"Exotic" quantum effects in the laboratory?

This Article provides a brief (non-exhaustive) review of some recent developments regarding the theoretical and possibly experimental study of "exotic" quantum effects in the laboratory with special emphasis on cosmological particle creation, Hawking radiation, and the Unruh effect.Comment: 5 page

Large-scale Perturbations from the Waterfall Field in Hybrid Inflation

We estimate large-scale curvature perturbations from isocurvature fluctuations in the waterfall field during hybrid inflation, in addition to the usual inflaton field perturbations. The tachyonic instability at the end of inflation leads to an explosive growth of super-Hubble scale perturbations, but they retain the steep blue spectrum characteristic of vacuum fluctuations in a massive field during inflation. The power spectrum thus peaks around the Hubble-horizon scale at the end of inflation. We extend the usual delta-N formalism to include the essential role of these small fluctuations when estimating the large-scale curvature perturbation. The resulting curvature perturbation due to fluctuations in the waterfall field is second-order and the spectrum is expected to be of order 10^{-54} on cosmological scales.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; v2 comments added on application of delta-N formalism including Hubble scale fluctuation

Gravitational Radiation from Preheating with Many Fields

Parametric resonances provide a mechanism by which particles can be created just after inflation. Thus far, attention has focused on a single or many inflaton fields coupled to a single scalar field. However, generically we expect the inflaton to couple to many other relativistic degrees of freedom present in the early universe. Using simulations in an expanding Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker spacetime, in this paper we show how preheating is affected by the addition of multiple fields coupled to the inflaton. We focus our attention on gravitational wave production--an important potential observational signature of the preheating stage. We find that preheating and its gravitational wave signature is robust to the coupling of the inflaton to more matter fields.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, v2 submission version, thank you for comments

Quantum-to-classical Transition of Cosmological Perturbations for Non-vacuum Initial States

Transition from quantum to semiclassical behaviour and loss of quantum coherence for inhomogeneous perturbations generated from a non-vacuum initial state in the early Universe is considered in the Heisenberg and the Schr\"odinger representations, as well as using the Wigner function. We show explicitly that these three approaches lead to the same prediction in the limit of large squeezing (i.e. when the squeezing parameter $|r_k|\to \infty$): each two-modes quantum state (k, -k) of these perturbations is equivalent to a classical perturbation that has a stochastic amplitude, obeying a non-gaussian statistics which depends on the initial state, and that belongs to the quasi-isotropic mode (i.e. it possesses a fixed phase). The Wigner function is not everywhere positive for any finite $r_k$, hence its interpretation as a classical distribution function in phase space is impossible without some coarse graining procedure. However, this does not affect the transition to semiclassical behaviour since the Wigner function becomes concentrated near a classical trajectory in phase space when $|r_k|\to \infty$ even without coarse graining. Deviations of the statistics of the perturbations in real space from a Gaussian one lie below the cosmic variance level for the N-particles initial states with N=N(|k|) but may be observable for other initial states without statistical isotropy or with correlations between different k modes. As a way to look for this effect, it is proposed to measure the kurtosis of the angular fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background temperature.Comment: LaTeX (28 pages),+2 eps figure

Optimal dataset combining in f_nl constraints from large scale structure in an idealised case

We consider the problem of optimal weighting of tracers of structure for the purpose of constraining the non-Gaussianity parameter f_NL. We work within the Fisher matrix formalism expanded around fiducial model with f_NL=0 and make several simplifying assumptions. By slicing a general sample into infinitely many samples with different biases, we derive the analytic expression for the relevant Fisher matrix element. We next consider weighting schemes that construct two effective samples from a single sample of tracers with a continuously varying bias. We show that a particularly simple ansatz for weighting functions can recover all information about f_NL in the initial sample that is recoverable using a given bias observable and that simple division into two equal samples is considerably suboptimal when sampling of modes is good, but only marginally suboptimal in the limit where Poisson errors dominate.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; v2: comment on weighting for PS determination, fixed a couple of typos; v3: revised, matches version accepted by JCA

