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At least 1,567 records · Page 87
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

Inflationary dynamics of kinetically-coupled gauge fields

We investigate the inflationary dynamics of two kinetically-coupled massless U(1) gauge fields with time-varying kinetic-term coefficients. Ensuring that the system does not have strongly coupled regimes shrinks the parameter space. Also, we further restrict ourselves to systems that can be quantized using the standard creation, annihilation operator algebra. This second constraint limits us to scenarios where the system can be diagonalized into the sum of two decoupled, massless, vector fields with a varying kinetic-term coefficient. Such a system might be interesting for magnetogenesis because of how the strong coupling problem generalizes. We explore this idea by assuming that one of the gauge fields is the Standard Model U(1) field and that the other dark gauge field has no particles charged under its gauge group. We consider whether it would be possible to transfer a magnetic field from the dark sector, generated perhaps before the coupling was turned on, to the visible sector. We also investigate whether the simple existence of the mixing provides more opportunities to generate magnetic fields. We find that neither possibility works efficiently, consistent with the well-known difficulties in inflationary magnetogenesis.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Future cosmological sensitivity for hot dark matter axions

We study the potential of a future, large-volume photometric survey to constrain the axion mass m{sub a} in the hot dark matter limit. Future surveys such as EUCLID will have significantly more constraining power than current observations for hot dark matter. Nonetheless, the lowest accessible axion masses are limited by the fact that axions lighter than ∼ 0.15 eV decouple before the QCD epoch, assumed here to occur at a temperature T{sub QCD} ∼ 170 MeV; this leaves an axion population of such low density that its late-time cosmological impact is negligible. For larger axion masses, m{sub a} ∼> 0.15 eV, where axions remain in equilibrium until after the QCD phase transition, we find that a EUCLID-like survey combined with Planck CMB data can detect m{sub a} at very high significance. Our conclusions are robust against assumptions about prior knowledge of the neutrino mass. Given that the proposed IAXO solar axion search is sensitive to m{sub a}∼<0.2 eV, the axion mass range probed by cosmology is nicely complementary.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Constraints on secret neutrino interactions after Planck

Neutrino interactions beyond the standard model of particle physics may affect the cosmological evolution and can be constrained through observations. We consider the possibility that neutrinos possess secret scalar or pseudoscalar interactions mediated by the Nambu-Goldstone boson of a still unknown spontaneously broken global U(1) symmetry, as in, e.g., Majoron models. In such scenarios, neutrinos still decouple at T≅ 1 MeV, but become tightly coupled again (''recouple'') at later stages of the cosmological evolution. We use available observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, including Planck 2013 and the joint BICEP2/Planck 2015 data, to derive constraints on the quantity γ{sub νν}{sup 4}, parameterizing the neutrino collision rate due to scalar or pseudoscalar interactions. We consider both a minimal extension of the standard ΛCDM model, and more complicated scenarios with extra relativistic degrees of freedom or non-vanishing tensor amplitude. For a wide range of dataset and model combinations, we find a typical constraint γ{sub νν}{sup 4} ∼< 0.9× 10{sup −27} (95% C.L.), implying an upper limit on the redshift z{sub νrec} of neutrino recoupling 0∼< 850, leaving open the possibility that the latter occured well before hydrogen recombination. In the framework of Majoron models, the upper limit on γ{sub νν} roughly translates on a constraint g ∼< 8.2× 10{sup −7} on the Majoron-neutrino coupling constant g. In general, the data show a weak (∼ 1σ) but intriguing preference for non-zero values of γ{sub νν}{sup 4}, with best fits in the range γ{sub νν}{sup 4} = (0.15–0.35)× 10{sup −27}, depending on the particular dataset. This is more evident when either high-resolution CMB observations from the ACT and SPT experiments are included, or the possibility of non-vanishing tensor modes is considered. In particular, for the minimal model ΛCDM+γ{sub νν} and including the Planck 2013, ACT and SPT data, we report γ{sub νν}{sup 4}=(0.44{sup +0.17}{sub −0.36})×10{sup −27} (0300 ∼< z{sub νrec} ∼< 550) at 68% confidence level.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Cosmological constraint on the light gravitino mass from CMB lensing and cosmic shear

