Search Talks

It has been recently pointed out that variable weak gravitational lensing effects on the motion of background stars can be used to probe nonluminous structures inside the Milky Way halo. I will describe one possible detection strategy targeting collapsed dark matter structures in the mass range from million to billion solar masses. The data analysis technique will be discussed in detail with an application to the second data release of Gaia.

We propose a novel design of a laboratory search for axions based on photon regeneration with superconducting RF cavities. Our particular setup uses a toroid as a region of confined static magnetic field, while production and detection cavities are positioned in regions of vanishing external field. This permits cavity operation at quality factors of Q ~ 10¹⁰ - 10¹². The limitations due to fundamental issues such as signal screening and back-reaction are discussed, and the optimal sensitivity is calculated. This experimental design can potentially probe axion-photon couplings beyond astrophysical limits, comparable and complementary to next generation optical experiments.

The stability of dark matter and its interactions with the Standard Model remain some of the biggest mysteries of our time. Instead of inventing ad hoc stabilization symmetries I propose to economically use the existing baryon and lepton number symmetries of the SM. This can lead to interesting signatures in terrestrial experiments, shower us in anti-helium, and keep neutron stars warm.

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.

Why is the future different from the past? The most poignant property about the world around us is that time is always moving forward, yet, as odd as it may seem, our current theories of physics cannot account for this property. In all of fundamental physics, the future and the past are entirely similar. We select time increasing solutions by hand and call on extremely unlikely initial conditions at the big bang to justify this choice. I will address this question and describe attempts to restore the irreversibility of time as the building block of our understanding of nature.

This talk was delivered at ISSYP 2019, Perimeter's high school summer program.