Graviton emission from a higher-dimensional black hole

We discuss the graviton absorption probability (greybody factor) and the cross-section of a higher-dimensional Schwarzschild black hole (BH). We are motivated by the suggestion that a great many BHs may be produced at the LHC and bearing this fact in mind, for simplicity, we shall investigate the intermediate energy regime for a static Schwarzschild BH. That is, for $(2M)^{1/(n-1)}\omega\sim 1$, where $M$ is the mass of the black hole and $\omega$ is the energy of the emitted gravitons in $(2+n)$-dimensions. To find easily tractable solutions we work in the limit $l \gg 1$, where $l$ is the angular momentum quantum number of the graviton.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, references added, typos corrected. Graviton degeneracy factor included; main results remain unchange

Non-canonical generalizations of slow-roll inflation models

We consider non-canonical generalizations of two classes of simple single-field inflation models. First, we study the non-canonical version of "ultra-slow roll" inflation, which is a class of inflation models for which quantum modes do not freeze at horizon crossing, but instead evolve rapidly on superhorizon scales. Second, we consider the non-canonical generalization of the simplest "chaotic" inflation scenario, with a potential dominated by a quartic (mass) term for the inflaton. We find a class of related non-canonical solutions with polynomial potentials, but with varying speed of sound. These solutions are characterized by a constant field velocity, and we dub such models {\it isokinetic} inflation. As in the canonical limit, isokinetic inflation has a slightly red-tilted power spectrum, consistent with current data. Unlike the canonical case, however, these models can have an arbitrarily small tensor/scalar ratio. Of particular interest is that isokinetic inflation is marked by a correlation between the tensor/scalar ratio and the amplitude of non-Gaussianity such that parameter regimes with small tensor/scalar ratio have {\it large} associated non-Gaussianity, which is a distinct observational signature.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX; V2: version submitted to JCAP. References adde

Inflation and non-minimal scalar-curvature coupling in gravity and supergravity

Inflationary slow-roll dynamics in Einstein gravity with a non-minimal scalar-curvature coupling can be equivalent to that in the certain f(R) gravity theory. We review the correspondence and extend it to N=1 supergravity. The non-minimal coupling in supergravity is rewritten in terms of the standard (`minimal') N=1 matter-coupled supergravity by using curved superspace. The established equivalence between two different inflationary theories means the same inflaton scalar potential, and does not imply the same post-inflationary dynamics and reheating.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, LaTeX. minor changes, references added, the version published in JCAP. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1201.2239, arXiv:1011.024

A note on the moduli-induced gravitino problem

The cosmological moduli problem has been recently reconsidered. Papers [1,2] show that even heavy moduli (m_\phi > 10^5 GeV) can be a problem for cosmology if a branching ratio of the modulus into gravitini is large. In this paper, we discuss the tachyonic decay of moduli into the Standard Model's degrees of freedom, e.g. Higgs particles, as a resolution to the moduli-induced gravitino problem. Rough estimates on model dependent parameters set a lower bound on the allowed moduli at around 10^8 ~ 10^9 GeV.Comment: 6 pages, references added, identical to the published versio

Cosmological density perturbations from conformal scalar field: infrared properties and statistical anisotropy

We consider a scenario in which primordial scalar perturbations are generated when complex conformal scalar field rolls down its negative quartic potential. Initially, these are the perturbations of the phase of this field; they are converted into the adiabatic perturbations at a later stage. A potentially dangerous feature of this scenario is the existence of perturbations in the radial field direction, which have red power spectrum. We show, however, that to the linear order in the small parameter - the quartic self-coupling - the infrared effects are completely harmless, as they can be absorbed into field redefinition. We then evaluate the statistical anisotropy inherent in the model due to the existence of the long-ranged radial perturbations. To the linear order in the quartic self-coupling the statistical anisotropy is free of the infrared effects. The latter show up at the quadratic order in the self-coupling and result in the mild (logarithmic) enhancement of the corresponding contribution to the statistical anisotropy. The resulting statistical anisotropy is a combination of a larger term which, however, decays as momentum increases, and a smaller term which is independent of momentum.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures. Journal version, typos corrected, subsection adde