arXiv subjects

Eric V. Linder

Publications and source records attributed to Eric V. Linder.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Quantum power: a Lorentz invariant approach to Hawking radiation

Particle radiation from black holes has an observed emission power depending on the surface gravity $κ= c^4/(4GM)$ as \begin{equation}\nonumber P_{\textrm{black hole}} \sim \frac{\hbar κ^2}{6πc^2} = \frac{\hbar c^6}{96πG^2 M^2}\,,\end{equation} while both the radiation from accelerating particles and moving mirrors (accelerating boundaries) obey similar relativistic Larmor powers, \begin{equation}\nonumber P_{\textrm{electron}}= \frac{q^2α^2}{6πε_0 c^3}\,, \quad P_{\textrm{mirror}} =\frac{\hbar α^2}{6πc^2}\,, \end{equation} where $α$ is the Lorentz invariant proper acceleration. This equivalence between the Lorentz invariant powers suggests a close relation that could be used to understand black hole radiation. We show that an accelerating mirror with a prolonged metastable acceleration plateau can provide a unitary, thermal, energy-conserved analog model for black hole decay.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Ultra Fast Astronomy: Optimized Detection of Multimessenger Transients

Ultra Fast Astronomy is a new frontier becoming enabled by improved detector technology allowing discovery of optical transients on millisecond to nanosecond time scales. These may reveal counterparts of energetic processes such as fast radio bursts, gamma ray bursts, gravitational wave events, or play a role in the optical search for extraterrestrial intelligence (oSETI). We explore some example science cases and their optimization under constrained resources, basically how to distribute observations along the spectrum of short duration searches of many targets or long searches over fewer targets. As a demonstration of the method we present some analytic and some numerical optimizations, of both raw detections and science characterization such as an information matrix analysis of constraining a burst delay -- flash duration relation.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2021

Logarithmic Extensions to Inflation Universality Classes

The values of, and connection between, the cosmological observables of the primordial power spectrum tilt $n_s$ and the inflationary tensor to scalar ratio $r$ are key guideposts to the physics of inflation. Universality classes can be defined for the tilt from the scale free value proportional to $1/N$, where $N$ is the number of e-folds. We examine the consequences of a $\ln N$ next to leading order correction rather than an expansion in $1/N$, or introducing a new parameter. While nominally this can lower $r$ for some too-high $r$ simple inflation models (e.g. large field models), there is an interesting cancellation preventing such models from coming back into favor. On the other branch of the universality class, near Starobinsky inflation, $r$ can be raised, making it easier to detect.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Gravitational Wave Distances in Horndeski Cosmology

Gravitational wave propagation encounters a spacetime friction from a running Planck mass in modified gravity, causing the luminosity distance to deviate from that in general relativity (or given by the photon luminosity distance to the source), thus making it a valuable cosmological probe. We present the exact expression for the cosmological distance deviation in Horndeski gravity including theories that have a $G_5$ term yet propagate at the speed of light. An especially simple result ensues for coupled Gauss-Bonnet gravity, which we use to show it does not give a viable cosmology. We also generalize such coupling, and review the important connection of gravitational wave cosmological distance deviations to growth of cosmic structure measured by redshift space distortions.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Möbius Mirrors

An accelerating boundary (mirror) acts as a horizon and black hole analog, radiating energy with some particle spectrum. We demonstrate that a Möbius transformation on the null coordinate advanced time mirror trajectory uniquely keeps invariant not only the energy flux but the particle spectrum. We clarify how the geometric entanglement entropy is also invariant. The transform allows generation of families of dynamically distinct trajectories, including $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric ones, mapping from the eternally thermal mirror to the de Sitter horizon, and different boundary motions corresponding to Kerr or Schwarzschild black holes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Distinguishing Time Clustering of Astrophysical Bursts

Many astrophysical bursts can recur, and their time series structure or pattern could be closely tied to the emission and system physics. While analysis of periodic events is well established, some sources, e.g. some fast radio bursts and soft gamma-ray emitters, are suspected of more subtle and less explored periodic windowed behavior: the bursts themselves are not periodic, but the activity only occurs during periodic windows. We focus here on distinguishing periodic windowed behavior from merely clustered events through time clustering analysis, using techniques analogous to spatial clustering, demonstrating methods for identifying and characterizing the behavior. An important aspect is accounting for the ``curious incident of the dog in the night time'' - lack of bursts carries information. As a worked example, we analyze six years of data from the soft gamma repeater SGR1935+2154, deriving a window period of 231 days and 55% duty cycle; this has now successfully predicted both active and inactive periods.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2021