Light gravitinos of mass ∼< O (10) eV are of particular interest in cosmology, offering various baryogenesis scenarios without suffering from the cosmological gravitino problem. The gravitino may contribute considerably to the total matter content of the Universe and affect structure formation from early to present epochs. After the gravitinos decouple from other particles in the early Universe, they free-stream and consequently suppress density fluctuations of (sub-)galactic length scales. Observations of structure at the relevant length-scales can be used to infer or constrain the mass and the abundance of light gravitinos. We derive constraints on the light gravitino mass using the data of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing from Planck and of cosmic shear from the Canada France Hawaii Lensing Survey survey, combined with analyses of the primary CMB anisotropies and the signature of baryon acoustic oscillations in galaxy distributions. The obtained constraint on the gravitino mass is m {sub 3/2} < 4.7 eV (95 % C.L.), which is substantially tighter than the previous constraint from clustering analysis of Ly-α forests.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Lyman-alpha forests cool warm dark matter

The free-streaming of keV-scale particles impacts structure growth on scales that are probed by the Lyman-alpha forest of distant quasars. Using an unprecedentedly large sample of medium-resolution QSO spectra from the ninth data release of SDSS, along with a state-of-the-art set of hydrodynamical simulations to model the Lyman-alpha forest in the non-linear regime, we issue one of the tightest bounds to date, from Ly-α data alone, on pure dark matter particles: m{sub X} >4.09 keV (95% CL) for early decoupled thermal relics such as a hypothetical gravitino, and correspondingly m{sub s} >24.4 keV (95% CL) for a non-resonantly produced right-handed neutrino. This limit depends on the value on n {sub s} , and Planck measures a higher value of n {sub s} than SDSS-III/BOSS. Our bounds thus change slightly when Ly-α data are combined with CMB data from Planck 2016. The limits shift to m{sub X} >2.96 keV (95% CL) and m{sub s} >16.0 keV (95% CL). Thanks to SDSS-III data featuring smaller uncertainties and covering a larger redshift range than SDSS-I data, our bounds confirm the most stringent results established by previous works and are further at odds with a purely non-resonantly produced sterile neutrino as dark matter.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Sharing but not caring: dark matter and the baryon asymmetry of the universe

We consider scenarios where Dark Matter (DM) particles carry baryon and/or lepton numbers, which can be defined if there exist operators connecting the dark to the visible sector. As a result, the DM fields become intimately linked to the Standard Model (SM) ones and can be maximally asymmetric just like the ordinary matter. In particular, we discuss minimal scenarios where the DM is a complex scalar or a Dirac fermion coupled to operators with nonzero baryon and/or lepton numbers, and that consist of only SM fields. We consider an initial asymmetry stored in either the SM or the DM sector; the main role of these operators is to properly share the asymmetry between the two sectors, in accordance with observations. After the chemical decoupling, the DM and SM sectors do not care about each other as there is only an ineffective communication between them. Once the DM mass is specified, the Wilson coefficients of these operators are fixed by the requirement of the correct transfer of the asymmetry. We study the phenomenology of this framework at colliders, direct detection and indirect detection experiments. In particular, the LHC phenomenology is very rich and can be tested in different channels such as the two same-sign leptons with two jets, monojet and monojet with a monolepton.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Testing averaged cosmology with type Ia supernovae and BAO data

An important problem in precision cosmology is the determination of the effects of averaging and backreaction on observational predictions, particularly in view of the wealth of new observational data and improved statistical techniques. In this paper, we discuss the observational viability of a class of averaged cosmologies which consist of a simple parametrized phenomenological two-scale backreaction model with decoupled spatial curvature parameters. We perform a Bayesian model selection analysis and find that this class of averaged phenomenological cosmological models is favored with respect to the standard ΛCDM cosmological scenario when a joint analysis of current SNe Ia and BAO data is performed. In particular, the analysis provides observational evidence for non-trivial spatial curvature.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Make dark matter charged again

We revisit constraints on dark matter that is charged under a U(1) gauge group in the dark sector, decoupled from Standard Model forces. We find that the strongest constraints in the literature are subject to a number of mitigating factors. For instance, the naive dark matter thermalization timescale in halos is corrected by saturation effects that slow down isotropization for modest ellipticities. The weakened bounds uncover interesting parameter space, making models with weak-scale charged dark matter viable, even with electromagnetic strength interaction. This also leads to the intriguing possibility that dark matter self-interactions within small dwarf galaxies are extremely large, a relatively unexplored regime in current simulations. Such strong interactions suppress heat transfer over scales larger than the dark matter mean free path, inducing a dynamical cutoff length scale above which the system appears to have only feeble interactions. These effects must be taken into account to assess the viability of darkly-charged dark matter. Future analyses and measurements should probe a promising region of parameter space for this model.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

