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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 757 records · Page 42
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DOE OSTI2015

Dark energy as a fixed point of the Einstein Yang-Mills Higgs equations

We study the Einstein Yang-Mills Higgs equations in the SO(3) representation on a isotropic and homogeneous flat Universe, in the presence of radiation and matter fluids. We map the equations of motion into an autonomous dynamical system of first-order differential equations and we find the equilibrium points. We show that there is only one stable fixed point that corresponds to an accelerated expanding Universe in the future. In the past, instead, there is an unstable fixed point that implies a stiff-matter domination. In between, we find three other unstable fixed points, corresponding, in chronological order, to radiation domination, to matter domination, and, finally, to a transition from decelerated expansion to accelerated expansion. We solve the system numerically and we confirm that there are smooth trajectories that correctly describe the evolution of the Universe, from a remote past dominated by radiation to a remote future dominated by dark energy, passing through a matter-dominated phase.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

WIMP dark matter and unitarity-conserving inflation via a gauge singlet scalar

A gauge singlet scalar with non-minimal coupling to gravity can drive inflation and later freeze out to become cold dark matter. We explore this idea by revisiting inflation in the singlet direction (S-inflation) and Higgs Portal Dark Matter in light of the Higgs discovery, limits from LUX and observations by Planck. We show that large regions of parameter space remain viable, so that successful inflation is possible and the dark matter relic abundance can be reproduced. Moreover, the scalar singlet can stabilise the electroweak vacuum and at the same time overcome the problem of unitarity-violation during inflation encountered by Higgs Inflation, provided the singlet is a real scalar. The 2-σ Planck upper bound on n{sub s} imposes that the singlet mass is below 2 TeV, so that almost the entire allowed parameter range can be probed by XENON1T.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Freeze-In dark matter with displaced signatures at colliders

Dark matter, X, may be generated by new physics at the TeV scale during an early matter-dominated (MD) era that ends at temperature T{sub R}≪ TeV. Compared to the conventional radiation-dominated (RD) results, yields from both Freeze-Out and Freeze-In processes are greatly suppressed by dilution from entropy production, making Freeze-Out less plausible while allowing successful Freeze-In with a much larger coupling strength. Freeze-In is typically dominated by the decay of a particle B of the thermal bath, B→X. For a large fraction of the relevant cosmological parameter space, the decay rate required to produce the observed dark matter abundance leads to displaced signals at LHC and future colliders, for any m{sub X} in the range keV <m{sub X}<m{sub B} and for values of m{sub B} accessible to these colliders. This result applies whether the early MD era arises after conventional inflation, when T{sub R} is the usual reheat temperature, or is a generic MD era with an alternative origin. In the former case, if m{sub X} is sufficiently large to be measured from kinematics, the reheat temperature T{sub R} can be extracted. Our result is independent of the particular particle physics implementation of B→X, and can occur via any operator of dimension less than 8 (4) for a post-inflation (general MD) cosmology. An interesting example is provided by DFS axion theories with TeV-scale supersymmetry and axino dark matter of mass GeV to TeV, which is typically overproduced in a conventional RD cosmology. If B is the higgsino, h-tilde, Higgs, W and Z particles appear at the displaced decays, h-tilde→ha-tilde, Za-tilde and h-tilde{sup ±}→W{sup ±}a-tilde. The scale of axion physics, f, is predicted to be in the range (3×10{sup 8}−10{sup 12}) GeV and, over much of this range, can be extracted from the decay length.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Disappearing inflaton potential via heavy field dynamics

We propose a possibility that the inflaton potential is significantly modified after inflation due to heavy field dynamics. During inflation such a heavy scalar field may be stabilized at a value deviated from the low-energy minimum. In extreme cases, the inflaton potential vanishes and the inflaton becomes almost massless at some time after inflation. Such transition of the inflaton potential has interesting implications for primordial density perturbations, reheating, creation of unwanted relics, dark radiation, and experimental search for light degrees of freedom. To be concrete, we consider a chaotic inflation in supergravity where the inflaton mass parameter is promoted to a modulus field, finding that the inflaton becomes stable after the transition and contributes to dark matter. Another example is a hilltop inflation (also called new inflation) by the MSSM Higgs field which acquires a large expectation value just after inflation, but it returns to the origin after the transition and finally rolls down to the electroweak vacuum. Interestingly, the smallness of the electroweak scale compared to the Planck scale is directly related to the flatness of the inflaton potential.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Detectable gravitational waves from very strong phase transitions in the general NMSSM

