Cosmology and Gravitation

Primordial SU(2) gauge fields and axions can contribute to the physics of
inflation. In this class of models, both the gauge field and axion acquire
a VEV, which is P and CP breaking and enriches the phenomenology of
particles with spin. Their multifaceted phenomenology and unique
observational signatures, e.g., chiral primordial gravitational waves and
gravitational leptogenesis, turned this class of models to a hot topic of
research in the past nine years. In this talk, first, I will briefly
review the different realizations of this setup. Next, I will tell you
about the three different types of particles produced by the SU(2) gauge field,
i.e., scalar, fermion, and spin-2 particles and their observable
signatures. In particular, the new spin-2 field produces
chiral gravitational waves, which can be detected with LiteBIRD, CMB-S4,
adv LISA, and BBO. Last but not least, I will tell you about the fermion
generation during inflation, dark and visible, as yet another generous
opportunity offered by the primordial SU(2)!

Thus far, the non-linear regime of structure formation is only accessible through expensive numerical N-body simulations since the conventional ana-
lytic treatment of cosmic density fluctuations via the hydrodynamical equations runs into severe problems even in a mildly non-linear regime. I will give an overview of Kinetic Field Theory, a novel analytic approach to cosmic large-scale structure formation, which provides a density fluctuation power spectrum that agrees well with state of the art N-body simulations up to k = 10h Mpc−1. I will point out how Kinetic Field Theory avoids the difficulties of standard perturbation theory by construction and allows to proceed deeply into the non-linear regime of density fluctuations. I will give a summary of the most important results and recent developments for cosmic structure formation and briefly show applications of Kinetic Field Theory outside of cosmology, stressing the opportunities this method provides for the study of the physics behind structure formation. I will then focus my discussion on how the form of the interaction potential influences the formation of cosmic structures in the highly non-linear regime and the implications it bears on the NFW density profile of dark matter halos.

Scattering amplitudes of massive spin-2 particles generically grow with energy and lead to violations of perturbative unitarity. One way to partially soften such amplitudes is with the infinite towers of particles present in Kaluza-Klein theories. In this talk I will discuss in detail this mechanism of unitarization for general dimensional reductions of pure gravity and show that it leads to some interesting constraints on the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the scalar Laplacian on closed manifolds. A consequence of these constraints is that there exists an upper bound on the gaps between Kaluza-Klein excitations of the graviton, which applies also to Calabi-Yau compactifications of string theory.   

Maps of the mass density field can be used to predict peculiar velocities point-by-point. The comparison of these predictions to peculiar velocity data can be used to determine the cosmological parameter combination f sigma_8. I will briefly discuss the history of this field, present some of our recent results as well as other applications to calibrating the Hubble constant via SNe and gravitational waves, and discuss ongoing work to improving these measurements, through better modelling and, more importantly, acquiring more peculiar velocity data.

 In this work, our prime focus is to study the one to one correspondence between the conduction phenomena in electrical wires with impurity and the scattering events responsible for particle production during stochastic inflation and reheating implemented under a closed quantum mechanical system in early universe cosmology. In this connection, we also present a derivation of quantum corrected version of the Fokker–Planck equation without dissipation and its fourth-order corrected analytical solution for the probability distribution profile responsible for studying the dynamical features of the particle creation events in the stochastic inflation and reheating stage of the universe. It is explicitly shown from our computation that quantum corrected Fokker–Planck equation describes the particle creation phenomena better for Dirac delta type of scatterer. In this connection, we additionally discuss Itô, Stratonovich prescription and the explicit role of finite temperature effective potential for solving the probability distribution profile. Furthermore, we extend our discussion of particle production phenomena to describe the quantum description of randomness involved in the dynamics. We also present computation to derive the expression for the measure of the stochastic nonlinearity (randomness or chaos) arising in the stochastic inflation and reheating epoch of the universe, often described by Lyapunov Exponent. Apart from that, we quantify the quantum chaos arising in a closed system by a more strong measure, commonly known as Spectral Form Factor using the principles of random matrix theory (RMT). Finally, we discuss the role of out of time order correlation function (OTOC) to describe quantum chaos in early universe cosmology. 

Neutrinos are established to be massive and the mass differences have been measured, but the absolute neutrino mass values remain unknown. Cosmic neutrinos with finite mass slightly suppress the matter power spectrum below their free-streaming scale and this effect can be applied to constrain neutrino masses. However, the challenge of this method is to disentangle the complex and poorly understood baryonic effects and to obtain better optical depth measurements from the cosmic microwave background experiments. In this talk, I will discuss the effects of the relative velocity between dark matter and neutrino fluids and how to use them to constrain neutrino masses with nonlinear reconstruction methods. The new method is not affected by most systematics which are parity even and not limited by the knowledge of optical depth to the cosmic microwave background, rendering it a new promising probe of neutrino properties.