A Sparse Spectroscopic Supernova Survey

Supernova cosmology surveys are traditionally time consuming, especially for the critical spectroscopic data. However, a single spectrum at maximum light may provide accurate distance estimation if recent developments hold. This could open up a new type of supernova cosmology survey, with a useful interaction between the spectra and a focus on specific redshifts. We optimize the redshift selection and show that this condensed survey could efficiently deliver highly accurate dark energy constraints.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

The Rise of Dark Energy

While dark energy has dominated cosmic dynamics only since $z\approx0.7$, its energy density was still $\gtrsim5\%$ of the total out to $z\approx2.5$. We calculate model independent constraints on its fraction from future galaxy surveys, finding that the rise of dark energy could be detected at $3σ$ nearly out to $z\approx2.5$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

What is the Standard Cosmological Model?

Reports of "cosmology in crisis" are in vogue, but as Mark Twain said, "the report of my death was an exaggeration". We explore what we might actually mean by the standard cosmological model, how tensions - or their apparent resolutions - might arise from too narrow a view, and why looking at the big picture is so essential. This is based on the seminar "All Cosmology, All the Time".

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Light and Airy: a simple solution for relativistic quantum acceleration radiation

We study the quantum radiation of particle production by vacuum from an ultra-relativistic moving mirror (dynamical Casimir effect) solution that allows (possibly for the first time) analytically calculable time evolution of particle creation and an Airy particle spectral distribution. The reality of the beta Bogoliubov coefficients is responsible for the simplicity, and the mirror is asymptotically inertial at the speed of light, with finite energy production. We also discuss general relations regarding negative energy flux, the transformation to the 1-D Schr{ö}dinger equation, and the incompleteness of entanglement entropy.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Cosmology Requirements on Supernova Photometric Redshift Systematics for Rubin LSST and Roman Space Telescope

Some million Type Ia supernovae (SN) will be discovered and monitored during upcoming wide area time domain surveys such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). For cosmological use, accurate redshifts are needed among other characteristics; however the vast majority of the SN will not have spectroscopic redshifts, even for their host galaxies, only photometric redshifts. We assess the redshift systematic control necessary for robust cosmology. Based on the photometric vs true redshift relation generated by machine learning applied to a simulation of 500,000 galaxies as observed with LSST quality, we quantify requirements on systematics in the mean relation and in the outlier fraction and deviance so as not to bias dark energy cosmological inference. Certain redshift ranges are particularly sensitive, motivating spectroscopic followup of SN at $z\lesssim0.2$ and around $z\approx0.5$-0.6. Including Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope near infrared bands in the simulation, we reanalyze the constraints, finding improvements at high redshift but little at the low redshifts where systematics lead to strong cosmology bias. We identify a complete spectroscopic survey of SN host galaxies for $z\lesssim0.2$ as a highly favored element for robust SN cosmology.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

An Expansion of Well Tempered Gravity

When faced with two nigh intractable problems in cosmology -- how to remove the original cosmological constant problem and how to parametrize modified gravity to explain current cosmic acceleration -- we can make progress by counterposing them. The well tempered solution to the cosmological constant through degenerate scalar field dynamics also relates disparate Horndeski gravity terms, making them contrapuntal. We derive the connection between the kinetic term $K$ and braiding term $G_3$ for shift symmetric theories (including the running Planck mass $G_4$), extending previous work on monomial or binomial dependence to polynomials of arbitrary finite degree. We also exhibit an example for an infinite series expansion. This contrapuntal condition greatly reduces the number of parameters needed to test modified gravity against cosmological observations, for these "golden" theories of gravity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measure Distribution as a Probe of Helium Reionization

Fast radio burst (FRB) discoveries are occurring rapidly, with thousands expected from upcoming surveys. The dispersion measures (DM) observed for FRB include important information on cosmological distances and the ionization state of the universe from the redshift of emission until today. Rather than considering the DM--redshift relation, we investigate the statistical ensemble of the distribution of dispersion measures. We explore the use of this abundance information, with and without redshift information, to probe helium reionization. Carrying out Monte Carlo simulations of FRB survey samples, we examine the effect of different source redshift distributions, host galaxy models, sudden vs gradual reionization, and covariance with cosmological parameters on determination of helium reionization properties. We find that a fluence limited survey with 10$^4$ FRBs can discriminate different helium reionization histories at $\sim6σ$ using the DM-distribution of bursts, without redshift information (and $\sim10σ$ with redshifts).