On the dark radiation problem in the axiverse

String scenarios generically predict that we live in a so called axiverse: the Universe with about a hundred of light axion species which are decoupled from the Standard Model particles. However, the axions can couple to the inflaton which leads to their production after inflation. Then, these axions remain in the expanding Universe contributing to the dark radiation component, which is severely bounded from present cosmological data. We place a general constraint on the axion production rate and apply it to several variants of reasonable inflaton-to-axion couplings. The limit merely constrains the number of ultralight axions and the relative strength of inflaton-to-axion coupling. It is valid in both large and small field inflationary models irrespectively of the axion energy scales and masses. Thus, the limit is complementary to those associated with the Universe overclosure and axion isocurvature fluctuations. In particular, a hundred of axions is forbidden if inflaton universally couples to all the fields at reheating. In the case of gravitational sector being responsible for the reheating of the Universe (which is a natural option in all inflationary models with modified gravity), the axion production can be efficient. We find that in the Starobinsky R {sup 2}-inflation even a single axion (e.g. the standard QCD-axion) is in tension with the Planck data, making the model inconsistent with the axiverse. The general conclusion is that an inflation with inefficient reheating mechanism and low reheating temperature may be in tension with the presence of light scalars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Constraints on neutrino masses from Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum with BOSS and XQ-100

We present constraints on masses of active and sterile neutrinos in the context of the ΛCDMν and ΛWDM models, respectively. We use the one-dimensional Lyα-forest power spectrum from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) measured by Palanque-Delabrouille et al. [1], and from the VLT/XSHOOTER legacy survey (XQ-100). In this paper, we present our own measurement of the publicly released XQ-100 quasar spectra, focusing in particular on an improved determination of the spectrograph resolution that allows us to push to smaller scales than the public release and reach k -modes of 0.070 s km{sup −1}. We compare the obtained 1D Lyα flux power spectrum to the one measured by Irsic et al. [2] to k -modes of 0.057 s km{sup −1}. Fitting Lyα data alone leads to cosmological parameters in excellent agreement with the values derived independently from Planck 2015 Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. Combining BOSS and XQ-100 Lyα power spectra, we constrain the sum of neutrino masses to ∑ m {sub ν} < 0.8 eV (95% C.L.) including all identified sources of systematic uncertainties. With the addition of CMB data, this bound is tightened to ∑ m {sub ν} < 0.14 eV (95% C.L.). With their sensitivity to small scales, Lyα data are ideal to constrain ΛWDM models. Using XQ-100 alone, we issue lower bounds on pure dark matter particles: m {sub X} ∼> 2.08 : keV (95% C.L.) for early decoupled thermal relics, and m {sub s} ∼> 10.2 : keV (95% C.L.) for non-resonantly produced right-handed neutrinos. Combining the 1D Lyα-forest power spectrum measured by BOSS and XQ-100, we improve the two bounds to m {sub X} ∼> 4.17 : keV and m {sub s} ∼> 25.0 : keV (95% C.L.), slightly more constraining than what was achieved in Baur et al. 2015 [3] with BOSS data alone. The 3 σ bound shows a more significant improvement, increasing from m {sub X} ∼> 2.74 : keV for BOSS alone to m {sub X} ∼> 3.10 : keV for the combined BOSS+XQ-100 data set. Finally, we include in our analysis the first two redshift bins ( z = 4.2 and z = 4.6) of the power spectrum measured by Viel et al. 2013 [4] with the high-resolution HIRES/MIKE spectrographs. The addition of HIRES/MIKE power spectrum allows us to further improve the two limits to m {sub X} ∼> 4.65 : keV and m {sub s} ∼> 28.8 : keV (95% C.L.).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Dark catalysis

Recently it was shown that dark matter with mass of order the weak scale can be charged under a new long-range force, decoupled from the Standard Model, with only weak constraints from early Universe cosmology. Here we consider the implications of an additional charged particle C that is light enough to lead to significant dissipative dynamics on galactic times scales. We highlight several novel features of this model, which can be relevant even when the C particle constitutes only a small fraction of the number density (and energy density). We assume a small asymmetric abundance of the C particle whose charge is compensated by a heavy X particle so that the relic abundance of dark matter consists mostly of symmetric X and X-bar , with a small asymmetric component made up of X and C . As the universe cools, it undergoes asymmetric recombination binding the free C s into ( XC ) dark atoms efficiently. Even with a tiny asymmetric component, the presence of C particles catalyzes tight coupling between the heavy dark matter X and the dark photon plasma that can lead to a significant suppression of the matter power spectrum on small scales and lead to some of the strongest bounds on such dark matter theories. We find a viable parameter space where structure formation constraints are satisfied and significant dissipative dynamics can occur in galactic haloes but show a large region is excluded. Our model shows that subdominant components in the dark sector can dramatically affect structure formation.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Hot leptogenesis from thermal Dark Matter

