29 research outputs found
Resolving Cosmic Neutrino Structure: A Hybrid Neutrino N-body Scheme
We present the first simulation capable of resolving the structure of
neutrino clustering on Mpc scales. The method combines grid- and particle-based
methods and achieves very good accuracy on both small and large scales, while
keeping CPU consumption under control. Such simulations are not only ideal for
calculating the non-linear matter power spectrum but also particularly relevant
for studies of how neutrinos cluster in galaxy- or cluster-sized halos. We
perform the largest neutrino N-body simulation to date, effectively containing
10 different neutrino hot dark matter components with different thermal
properties.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Full Boltzmann equations for leptogenesis including scattering
We study the evolution of a cosmological baryon asymmetry produced via
leptogenesis by means of the full classical Boltzmann equations, without the
assumption of kinetic equilibrium and including all quantum statistical
factors. Beginning with the full mode equations we derive the usual equations
of motion for the right-handed neutrino number density and integrated lepton
asymmetry, and show explicitly the impact of each assumption on these
quantities. For the first time, we investigate also the effects of scattering
of the right-handed neutrino with the top quark to leading order in the Yukawa
couplings by means of the full Boltzmann equations. We find that in our full
Boltzmann treatment the final lepton asymmetry can be suppressed by as much as
a factor of 1.5 in the weak wash-out regime (K<1), compared to the usual
integrated approach which assumes kinetic equilibrium and neglects quantum
statistics. This suppression is in contrast with the enhancement seen in some
previous studies that considered only decay and inverse decay of the
right-handed neutrino. However, this suppression quickly decreases as we
increase K. In the strong wash-out regime (K>1), the full Boltzmann treatment
and the integrated approach give nearly identical final lepton asymmetries
(within 10 % of each other at K>3). Finally, we show that the opposing effects
of quantum statistics on decays/inverse decays and the scattering processes
tend to reduce the net importance of scattering on leptogenesis in the full
treatment compared to the integrated approach.Comment: 39 pages, 8 figures, typos corrected, replaced to match published
versio
Comment on ``Neutrino oscillations in the early universe: how can large lepton asymmetry be generated?"
We comment on the recent paper by A. D. Dolgov, S. H. Hansen, S. Pastor and
D. V. Semikoz (DHPS) [Astropart. Phys. {\bf 14}, 79 (2000)] on the generation
of neutrino asymmetries from active-sterile neutrino oscillations. We
demonstrate that the approximate asymmetry evolution equation obtained therein
is an expansion, up to a minor discrepancy, of the well-established static
approximation equation, valid only when the supposedly new higher order
correction term is small. In the regime where this so-called ``back-reaction''
term is large and artificially terminates the asymmetry growth, their evolution
equation ceases to be a faithful approximation to the Quantum Kinetic Equations
(QKEs) simply because pure Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) transitions have
been neglected. At low temperatures the MSW effect is the dominant asymmetry
amplifier. Neither the static nor the DHPS approach contains this important
physics. Therefore we conclude that the DHPS results have sufficient veracity
at the onset of explosive asymmetry generation, but are invalid in the ensuing
low temperature epoch where MSW conversions are able to enhance the asymmetry
to values of order . DHPS do claim to find a significant final
asymmetry for very large values. However, for this regime the
effective potential they employed is not valid.Comment: RevTeX, 32 pages, including 4 embedded figures; this version to
appear in Astropart.Phy
Isocurvature forecast in the anthropic axion window
We explore the cosmological sensitivity to the amplitude of isocurvature
fluctuations that would be caused by axions in the "anthropic window" where the
axion decay constant f_a >> 10^12 GeV and the initial misalignment angle
Theta_i << 1. In a minimal Lambda-CDM cosmology extended with subdominant
scale-invariant isocurvature fluctuations, existing data constrain the
isocurvature fraction to alpha < 0.09 at 95% C.L. If no signal shows up, Planck
can improve this constraint to 0.042 while an ultimate CMB probe limited only
by cosmic variance in both temperature and E-polarisation can reach 0.017,
about a factor of five better than the current limit. In the parameter space of
f_a and H_I (Hubble parameter during inflation) we identify a small region
where axion detection remains within the reach of realistic cosmological
probes.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures; v2: matches published versio
Remarks on the Cosmic Density of Degenerate Neutrinos
We re-investigate the evolution of the strongly degenerate neutrinos in the
early universe. With the larger degeneracy, the neutrino number freezes at
higher temperatures because the neutrino annihilation rate decreases. We
consider very large degeneracy so large that the neutrino number freezes before
events in which the particle degrees of freedom in the universe decrease (e.g.
the muon annihilation and the quark-hadron phase transition). In such a case,
the degeneracy by the time of nucleosynthesis becomes smaller than the initial
degeneracy. We calculate how much it decreases from the initial value on the
basis of the conservation of the neutrino number and the total entropy. We
found a large drop in the degeneracy but it is not large enough to affect the
current constraints on the neutrino degeneracy from BBN and CMBR.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Do many-particle neutrino interactions cause a novel coherent effect?