The influx of new and high-quality cosmological data from upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large-scale structure surveys will provide unique and exciting opportunities to study the fundamental constituents of the Universe in the upcoming few years. In particular, measurements of second-order effects in the CMB will become observationally significant for the fist time as surveys will achieve the necessary precision. Such second-order effects include weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structure; the integrated Sachs-Wolfe and Rees-Sciama effects, which describe the redshift effect on CMB photons due to evolving gravitational potentials along the line of sight; and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect where CMB photons Compton scatter with free electrons in galaxy clusters and the intergalactic medium. In parallel, surveys of the 21cm hydrogen line will achieve sufficient accuracy for cosmological inference. In this talk I will describe how these new cosmological probes provide opportunities to study old fundamental problems. I will focus on two new probes: the moving lens effect on the CMB (Hotinli 2019, PRL) and the velocity acoustic oscillations (`so-called' VAOs) in the 21cm hydrogen. I will describe how these observables can be utilised to constrain a class of early Universe models.

Ghostly neutrino particles continue to bring surprises to fundamental physics, from their existence to the phenomenon of neutrino oscillation which implies that their masses are nonzero. Their exact masses, among the most curious unknowns beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, can soon be probed by the joint analysis of upcoming cosmological surveys including LSST, Euclid, WFIRST, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4. In this talk, I will first discuss ongoing work studying the effects of massive neutrinos. I will then turn the focus to my major efforts of modeling the challenging nonlinear regime of cosmic structures (<10 Mpc) where neutrino effects are the strongest. Finally, I will draw a roadmap to pin down the neutrino mass over the next decade.

A massive U(1)' gauge boson known as a “dark photon” or A', has long been proposed as a potential explanation for the muon g − 2 anomaly. Recently, experimental results have excluded this possibility for a dark photon decaying visibly and invisibly. I revisit this idea and consider a model where A' couples to inelastic dark matter, leading to a semi-visible decay mode. I show that for large mass splittings between the dark sector states this decay mode is enhanced, weakening the invisibly decaying dark photon bounds. As a consequence, A' resolves the g −2 anomaly in a region of parameter space the thermal dark matter component of the Universe is readily explained.

Large galaxy surveys have dramatically improved our understanding of astrophysics and cosmology in the high-redshift universe, but they are fundamentally limited by the need to integrate long enough to detect each individual source. Line intensity mapping has recently arisen as a powerful alternative to these surveys, offering access to fainter sources and larger volumes than conventional techniques. There has been a surge of experimental interest in this technique, with surveys planned or in progress across the electromagnetic spectrum. In this talk, I will describe the wide variety of science which we will obtain from these experiments in the next few years and illustrate the methods by which we can go from maps of confused line emission to useful astrophysics. I will show how intensity maps can give new insights into topics ranging from star formation to the high-redshift ISM to the Hubble constant tension. I will further discuss the utility of combining intensity maps with conventional surveys, both for systematics control and for studying processes like AGN feedback. I will close with a discussion of how modern machine learning methods can be used to further extend what we can learn from these surveys.

We introduce two new effective quantities for the study of comoving curvature perturbations ζ: the space dependent effective sound speed (SESS) and the momentum dependent effective sound speed (MESS) . We use the SESS and the MESS to derive a new set of equations,  not involving explicitly entropy or anisotropies, which can be applied to any system described by an effective stress-energy-momentum tensor (EST), including any multi-fields systems, supergravity and modified gravity theories.

The MESS is the natural quantity to parametrize in a model independent way the effects produced on curvature perturbations by multi-fields systems, particle production and modified gravity theories and could be conveniently used in the analysis of LSS observations, such as the ones from the upcoming EUCLID mission or CMB radiation measurements. It can be also useful to study in a model independent way the production of primordial black holes.

Beside the degeneracy due to different theoretical scenarios producing the same MESS, we show that in absence of entropy or effective anisotropic stress there is an additional degeneracy related to the freedom in the choice of the initial energy scale of inflation, or to the sign of the Hubble parameter.  This implies the existence of an infinite family of dual slow-roll parameters histories which can produce the same spectrum of comoving curvature perturbations, implying  that in general there is no one-to-one correspondence between the spectrum and higher order correlation functions. Bounce models are  examples of  the members of this infinite class of dual models.

The combined analysis of data from future CMB and gravitational wave experiments could allow to distinguish between dual models  because the primordial tensor perturbations spectra of dual models are in general different.

I’ll discuss the issue of how we can tell which quantum state might be the “right “ one for inflationary quantum fluctuations. I’ll then use a new class of states that entangle curvature fluctuations with those of a spectator scalar field and discuss potential observational signatures of such states.