Engineering topics

Jhingan, Sanjay

Publications and source records attributed to Jhingan, Sanjay.

4 records

DOE OSTI2016

Primordial black hole formation in the matter-dominated phase of the universe

We investigate primordial black hole formation in the matter-dominated phase of the universe, where nonspherical effects in gravitational collapse play a crucial role. This is in contrast to the black hole formation in a radiation-dominated era. We apply the Zel’dovich approximation, Thorne’s hoop conjecture, and Doroshkevich’s probability distribution and subsequently derive the production probability β{sub 0} of primordial black holes. The numerical result obtained is applicable even if the density fluctuation σ at horizon entry is of the order of unity. For σ≪1, we find a semi-analytic formula β{sub 0}≃0.05556σ{sup 5}, which is comparable to the Khlopov–Polnarev formula. We find that the production probability in the matter-dominated era is much larger than that in the radiation-dominated era for σ≲0.05, while they are comparable with each other for σ≳0.05. We also discuss how σ can be written in terms of primordial curvature perturbations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2016

Component separation of a isotropic Gravitational Wave Background

A Gravitational Wave Background (GWB) is expected in the universe from the superposition of a large number of unresolved astrophysical sources and phenomena in the early universe. Each component of the background (e.g., from primordial metric perturbations, binary neutron stars, milli-second pulsars etc.) has its own spectral shape. Many ongoing experiments aim to probe GWB at a variety of frequency bands. In the last two decades, using data from ground-based laser interferometric gravitational wave (GW) observatories, upper limits on GWB were placed in the frequency range of 0∼ 50−100 Hz, considering one spectral shape at a time. However, one strong component can significantly enhance the estimated strength of another component. Hence, estimation of the amplitudes of the components with different spectral shapes should be done jointly. Here we propose a method for 'component separation' of a statistically isotropic background, that can, for the first time, jointly estimate the amplitudes of many components and place upper limits. The method is rather straightforward and needs negligible amount of computation. It utilises the linear relationship between the measurements and the amplitudes of the actual components, alleviating the need for a sampling based method, e.g., Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or matched filtering, which are computationally intensive and cumbersome in a multi-dimensional parameter space. Using this formalism we could also study how many independent components can be separated using a given dataset from a network of current and upcoming ground based interferometric detectors.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

Exploring scalar field dynamics with Gaussian processes

The origin of the accelerated expansion of the Universe remains an unsolved mystery in Cosmology. In this work we consider a spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) Universe with non-relativistic matter and a single scalar field contributing to the energy density of the Universe. Properties of this scalar field, like potential, kinetic energy, equation of state etc. are reconstructed from Supernovae and BAO data using Gaussian processes. We also reconstruct energy conditions and kinematic variables of expansion, such as the jerk and the slow roll parameter. We find that the reconstructed scalar field variables and the kinematic quantities are consistent with a flat ΛCDM Universe. Further, we find that the null energy condition is satisfied for the redshift range of the Supernovae data considered in the paper, but the strong energy condition is violated.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2013

Is dark energy evolving?

We look for evidence for the evolution in dark energy density by employing Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Distance redshift data from supernovae and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) along with WMAP7 distance priors are used to put constraints on curvature parameter Ω{sub k} and dark energy parameters. The data sets are consistent with a flat Universe. The constraints on the dark energy evolution parameters obtained from supernovae (including CMB distance priors) are consistent with a flat ΛCDM Universe. On the other hand, in the parameter estimates obtained from the addition of BAO data the second principal component, which characterize a non-constant contribution from dark energy, is non-zero at 1σ. This could be a systematic effect and future BAO data holds key to making more robust claims.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