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Be It Unresolved: Measuring Time Delays from Lensed Supernovae

Gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernovae may be the next frontier in cosmic probes, able to deliver independent constraints on dark energy, spatial curvature, and the Hubble constant. Measurements of time delays between the multiple images become more incisive due to the standardized candle nature of the source, monitoring for months rather than years, and partial immunity to microlensing. While currently extremely rare, hundreds of such systems should be detected by upcoming time domain surveys. Even more will have the images spatially unresolved, with the observed lightcurve a superposition of time delayed image fluxes. We investigate whether unresolved images can be recognized as lensed sources given only lightcurve information, and whether time delays can be extracted robustly. We develop a method that successfully identifies such systems, with a false positive rate of $\lesssim 5\%$, and measures the time delays with a completeness of $\gtrsim 93\%$ and with a bias of $\lesssim 0.5\%$ for $Δt_{\rm fit} \gtrsim 10$ days.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

The Well-Tempered Cosmological Constant: The Horndeski Variations

Well tempering is one of the few classical field theory methods for solving the original cosmological constant problem, dynamically canceling a large (possibly Planck scale) vacuum energy and leaving the matter component intact, while providing a viable cosmology with late time cosmic acceleration and an end de Sitter state. We present the general constraints that variations of Horndeski gravity models with different combinations of terms must satisfy to admit an exact de Sitter spacetime that does not respond to an arbitrarily large cosmological constant. We explicitly derive several specific scalar-tensor models that well temper and can deliver a standard cosmic history including current cosmic acceleration. Stability criteria, attractor behavior of the de Sitter state, and the response of the models to pressureless matter are considered. The well tempered conditions can be used to focus on particular models of modified gravity that have special interest -- not only removing the original cosmological constant problem but providing relations between the free Horndeski functions and reducing them to a couple of parameters, suitable for testing gravity and cosmological data analysis.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

The Well-Tempered Cosmological Constant: Fugue in B$^\flat$

Zero point fluctuations of quantum fields should generate a large cosmological constant energy density in any spacetime. How then can we have anything other than de Sitter space without fine tuning? Well tempering -- dynamical cancellation of the cosmological constant using degeneracy within the field equations -- can replace a large cosmological constant with a much lower energy state. Here we give an explicit mechanism to obtain a Minkowski solution, replacing the cosmological constant with zero, and testing its attractor nature and persistence through a vacuum phase transition. We derive the general conditions that Horndeski scalar-tensor gravity must possess, and evolve in a fugue of functions, to deliver nothing and make the universe be flat.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

$H_0$ Ex Machina: Vacuum Metamorphosis and Beyond $H_0$

We do not solve tensions with concordance cosmology; we do obtain $H_0\approx 74\,$km/s/Mpc from CMB+BAO+SN data in our model, but that is not the point. Discrepancies in Hubble constant values obtained by various astrophysical probes should not be viewed in isolation. While one can resolve at least some of the differences through either an early time transition or late time transition in the expansion rate, these introduce other changes. We advocate a holistic approach, using a wide variety of cosmic data, rather than focusing on one number, $H_0$. Vacuum metamorphosis, a late time transition physically motivated by quantum gravitational effects and with the same number of parameters as \lcdm, can successfully give a high $H_0$ value from cosmic microwave background data but fails when combined with multiple distance probes. We also explore the influence of spatial curvature, and of a conjoined analysis of cosmic expansion and growth.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Determining Model-independent $H_0$ and Consistency Tests

We determine the Hubble constant $H_0$ precisely ($2.3\%$ uncertainty) in a manner independent of cosmological model through Gaussian process regression, using strong lensing and supernova data. Strong gravitational lensing of a variable source can provide a time-delay distance $D_{Δt}$ and angular diameter distance to the lens $D_{\rm{d}}$. These absolute distances can anchor Type Ia supernovae, which give an excellent constraint on the shape of the distance-redshift relation. Updating our previous results to use the H0LiCOW program's milestone dataset consisting of six lenses, four of which have both $D_{Δt}$ and $D_{\rm{d}}$ measurements, we obtain $H_0=72.8_{-1.7}^{+1.6}\rm{\ km/s/Mpc}$ for a flat universe and $H_0=77.3_{-3.0}^{+2.2}\rm{\ km/s/Mpc}$ for a non-flat universe. We carry out several consistency checks on the data and find no statistically significant tensions, though a noticeable redshift dependence persists in a particular systematic manner that we investigate. Speculating on the possibility that this trend of derived Hubble constant with lens distance is physical, we show how this can arise through modified gravity light propagation, which would also impact the weak lensing $σ_8$ tension.

astro-ph.CO↗