Cosmology and Gravitation

The spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is known to be extremely close to a perfect blackbody. However, even within standard cosmology several processes occurring in the early Universe lead to distortions of the CMB at a level that might become observable in the future. This could open an exciting new window to early Universe physics. In my talk I will then explain in more detail why the cooling of matter in the early Universe causes a negative mu- and y-type distortion and how the damping of primordial small-scale perturbations before recombination could allow placing interesting constraints on different inflationary models.

I will introduce the theory and experimental technique of extra-solar planet observation by the gravitational microlensing and give a report on recent results. Then I will discuss the wave optics features in the gravitational microlensing, the analogy of this effect in the astronomical scales to the Young's double slit experiment. Finally I will discuss about the possibility of observation of diffraction patterns in the microlensing experiment.

Tidal stripping of dark matter from subhalos falling into the Milky Way produces narrow, cold tidal streams as well as more spatially extended ``debris flows'' in the form of shells, sheets, and plumes.Here we focus on the debris flow in the Via Lactea II simulation, and show that this incompletely phase-mixed material exhibits distinctive high velocity behavior. Unlike tidal streams, which may not necessarily intersect the Earth's location, debris flow is spatially uniform at 8 kpc and thus guaranteed to be present in the dark matter flux incident on direct detection experiments. At Earth-frame speeds greater than 450 km/s, debris flow comprises more than half of the dark matter at the Sun's location, and up to 80% at even higher speeds. Therefore, debris flow is most important for experiments that are particularly sensitive to the high speed tail of the dark matter distribution, such as searches for light or inelastic dark matter or experiments with directional sensitivity. We show that debris flow yields a distinctive recoil energy spectrum and a broadening of the distribution of incidence direction.

We discuss the shortcomings of Einstein gravity at both the classical and quantum levels. We discuss the motivation for replacing Einstein gravity by conformal gravity. We show how the conformal gravity theory is able to naturally solve the quantum gravity problem, the vacuum zero-point energy problem, the vacuum zero-point pressure problem, the cosmological constant problem, and the dark matter problem. Central to its viability as aquantum theory is that the conformal theory is both renormalizable and unitary, with unitarity being obtained because the theory is a PTsymmetric rather than a Hermitian theory. We show that in the conformal theory there can be no a priori classical curvature, with all curvature having to result from quantization. In the conformal theory gravity requires no independent quantization of its own, with it being quantized solely by virtue of its being coupled to a quantized matter source. In the absence of quantum mechanics then there would thus be no gravity, with it being the desire to start with a classical gravity theory and then quantize it
that has prevented the construction of a sensible quantum gravity theory. We show that the macroscopic classical theory that results from the quantum conformal theory incorporates global physics effects coming from the material outside of galaxies (viz. the rest of theuniverse), global physics effects that are found to provide for a detailed accounting of a comprehensive set of 138
galactic rotation curves with no adjustable parameters other than galactic mass to light ratios, and with the need for no dark matter whatsoever. With these global effects eliminating the need for dark matter, we see that invoking dark matter in galaxies could potentially be nothing more than an attempt to describe global physics effects in purely local galactic terms.

How did inflation actually happen? Precision measurements of statistical properties of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation offer a direct probe of the physics of inflation. When we calculate statistical properties of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation, we usually assume that the initial state of quantum fluctuations is in a preferred vacuum state called Bunch-Davies vacuum. While there is some motivation for choosing such a state, this is an assumption, and thus needs to be tested by observations. In this talk I will present new probes of initial state of quantum fluctuations during inflation: the 3-point function of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, the 2-point function of galaxies, and a spectral distortion of the thermal spectrum of the cosmic microwave background.   

In this talk I provide a model where the late time acceleration of the universe emerges from a BCS-like condensation of sterile neutrinos. This scenario can be naturally accommodated by general relativity covariantly coupled to sterile neutrinos, where the neutrinos act like an "aether" field.  We show that when active neutrinos couple to the neutrino condensate, they oscillate at a rate proportional to the dark energy density.  As a result, the oscillation of neutrinos and dark energy are tied in with the same mechanism.  I also show that neutrinos could oscillate even if dark energy is not a neutrino condensate.  I end with a discussion of stability of this model and predictions of CPT violating oscillations of such models.

With the emergence of the dark sector in cosmology,  a variety of modified theories of gravity have come to the fore. I will discuss a framework which can be used to test gravity on large scales and the observational programmes that might lead to the tightest constraints.

I will discuss string cosmology and the dynamics of multiple scalar fields in potentials that can become negative, and their features as (Early) Dark Energy models. The point of departure is the ``String Axiverse'', a scenario that motivates the existence of cosmologically light axion fields as a generic consequence of string theory. These fields can constitute part of the Dark Matter, suppressing structure formation in a manner similar to massive neutrinos. Future observations will constrain their existence to percent level accuracy. I couple such an axion to its corresponding modulus and give a detailed presentation of the rich cosmology of such a model, ranging from the setting of initial conditions on the fields during inflation, to the asymptotic future. A dynamical systems analysis reveals the existence of many fixed point attractors, repellers and saddle points, which I analyse in detail, and provide a geometric interpretation of. These fixed points can be used to bound the couplings in the model. A systematic scan of certain regions of parameter space reveals that the future evolution of the universe in this model can be rich, containing multiple epochs of accelerated expansion.

(Given time) I will also discuss the relevance of isocurvature perturbations in these models, and the motivation to study negative (terminal) vauca in the context of eternal inflation and the string landscape, as recently discussed by Susskind.

(based primarily on Marsh, Tarrant, Copeland and Ferreira (to appear) but also arXiv:1102.4851  arXiv:1110.0502)