In this work, we investigate a scenario in which heavy Majorana Right-Handed Neutrinos (RHNs) are in thermal equilibrium with a dark sector with temperature higher than the Standard Model (SM) thermal bath. Specifically, we consider the scenario in which thermal Dark Matter (DM) abundance is fixed from the freeze-out of DM annihilations into RHNs. Due to the inert nature of the RHNs, we show that it is possible for the two sectors to remain thermally decoupled by having more than two generations of the RHNs. The hotter temperature implies higher abundances of DM and RHNs with the following consequences. For leptogenesis, an enhancement in efficiency up to a factor of 51.6 can be obtained, though a resonant enhancement of CP violation is still required due to an upper mass bound of about 4 TeV for the RHNs. For the DM, an enhanced annihilation cross section up to a factor of 51.6 is required to obtain the correct DM abundance. This scenario can be probed via indirect detection of DM annihilating into RHNs, which then decay into hν, Zν and W ± ℓ ∓ with an enhanced annihilation cross section above the typical thermal value.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Interacting radiation after Planck and its implications for the Hubble tension

Standard cosmology predicts that prior to matter-radiation equality about 41% of the energy density was in free-streaming neutrinos. In many beyond Standard Model scenarios, however, the amount and free-streaming nature of this component is modified. For example, this occurs in models with new neutrino self-interactions or an additional dark sector with interacting light particles. Here, we consider several extensions of the standard cosmology that include a non-free-streaming radiation component as motivated by such particle physics models and use the final Planck data release to constrain them. This release contains significant improvements in the polarization likelihood which plays an important role in distinguishing free-streaming from interacting radiation species. Fixing the total amount of energy in radiation to match the expectation from standard neutrino decoupling we find that the fraction of free-streaming radiation must be ffs > 0.8 at 95% CL (combining temperature, polarization and baryon acoustic oscillation data). Allowing for arbitrary contributions of free-streaming and interacting radiation, the effective number of new non-free-streaming degrees of freedom is constrained to be Nfld < 0.6 at 95% CL. Cosmologies with additional radiation are also known to ease the discrepancy between the local measurement and CMB inference of the current expansion rate H0. We show that including a non-free-streaming radiation component allows for a larger amount of total energy density in radiation, leading to a mild improvement of the fit to cosmological data compared to previously discussed models with only a free-streaming component.

particle physics - cosmology connection↗
DOE OSTI2021

Flavor-specific interaction favors strong neutrino self-coupling in the early universe

Flavor-universal neutrino self-interaction has been shown to ease the tension between the values of the Hubble constant measured from early and late Universe data. Here, we introduce a self-interaction structure that is flavor-specific in the three active neutrino framework. This is motivated by the stringent constraints on new secret interactions among electron and muon neutrinos from several laboratory experiments. Our study indicates the presence of a strongly interaction mode which implies a late-decoupling of the neutrinos just prior to matter radiation equality. Using the degeneracy of the coupling strength with other cosmological parameters, we explain the origin of this new mode as a result of better fit to certain features in the CMB data. We find that if only one or two of the three active neutrino flavors are interacting, then the statistical significance of the strongly-interacting neutrino mode increases substantially relative to the flavor-universal scenario. However, the central value of the coupling strength for this interaction mode does not change by any appreciable amount in the flavor-specific cases. We also briefly analyze a scenario with more than three neutrino species of which only one is self-interacting. In none of the cases, we find a large enough Hubble constant that could resolve the so-called Hubble tension.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

The growth of density perturbations in the last ~10 billion years from tomographic large-scale structure data