We study the general NMSSM with an emphasis on the parameter regions with a very strong first-order electroweak phase transition (EWPT). In the presence of heavy fields coupled to the Higgs sector, the analysis can be problematic due to the existence of sizable radiative corrections. In this paper we propose a subtraction scheme that helps to circumvent this problem. For simplicity we focus on a parameter region that is by construction hidden from the current collider searches. The analysis proves that (at least) in the identified parameter region the EWPT can be very strong and striking gravitational wave signals can be produced. The corresponding gravitational stochastic background can potentially be detected at the planned space-based gravitational wave observatory eLISA, depending on the specific experiment design that will be approved.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Dodelson-Widrow production of sterile neutrino Dark Matter with non-trivial initial abundance

The simplest way to create sterile neutrinos in the early Universe is by their admixture to active neutrinos. However, this mechanism, connected to the Dark Matter (DM) problem by Dodelson and Widrow (DW), cannot simulatenously meet the relic abundance constraint as well as bounds from structure formation and X-rays. Nonetheless, unless a symmetry forces active-sterile mixing to vanish exactly, the DW mechanism will unavoidably affect the sterile neutrino DM population created by any other production mechanism. We present a semi-analytic approach to the DW mechanism acting on an arbitrary initial abundance of sterile neutrinos, allowing to combine DW with any other preceeding production mechanism in a physical and precise way. While previous analyses usually assumed that the spectra produced by DW and another mechanism can simply be added, we use our semi-analytic results to discuss the validity of this assumption and to quantify its accurateness, thereby also scrutinising the DW spectrum and the derived mass bounds. We then map our results to the case of sterile neutrino DM from the decay of a real SM singlet coupled to the Higgs. Finally, we will investigate aspects of structure formation beyond the usual simple free-streaming estimates in order to judge on the effects of the DW modification on the sterile neutrino DM spectra generated by scalar decay.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Survival of pq -superstrings in field theory simulations

We perform large-scale field theoretical simulations in expanding universe to characterize a network of strings that can form composed bound states. The network consists of two copies of Abelian Higgs strings (which we label p and q , respectively) coupled via a potential term to give pq bound states. The simulations are performed using two different kinds of initial conditions: the first one with a network of p - and q -strings, and the second one with a network of q - and pq -strings. This way, we start from two opposite situations: one with no initial pq -strings, and one with a large initial number of pq -strings. We find that in both cases the system scales, and in both cases the system prefers to have a low fraction of pq -strings. This is somewhat surprising in the case for the second type of conditions, showing that the unzipping mechanism is very efficient. We also find hints that both initial conditions tend to asymptote to a common configuration, though we would need a larger dynamical range to confirm it. The average velocities of the different types of strings in the network have also been explored for the first time.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Combined preheating on the lattice with applications to Higgs inflation

We use classical lattice simulations in 3+1 dimensions to study the interplay between the resonant production of particles during preheating and the subsequent decay of these into a set of secondary species. We choose to work in a simplified version of Higgs inflation in which the Higgs field non-minimally coupled to gravity plays the role of the inflaton. Our numerical results extend the analytical estimates in the literature beyond the linear regime and shed some light on the limitations of the analytical techniques. The inclusion of fast and inefficient decays postpones the onset of parametric resonance by depleting the particles produced at the bottom of the potential. In spite of this delay, fermions are shown to play an important role on the destruction of the inflaton field. The limitations of our approach and its applications to a realistic Higgs inflation scenario are also discussed.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Warm dark matter via ultra-violet freeze-in: reheating temperature and non-thermal distribution for fermionic Higgs portal dark matter

Warm dark matter (WDM) of order keV mass may be able to resolve the disagreement between structure formation in cold dark matter simulations and observations. The detailed properties of WDM will depend upon its energy distribution, in particular how it deviates from the thermal distribution usually assumed in WDM simulations. Here we focus on WDM production via the Ultra-Violet (UV) freeze-in mechanism, for the case of fermionic Higgs portal dark matter ψ produced via the portal interaction ψ-barψH{sup †}H/Λ. We introduce a new method to simplify the computation of the non-thermal energy distribution of dark matter from freeze-in. We show that the non-thermal energy distribution from UV freeze-in is hotter than the corresponding thermal distribution and has the form of a Bose-Einstein distribution with a non-thermal normalization. The resulting range of dark matter fermion mass consistent with observations is 5–7 keV. The reheating temperature must satisfy T{sub R}≳120 GeV in order to account for the observed dark matter density when m{sub ψ}≈5 keV, where the lower bound on T{sub R} corresponds to the limit where the fermion mass is entirely due to electroweak symmetry breaking via the portal interaction. The corresponding bound on the interaction scale is Λ≳6.0×10{sup 9} GeV.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Multi-phase induced inflation in theories with non-minimal coupling to gravity

