Large-scale magnetic fields, curvature fluctuations and the thermal history of the Universe

It is shown that gravitating magnetic fields affect the evolution of curvature perturbations in a way that is reminiscent of a pristine non-adiabatic pressure fluctuation. The gauge-invariant evolution of curvature perturbations is used to constrain the magnetic power spectrum. Depending on the essential features of the thermodynamic history of the Universe, the explicit derivation of the bound is modified. The theoretical uncertainty in the constraints on the magnetic energy spectrum is assessed by comparing the results obtained in the case of the conventional thermal history with the estimates stemming from less conventional (but phenomenologically allowed) post-inflationary evolutions.Comment: 21 pages, 6 included figure

Nonequilibrium corrections to energy spectra of massive particles in expanding universe

Deviations from kinetic equilibrium of massive particles caused by the universe expansion are calculated analytically in the Boltzmann approximation. For the case of an energy independent amplitude of elastic scattering, an exact partial differential equation is derived instead of the usual integro-differential one. A simple perturbative solution of the former is found. For the case of an energy-dependent amplitude the problem cannot be reduced to the differential equation but the solution of the original integro-differential equation can be found in terms of the Taylor expansion, which in the case of aconstant amplitude shows a perfect agreement with the perturbative solution of the differential equation. Corrections to the spectrum of (possibly) massive tau-neutrinos are calculated. The method may be of more general interest and can be applied to the calculation of spectrum distortion in other (not necessarily cosmological) nonequilibrium processes.Comment: 14 pages, latex twice; ps-files for figures are available upon reques

Lepton Flavor Violation without Supersymmetry

We study the lepton flavor violating (LFV) processes mu -> e gamma, mu -> 3e, and mu -> e conversion in nuclei in the left-right symmetric model without supersymmetry and perform the first complete computation of the LFV branching ratios B(mu -> f) to leading non-trivial order in the ratio of left- and right-handed symmetry breaking scales. To this order, B(mu -> e gamma) and B(mu -> e) are governed by the same combination of LFV violating couplings, and their ratio is naturally of order unity. We also find B(mu -> 3 e)/B(mu -> e) \sim 100 under slightly stronger assumptions. Existing limits on the branching ratios already substantially constrain mass splittings and/or mixings in the heavy neutrino sector. When combined with future collider studies and precision electroweak measurements, improved limits on LFV processes will test the viability of low-scale, non-supersymmetric LFV scenarios.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

WIMP Annihilation and Cooling of Neutron Stars

We study the effect of WIMP annihilation on the temperature of a neutron star. We shall argue that the released energy due to WIMP annihilation inside the neutron stars, might affect the temperature of stars older than 10 million years, flattening out the temperature at $\sim 10^4$ K for a typical neutron star.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure

Evolution of low-frequency features in the CMB spectrum due to stimulated Compton scattering and Doppler-broadening

We discuss a new solution of the Kompaneets-equation for physical situations in which low frequency photons, forming relatively narrow spectral details, are Compton scattered in an isotropic, infinite medium with an intense ambient blackbody field that is very close to full thermodynamic equilibrium with the free electrons. In this situation the background-induced stimulated Compton scattering slows down the motion of photons toward higher frequencies by a factor of 3 in comparison with the solution that only takes into account Doppler-broadening and boosting. This new solution is important for detailed computations of cosmic microwave background spectral distortions arising due to uncompensated atomic transitions of hydrogen and helium in the early Universe. In addition we derive another analytic solution that only includes the background-induced stimulated Compton scattering and is valid for power-law ambient radiation fields. This solution might have interesting applications for radio lines arising inside of bright extra-galactic radio source, where according to our estimates line shifts because of background-induced stimulated scattering could be amplified and even exceed the line broadening due to the Doppler-effect.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to A&

Neutrinos in IceCube/KM3NeT as probes of Dark Matter Substructures in Galaxy Clusters