In order to investigate the origin of the ongoing tension between the amplitude of matter fluctuations measured by weak lensing experiments at low redshifts and the value inferred from the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, we reconstruct the evolution of this amplitude from z ~ 2 using existing large-scale structure data. To do so, we decouple the linear growth of density inhomogeneities from the background expansion, and constrain its redshift dependence making use of a combination of 6 different data sets, including cosmic shear, galaxy clustering and CMB lensing. We analyze these data under a consistent harmonic-space angular power spectrum-based pipeline. We show that current data constrain the amplitude of fluctuations mostly in the range 0.2 < z < 0.7, where it is lower than predicted by . This difference is mostly driven by current cosmic shear data, although the growth histories reconstructed from different data combinations are consistent with each other, and we find no evidence of systematic deviations in any particular experiment. In spite of the tension with , the data are well-described by the model, albeit with a lower value of S 8 ≡ σ 8 (Ω m /0.3) 0.5 . As part of our analysis, we find constraints on this parameter of S 8 = 0.7781 ± 0.0094 (68% confidence level), reaching almost percent-level errors comparable with CMB measurements, and 3.4σ away from the value found by .

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Cannibalism's lingering imprint on the matter power spectrum

The early universe may have contained internally thermalized dark sectors that were decoupled from the Standard Model. In such scenarios, the relic dark thermal bath, composed of the lightest particle in the dark sector, can give rise to an epoch of early matter domination prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, which has a potentially observable impact on the smallest dark matter structures. This lightest dark particle can easily and generically have number-changing self-interactions that give rise to “cannibal” behavior. We consider cosmologies where an initially sub-dominant cannibal species comes to temporarily drive the expansion of the universe, and we provide a simple map between the particle properties of the cannibal species and the key features of the enhanced dark matter perturbation growth in such cosmologies. Finally, we further demonstrate that cannibal self-interactions can determine the small-scale cutoff in the matter power spectrum even when the cannibal self-interactions freeze out prior to cannibal domination.

cosmological perturbation theory↗
DOE OSTI2022

Probing physics beyond the standard model: limits from BBN and the CMB independently and combined

We present new Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) limits on the cosmic expansion rate or relativistic energy density, quantified via the number N ν of equivalent neutrino species. We use the latest light element observations, neutron mean lifetime, and update our evaluation for the nuclear rates d + d → 3 He + n and d + d → 3 H+p. Combining this result with the independent constraints from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) yields tight limits on new physics that perturbs N ν and η prior to cosmic nucleosynthesis: a joint BBN+CMB analysis gives N ν = 2.898 ± 0.141, resulting in N ν < 3.180 at 2σ. We apply these limits to a wide variety of new physics scenarios including right-handed neutrinos, dark radiation, and a stochastic gravitational wave background. The strength of the independent BBN and CMB constraints now opens a new window: we can search for limits on potential changes in N ν and/or the baryon-to-photon ratio η between the two epochs. The present data place strong constraints on the allowed changes in N ν between BBN and CMB decoupling; for example, we find -0.708 < N ν CMB - N ν BBN < 0.328 in the case where η and the primordial helium mass fraction Yp are unchanged between the two epochs; we also give limits on the allowed variations in η or in (η, N ν ) jointly. We discuss scenarios in which such changes could occur, and show that BBN+CMB results combine to place important constraints on some early dark energy models to explain the H 0 tension. Looking to the future, we forecast the tightened precision for N ν arising from both CMB Stage 4 measurements as well as improvements in astronomical 4 He measurements. Here, we find that CMB-S4 combined with present BBN and light element observation precision can give σ(N ν ) ≃ 0.03. Such future precision would reveal the expected effect of neutrino heating (N eff -3 = 0.044) of the CMB during BBN, and would be near the level to reveal any particle species ever in thermal equilibrium with the standard model. Improved Y p measurements can push this precision even further.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Stability of hairy black holes in shift-symmetric scalar-tensor theories via the effective field theory approach

Shift-symmetric Horndeski theories admit an interesting class of Schwarzschild-de Sitter black hole solutions exhibiting time-dependent scalar hair. The properties of these solutions may be studied via a bottom-up effective field theory (EFT) based on the background symmetries. This is in part possible by making use of a convenient coordinate choice — Lemaître-type coordinates — in which the profile of the Horndeski scalar field is linear in the relevant time coordinate. We construct this EFT, and use it to understand the stability of hairy black holes in shift-symmetric Horndeski theories, providing a set of constraints that the otherwise-free functions appearing in the Horndeski Lagrangian must satisfy in order to admit stable black hole solutions. The EFT is analyzed in the decoupling limit to understand potential sources of instability. Further, we also perform a complete analysis of the EFT with odd-parity linear perturbations around general spherically symmetric space-time.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