of DM in a companion paper.Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures; v2: references added, published versio
Cosmological Constraints on Theories with Large Extra Dimensions
In theories with large extra dimensions, constraints from cosmology lead to
non-trivial lower bounds on the fundamental scale M_F, corresponding to upper
bounds on the radii of the compact extra dimensions. These constraints are
especially relevant to the case of two extra dimensions, since only if M_F is
10 TeV or less do deviations from the standard gravitational force law become
evident at distances accessible to planned sub-mm gravity experiments. By
examining the graviton decay contribution to the cosmic diffuse gamma
radiation, we derive, for the case of two extra dimensions, a conservative
bound M_F > 110 TeV, corresponding to r_2 < 5.1 times 10^-5 mm, well beyond the
reach of these experiments. We also consider the constraint coming from
graviton overclosure of the universe and derive an independent bound M_F > 6.5
h^(-1/2) TeV, or r_2 < .015 h mm.Comment: 10 pages, references adde
Taming the Runaway Problem of Inflationary Landscapes
A wide variety of vacua, and their cosmological realization, may provide an
explanation for the apparently anthropic choices of some parameters of particle
physics and cosmology. If the probability on various parameters is weighted by
volume, a flat potential for slow-roll inflation is also naturally understood,
since the flatter the potential the larger the volume of the sub-universe.
However, such inflationary landscapes have a serious problem, predicting an
environment that makes it exponentially hard for observers to exist and giving
an exponentially small probability for a moderate universe like ours. A general
solution to this problem is proposed, and is illustrated in the context of
inflaton decay and leptogenesis, leading to an upper bound on the reheating
temperature in our sub-universe. In a particular scenario of chaotic inflation
and non-thermal leptogenesis, predictions can be made for the size of CP
violating phases, the rate of neutrinoless double beta decay and, in the case
of theories with gauge-mediated weak scale supersymmetry, for the fundamental
scale of supersymmetry breaking.Comment: 31 pages, including 3 figure
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