Galaxy clusters are one of the most promising candidate sites for dark matter annihilation. We focus on dark matter with mass in the range 10 GeV - 100 TeV annihilating to muon pairs, neutrino pairs, top pairs, or two neutrino pairs, and forecast the expected sensitivity to the annihilation cross section into these channels by observing galaxy clusters at IceCube/KM3NeT. Optimistically, the presence of dark matter substructures in galaxy clusters is predicted to enhance the signal by 2-3 orders of magnitude over the contribution from the smooth component of the dark matter distribution. Optimizing for the angular size of the region of interest for galaxy clusters, the sensitivity to the annihilation cross section of heavy DM with mass in the range 300 GeV - 100 TeV will be of the order of 10^{-24} cm^3 s^{-1}, for full IceCube/KM3NeT live time of 10 years, which is about one order of magnitude better than the best limit that can be obtained by observing the Milky Way halo. We find that neutrinos from cosmic ray interactions in the galaxy cluster, in addition to the atmospheric neutrinos, are a source of background. We show that significant improvement in the experimental sensitivity can be achieved for lower DM masses in the range 10 GeV - 300 GeV if neutrino-induced cascades can be reconstructed to approximately 5 degrees accuracy, as may be possible in KM3NeT. We therefore propose that a low-energy extension "KM3NeT-Core", similar to DeepCore in IceCube, be considered for an extended reach at low DM masses.Comment: v2: 17 pages, 5 figures. Neutrino spectra corrected, dependence on dark matter substructure model included, references added. Results unchanged. Accepted in PR

Dynamical suppression of non-adiabatic modes

Recent analyses of the WMAP 5-year data constrain possible non-adiabatic contributions to the initial conditions of CMB anisotropies. Depending upon the early dynamics of the plasma, the amplitude of the entropic modes can experience a different suppression by the time of photon decoupling. Explicit examples of the latter observation are presented both analytically and numerically when the post-inflationary dynamics is dominated by a stiff contribution.Comment: 9 pages, four figure

Contact Term, its Holographic Description in QCD and Dark Energy

In this work we study the well known contact term, which is the key element in resolving the so-called $U(1)_A$ problem in QCD. We study this term using the dual Holographic Description. We argue that in the dual picture the contact term is saturated by the D2 branes which can be interpreted as the tunnelling events in Minkowski space-time. We quote a number of direct lattice results supporting this identification. We also argue that the contact term receives a Casimir -like correction \sim (\Lqcd R)^{-1} rather than naively expected \exp(-\Lqcd R) when the Minkowski space-time ${\cal R}_{3,1}$ is replaced by a large but finite manifold with a size $R$. Such a behaviour is consistent with other QFT-based computations when power like corrections are due to nontrivial properties of topological sectors of the theory. In holographic description such a behaviour is due to massless Ramond-Ramond (RR) field living in the bulk of multidimensional space when power like corrections is a natural outcome of massless RR field. In many respects the phenomenon is similar to the Aharonov -Casher effect when the "modular electric field" can penetrate into a superconductor where the electric field is exponentially screened. The role of "modular operator" from Aharonov -Casher effect is played by large gauge transformation operator $\cal{T}$ in 4d QCD, resulting the transparency of the system to topologically nontrivial pure gauge configurations. We discuss some profound consequences of our findings. In particular, we speculate that a slow variation of the contact term in expanding universe might be the main source of the observed Dark Energy.Comment: Final version to appear in Phys. Rev. D. Comments added on interpretation of the "topological Casimir effect" from 5d viewpoint where it can be thought as conventional Casimir effec

Cosmic superstring trajectories in warped compactifications

We explore the generic motion of cosmic (super)strings when the internal compact dimensions are warped, using the Klebanov-Strassler solution as a prototypical throat geometry. We find that there is no dynamical mechanism which localises the string at the tip of the throat, but rather that the motion seems to explore both internal and external degrees of freedom democratically. This indicates that cosmic (super)strings formed by inflationary brane-antibrane annihilation will have sufficient internal motion for the gravitational wave signals from the string network to be suppressed relative to the signal from a `standard' cosmic string network.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figure

Spontaneous CP Symmetry Breaking at the Electroweak Scale

We present a top-condensation model in which the CP symmetry is spontaneously broken at the electroweak scale due to the condensation of two composite Higgs doublets. In particular the CP-violating phase of the CKM matrix is generated. A simpler model where only one quark family is included is also discussed. In this case, for a general four-fermion interaction ($G_{tb}\neq 0$), the particle spectrum is the one of the one Higgs doublet model.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX. References and comment adde