We investigate whether coherent flavor conversion of neutrinos in a neutrino
background is substantially modified by many-body effects, with respect to the
conventional one-particle effective description. We study the evolution of a
system of interacting neutrino plane waves in a box. Using its equivalence to a
system of spins, we determine the character of its behavior completely
analytically. We find that, if the neutrinos are initially in flavor
eigenstates, no coherent flavor conversion is realized, in agreement with the
effective one-particle description. This result does not depend on the size of
the neutrino wavepackets and therefore has a general character. The validity of
the several important applications of the one-particle formalism is thus
confirmed.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figur
The effect of neutrinos on the matter distribution as probed by the Intergalactic Medium
We present a suite of full hydrodynamical cosmological simulations that
quantitatively address the impact of neutrinos on the (mildly non-linear)
spatial distribution of matter and in particular on the neutral hydrogen
distribution in the Intergalactic Medium (IGM), which is responsible for the
intervening Lyman-alpha absorption in quasar spectra. The free-streaming of
neutrinos results in a (non-linear) scale-dependent suppression of power
spectrum of the total matter distribution at scales probed by Lyman-alpha
forest data which is larger than the linear theory prediction by about 25% and
strongly redshift dependent. By extracting a set of realistic mock quasar
spectra, we quantify the effect of neutrinos on the flux probability
distribution function and flux power spectrum. The differences in the matter
power spectra translate into a ~2.5% (5%) difference in the flux power spectrum
for neutrino masses with Sigma m_{\nu} = 0.3 eV (0.6 eV). This rather small
effect is difficult to detect from present Lyman-alpha forest data and nearly
perfectly degenerate with the overall amplitude of the matter power spectrum as
characterised by sigma_8. If the results of the numerical simulations are
normalized to have the same sigma_8 in the initial conditions, then neutrinos
produce a smaller suppression in the flux power of about 3% (5%) for Sigma
m_{\nu} = 0.6 eV (2
sigma C.L.), comparable to constraints obtained from the cosmic microwave
background data or other large scale structure probes.Comment: 38 pages, 21 figures. One section and references added. JCAP in pres
Neutrino flavor conversion in a neutrino background: single- versus multi-particle description
In the early Universe, or near a supernova core, neutrino flavor evolution
may be affected by coherent neutrino-neutrino scattering. We develop a
microscopic picture of this phenomenon. We show that coherent scattering does
not lead to the formation of entangled states in the neutrino ensemble and
therefore the evolution of the system can always be described by a set of
one-particle equations. We also show that the previously accepted formalism
overcounts the neutrino interaction energy; the correct one-particle evolution
equations for both active-active and active-sterile oscillations contain
additional terms. These additional terms modify the index of refraction of the
neutrino medium, but have no effect on oscillation physics.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, minor typos correcte
Cosmological Implications of Neutrinos
The lectures describe several cosmological effects produced by neutrinos.
Upper and lower cosmological limits on neutrino mass are derived. The role that
neutrinos may play in formation of large scale structure of the universe is
described and neutrino mass limits are presented. Effects of neutrinos on
cosmological background radiation and on big bang nucleosynthesis are
discussed. Limits on the number of neutrino flavors and mass/mixing are given.Comment: 41 page, 7 figures; lectures presented at ITEP Winter School,
February, 2002; to be published in the Proceeding
Spontaneous baryogenesis in flat directions
We discuss a spontaneous baryogenesis mechanism in flat directions. After
identifying the Nambu-Goldstone mode which derivatively couples to the
associated (1) current and rotates due to the A-term, we show that
spontaneous baryogenesis can be naturally realized in the context of the flat
direction. As applications, we discuss two scenarios of baryogenesis in detail.
One is baryogenesis in a flat direction with a vanishing charge,
especially, with neither baryon nor lepton charge, which was recently proposed
by Chiba and the present authors. The other is a baryogenesis scenario
compatible with a large lepton asymmetry.Comment: 10 pages, no figure, the version accepted to Phys. Rev. D; a few
explanatory comments are adde