Cosmology with varying fundamental constants from hyperlight, coupled scalars
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Baryakhtar, Masha (ORCID:0000000276312604)↗
Engineering topics
Weiner, Zachary J. (ORCID:0000000317552277)
Publications and source records attributed to Weiner, Zachary J. (ORCID:0000000317552277).
Modeling COVID-19 Dynamics in Illinois under Nonpharmaceutical Interventions
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60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
Stochastic evolution of scalar fields with continuous symmetries during inflation
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72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
Constraining Axion Inflation with Gravitational Waves across 29 Decades in Frequency
We demonstrate that gravitational waves generated by efficient gauge preheating after axion inflation generically contribute significantly to the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom $N_{\text{eff}}$. In this work we show that, with existing Planck limits, gravitational waves from preheating already place the strongest constraints on the inflaton’s possible axial coupling to Abelian gauge fields. We demonstrate that gauge preheating can completely reheat the Universe regardless of the inflationary potential. Further, we quantify the variation of the efficiency of gravitational wave production from model to model and show that it is correlated with the tensor-to-scalar ratio. In particular, when combined with constraints on models whose tensor-to-scalar ratios would be detected by next-generation cosmic microwave background experiments, $\textit{r}$ ≳ 10 –3 , constraints from $N_{\text{eff}}$ will probe or rule out the entire coupling regime for which gauge preheating is efficient.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