In this paper we investigate the induced inflation with two flat regions: one Starobinsky-like plateau in strong coupling regime and one shorter plateau around the saddle point of the Einstein frame potential. This multi-phase inflationary scenario can be used to solve problems of classical cosmology as well as the problem of initial conditions for inflation. The inflation at the saddle-point plateau is consistent with the data and can have arbitrarily low scale. The results can be useful in the context of the Higgs-Axion relaxation and in a certain limit they are equivalent to the α-attractors.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Electroweak stability and non-minimal coupling

The measured values of the Higgs and top quark mass indicate that the electroweak vacuum is metastable if there is no new physics below the Planck scale. This is at odds with a period of high scale inflation. A non-minimal coupling between the Higgs field and the Ricci scalar can stabilize the vacuum as it generates a large effective Higgs mass during inflation. We consider the effect of this coupling during preheating, when Higgs modes can be produced very efficiently due to the oscillating Ricci scalar. We compute their effect on the effective potential and the energy density. The Higgs excitations are defined with respect to the adiabatic vacuum. We study the adiabaticity conditions and find that the dependence of our results on the choice of the order of the adiabatic vacuum increases with time. For large enough coupling particle production is so efficient that the Higgs decays to the true vacuum before this is an issue. However, for smaller values of the Higgs-curvature coupling no definite statements can be made as the vacuum dependence is large.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Early Universe Higgs dynamics in the presence of the Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity couplings

Apparent metastability of the electroweak vacuum poses a number of cosmological questions. These concern evolution of the Higgs field to the current vacuum, and its stability during and after inflation. Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity interactions can make a crucial impact on these considerations potentially solving the problems. In this work, we allow for these couplings to be present simultaneously and study their interplay. We find that different combinations of the Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity couplings induce effective Higgs mass during and after inflation. This crucially affects the Higgs stability considerations during preheating. In particular, a wide range of the couplings leading to stable solutions becomes allowed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Electroweak vacuum instability and renormalized Higgs field vacuum fluctuations in the inflationary universe

In this work, we investigated the electroweak vacuum instability during or after inflation. In the inflationary Universe, i.e., de Sitter space, the vacuum field fluctuations < δ φ {sup 2} > enlarge in proportion to the Hubble scale H {sup 2}. Therefore, the large inflationary vacuum fluctuations of the Higgs field < δ φ {sup 2} > are potentially catastrophic to trigger the vacuum transition to the negative-energy Planck-scale vacuum state and cause an immediate collapse of the Universe. However, the vacuum field fluctuations < δ φ {sup 2} >, i.e., the vacuum expectation values have an ultraviolet divergence, and therefore a renormalization is necessary to estimate the physical effects of the vacuum transition. Thus, in this paper, we revisit the electroweak vacuum instability from the perspective of quantum field theory (QFT) in curved space-time, and discuss the dynamical behavior of the homogeneous Higgs field φ determined by the effective potential V {sub eff}( φ ) in curved space-time and the renormalized vacuum fluctuations < δ φ {sup 2} >{sub ren} via adiabatic regularization and point-splitting regularization. We simply suppose that the Higgs field only couples the gravity via the non-minimal Higgs-gravity coupling ξ(μ). In this scenario, the electroweak vacuum stability is inevitably threatened by the dynamical behavior of the homogeneous Higgs field φ, or the formations of AdS domains or bubbles unless the Hubble scale is small enough H < Λ {sub I} .

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

A dynamical weak scale from inflation

Dynamical scanning of the Higgs mass by an axion-like particle during inflation may provide a cosmological component to explaining part of the hierarchy problem. We propose a novel interplay of this cosmological relaxation mechanism with inflation, whereby the backreaction of the Higgs vacuum expectation value near the weak scale causes inflation to end. As Hubble drops, the relaxion's dissipative friction increases relative to Hubble and slows it down enough to be trapped by the barriers of its periodic potential. Such a scenario raises the natural cut-off of the theory up to ∼ 10{sup 10} GeV, while maintaining a minimal relaxion sector without having to introduce additional scanning scalars or new physics coincidentally close to the weak scale.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Strongly coupled dark energy with warm dark matter vs. LCDM

Cosmologies including strongly Coupled (SC) Dark Energy (DE) and Warm dark matter (SCDEW) are based on a conformally invariant (CI) attractor solution modifying the early radiative expansion. Then, aside of radiation, a kinetic field Φ and a DM component account for a stationary fraction, ∼ 1 %, of the total energy. Most SCDEW predictions are hardly distinguishable from LCDM, while SCDEW alleviates quite a few LCDM conceptual problems, as well as its difficulties to meet data below the average galaxy scale. The CI expansion begins at the end of inflation, when Φ (future DE) possibly plays a role in reheating, and ends at the Higgs scale. Afterwards, a number of viable options is open, allowing for the transition from the CI expansion to the present Universe. In this paper: (i) We show how the attractor is recovered when the spin degrees of freedom decreases. (ii) We perform a detailed comparison of CMB anisotropy and polarization spectra for SCDEW and LCDM, including tensor components, finding negligible discrepancies. (iii) Linear spectra exhibit a greater parameter dependence at large k 's, but are still consistent with data for suitable parameter choices. (iv) We also compare previous simulation results with fresh data on galaxy concentration. Finally, (v) we outline numerical difficulties at high k . This motivates a second related paper [1], where such problems are treated in a quantitative way.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Stellar limits on light CP-even scalar

Abstract We revisit the astrophysical constraints on a generic light CP-even scalar particle S , mixing with the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson, from observed luminosities of the Sun, red giants, white dwarfs and horizontal-branch stars. The production of S in the stellar core is dominated by the electron-nuclei bremsstrahlung process e + N → e + N + S . With the S decay and reabsorption processes taken into consideration, we find that the stellar luminosity limits exclude a broad range of parameter space in the S mass-mixing plane, with the scalar mass up to 350 keV and the mixing angle ranging from 7.0 × 10 -18 to 3.4 × 10 -3 . We also apply the stellar limits to a real-singlet scalar extension of the SM, where we can relate the mixing angle to the parameters in the scalar potential. In both the generic scalar case and the real-singlet extension, we show that the stellar limits preclude the scalar interpretation of the recently observed XENON1T excess in terms of the S particles emitted from the Sun.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2022

Improved stellar limits on a light CP-even scalar

We derive improved stellar luminosity limits on a generic light CP-even scalar field S mixing with the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson from the supernova SN1987A, the Sun, red giants (RGs) and white dwarfs (WDs). For the first time, we include the geometric effects for the decay and absorption of S particles in the stellar interior. For SN1987A and the Sun, we also take into account the detailed stellar profiles. We find that a broad range of the scalar mass and mixing angle can be excluded by our updated astrophysical constraints. For instance, SN1987A excludes 1.0 × 10 -7 ≲ sinθ ≲ 3.0 × 10 -5 and scalar mass up to 219 MeV, which covers the cosmological blind spot with a high reheating temperature. The updated solar limit excludes the mixing angle in the range of 1.5 × 10 -12 < sinθ < 1, with scalar mass up to 45 keV. The RG and WD limits are updated to 5.3 × 10-13 < sinθ < 0.39 and 2.8 × 10 -18 < sinθ < 1.8 × 10 -4 , with scalar mass up to 392 keV and 290 keV, respectively.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Primordial black holes from bubble collisions during a first-order phase transition

We study the possibility of production of primordial black holes (PBHs) from bubble collisions during a first-order phase transition. While typical colliding bubbles are small and irrelevant for PBH production, we find that those that can produce PBHs must have a macroscopically thick fluid shell and have been born much before the typical nucleation time. Particularly large uncertainties arise from an exponential sensitivity of the nucleation rate on the required duration of bubble growth which depends on the details of the collisions and the evolution of the spacetime metric toward the end of the phase transition. We introduce a few parameters to be obtained from future numerical simulation to represent those unknowns, and estimate the PBH abundance in an Abelian Higgs benchmark model and show that it can be significant. We predict an approximately monochromatic PBH mass spectrum, and find regions in the parameter space where the PBHs can constitute entire dark matter or even overclose the Universe. Our result thus shows that models with a first-order phase transition can be constrained by overabundant PBHs or null results of other PBH searches. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