Engineering topics

Domcke, V.

Publications and source records attributed to Domcke, V..

4 records

DOE OSTI2014

The chaotic regime of D-term inflation

We consider D-term inflation for small couplings of the inflaton to matter fields. Standard hybrid inflation then ends at a critical value of the inflaton field that exceeds the Planck mass. During the subsequent waterfall transition the inflaton continues its slow-roll motion, whereas the waterfall field rapidly grows by quantum fluctuations. Beyond the decoherence time, the waterfall field becomes classical and approaches a time-dependent minimum, which is determined by the value of the inflaton field and the self-interaction of the waterfall field. During the final stage of inflation, the effective inflaton potential is essentially quadratic, which leads to the standard predictions of chaotic inflation. The model illustrates how the decay of a false vacuum of GUT-scale energy density can end in a period of 'chaotic inflation'.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2014

Hybrid inflation in the complex plane

Supersymmetric hybrid inflation is an exquisite framework to connect inflationary cosmology to particle physics at the scale of grand unification. Ending in a phase transition associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking, it can naturally explain the generation of entropy, matter and dark matter. Coupling F-term hybrid inflation to soft supersymmetry breaking distorts the rotational invariance in the complex inflaton plane — an important fact, which has been neglected in all previous studies. Based on the δ N formalism, we analyze the cosmological perturbations for the first time in the full two-field model, also taking into account the fast-roll dynamics at and after the end of inflation. As a consequence of the two-field nature of hybrid inflation, the predictions for the primordial fluctuations depend not only on the parameters of the Lagrangian, but are eventually fixed by the choice of the inflationary trajectory. Recognizing hybrid inflation as a two-field model resolves two shortcomings often times attributed to it: the fine-tuning problem of the initial conditions is greatly relaxed and a spectral index in accordance with the PLANCK data can be achieved in a large part of the parameter space without the aid of supergravity corrections. Our analysis can be easily generalized to other (including large-field) scenarios of inflation in which soft supersymmetry breaking transforms an initially single-field model into a multi-field model.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2013

The gravitational wave spectrum from cosmological B-L breaking

Cosmological B-L breaking is a natural and testable mechanism to generate the initial conditions of the hot early universe. If B-L is broken at the grand unification scale, the false vacuum phase drives hybrid inflation, ending in tachyonic preheating. The decays of heavy B-L Higgs bosons and heavy neutrinos generate entropy, baryon asymmetry and dark matter and also control the reheating temperature. The different phases in the transition from inflation to the radiation dominated phase produce a characteristic spectrum of gravitational waves. We calculate the complete gravitational wave spectrum due to inflation, preheating and cosmic strings, which turns out to have several features. The production of gravitational waves from cosmic strings has large uncertainties, with lower and upper bounds provided by Abelian Higgs strings and Nambu-Goto strings, implying Ω{sub GW}h{sup 2} ∼ 10{sup −13}–10{sup −8}, much larger than the spectral amplitude predicted by inflation. Forthcoming gravitational wave detectors such as eLISA, advanced LIGO, ET, BBO and DECIGO will reach the sensitivity needed to test the predictions from cosmological B-L breaking.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2013

Superconformal D-term inflation

We study models of hybrid inflation in the framework of supergravity with superconformal matter. F-term hybrid inflation is not viable since the inflaton acquires a large tachyonic mass. On the contrary, D-term hybrid inflation can successfully account for the amplitude of the primordial power spectrum. It is a two-field inflation model which, depending on parameters, yields values of the scalar spectral index down to n{sub s} ≅ 0.96. Generically, there is a tension between a small spectral index and the cosmic string bound albeit, within 2σ uncertainty, the current observational bounds can be simultaneously fulfilled.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