3,633 research outputs found
Pair Creation of Dilaton Black Holes in Extended Inflation
Dilatonic Charged Nariai instantons mediate the nucleation of black hole
pairs during extended chaotic inflation. Depending on the dilaton and inflaton
fields, the black holes are described by one of two approximations in the
Lorentzian regime. For each case we find Euclidean solutions that satisfy the
no boundary proposal. The complex initial values of the dilaton and inflaton
are determined, and the pair creation rate is calculated from the Euclidean
action. Similar to standard inflation, black holes are abundantly produced near
the Planck boundary, but highly suppressed later on. An unusual feature we find
is that the earlier in inflation that the dilatonic black holes are created,
the more highly charged they can be.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, 6 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.
Inflation in softly broken Seiberg-Witten models
In a recent paper we proposed a new model of inflation based on the soft-breaking of N=2 supersymmetric SU(2) Yang-Mills theory. The advantage of such a model is the fact that we can write an exact expression for the effective scalar potential, including perturbative and non-perturbative effects. We find that the scalar condensate that plays the role of the inflaton can drive a long period of cosmological expansion in the weak coupling Higgs region, and end inflation in the strong coupling monopole region, where reheating takes place. The model predicts the right amount of temperature anisotropies in the microwave background, a precise spectral tilt, , and negligible gravitational wave perturbations
General Relativity as an Attractor in Scalar-Tensor Stochastic Inflation
Quantum fluctuations of scalar fields during inflation could determine the
very large-scale structure of the universe. In the case of general
scalar-tensor gravity theories these fluctuations lead to the diffusion of
fundamental constants like the Planck mass and the effective Brans--Dicke
parameter, . In the particular case of Brans--Dicke gravity, where
is constant, this leads to runaway solutions with infinitely large
values of the Planck mass. However, in a theory with variable we find
stationary probability distributions with a finite value of the Planck mass
peaked at exponentially large values of after inflation. We conclude
that general relativity is an attractor during the quantum diffusion of the
fields.Comment: LaTeX (with RevTex) 11 pages, 2 uuencoded figures appended, also
available on WWW via http://star.maps.susx.ac.uk/index.htm
Effective CP violation in the Standard Model
We study the strength of effective CP violation originating from the CKM
matrix in the effective action obtained by integrating out the fermions in the
Standard Model. Using results obtained by Salcedo for the effective action in a
general chiral gauge model, we find that there are no CKM CP-violating terms to
fourth order in a gauge-covariant derivative expansion that is non-perturbative
in the Higgs field. The details of the calculation suggest that, at zero
temperature, the strength of CP violation is approximately independent of the
overall scale of the Yukawa couplings. Thus, order of magnitude estimates based
on Jarlskog's invariant could be too small by a factor of about 10^{17}.Comment: 19 pages, no figure
20+ years of Inflation
In this talk I will review the present status of inflationary cosmology and
its emergence as the basic paradigm behind the Standard Cosmological Model,
with parameters determined today at better than 10% level from CMB and LSS
observations. I will also discuss the recent theoretical developments on the
process of reheating after inflation and model building based on string theory
and D-branes.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX, uses espcrc2.sty (included
Measuring the transition to homogeneity with photometric redshift surveys
We study the possibility of detecting the transition to homogeneity using
photometric redshift catalogs. Our method is based on measuring the fractality
of the projected galaxy distribution, using angular distances, and relies only
on observable quantites. It thus provides a way to test the Cosmological
Principle in a model-independent unbiased way. We have tested our method on
different synthetic inhomogeneous catalogs, and shown that it is capable of
discriminating some fractal models with relatively large fractal dimensions, in
spite of the loss of information due to the radial projection. We have also
studied the influence of the redshift bin width, photometric redshift errors,
bias, non-linear clustering, and surveyed area, on the angular homogeneity
index H2 ({\theta}) in a {\Lambda}CDM cosmology. The level to which an upcoming
galaxy survey will be able to constrain the transition to homogeneity will
depend mainly on the total surveyed area and the compactness of the surveyed
region. In particular, a Dark Energy Survey (DES)-like survey should be able to
easily discriminate certain fractal models with fractal dimensions as large as
D2 = 2.95. We believe that this method will have relevant applications for
upcoming large photometric redshift surveys, such as DES or the Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope (LSST).Comment: 14 pages, 14 figure
SOAR/Goodman spectroscopic assessment of candidate counterparts of the LIGO/Virgo Event GW190814
On 2019 August 14 at 21:10:39 UTC, the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) detected a possible neutron starblack hole merger (NSBH), the first ever identified. An extensive search for an optical counterpart of this event, designated GW190814, was undertaken using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4m Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Target of Opportunity interrupts were issued on eight separate nights to observe 11 candidates using the 4.1 m Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope’s Goodman High Throughput Spectrograph in order to assess whether any of these transients was likely to be an optical counterpart of the possible NSBH merger. Here, we describe the process of observing with SOAR, the analysis of our spectra, our spectroscopic typing methodology, and our resultant conclusion that none of the candidates corresponded to the gravitational wave merger event but were all instead other transients. Finally, we describe the lessons learned from this effort. Application of these lessons will be critical for a successful community spectroscopic follow-up program for LVC observing run 4 (O4) and beyon
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