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 $U(1)$ symmetry. In both models, we retrieve the ``standard'' natural inflation potential, $V\left(\theta\right) = \Lambda^4\left[1 + \cos\left(\theta / \mu\right)\right]$, 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 $\chi^2$ 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 $G\mu < 1.5\times 10^{-6}$. 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