SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 1002.1361

Scalar field in the anisotropic universe

Abstract

We discuss the primordial spectrum of a massless and minimally coupled scalar field, produced during the initial anisotropic epoch before the onset of inflation. We consider two models of the anisotropic cosmology, the (planar) Kasner de Sitter solution (Bianchi I) and the Taub-NUT de Sitter solution (Bianchi IX), where the 3-space geometry is initially anisotropic, followed by the de Sitter phase due to the presence of a positive cosmological constant. We discuss the behavior of a quantized, massless and minimally coupled scalar field in the anisotropic stage. We focus on the quantization procedure and evolution in the pre-inflationary anisotropic background. The initial condition is set by the requirement that the scalar field is initially in an adiabatic state. In our case, such a vacuum state exists only for limited solutions of the anisotropic Universe, whose spacetime structure is regular in the initial times. In this paper, we call our adiabatic vacuum state the anisotropic vacuum. In the Kasner de Sitter model, for one branch of planar solutions there is an anisotropic vacuum unless $k_3\neq 0$, where $k_3$ is the comoving momentum along the third direction, while in the other branch there is no anisotropic vacuum state. In the first branch, for the moderate modes, $k_3\sim k$, where $k$ is the total comoving momentum, the scalar power spectrum has an oscillatory behavior and its direction dependence is suppressed. For the planar modes, $k_3\ll k$, in contrast, the direction dependence becomes more important, because of the amplification of the scalar amplitude during this interval of the violation of WKB approximation in the initial anisotropic stage. The qualitative behaviors in the Taub-NUT de Sitter models are very similar to the case of the first branch of the planar Kasner de Sitter model.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Hyeong-Chan Kim, Masato Minamitsuji. 2010-03-25. Scalar field in the anisotropic universe. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.82.109904

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc