arXiv subjects

Glenn D. Starkman

Publications and source records attributed to Glenn D. Starkman.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

The "Goldstone Exception" II: Absence of a Higgs Fine-Tuning Problem in the Spontaneously Broken Limit of the Gell Mann Levy Linear Sigma Model: O(4) with PCAC and SU(2)_L with PCAC and Standard Model Quarks and Leptons

More than four decades ago, Lee and Symanzik proved that, in the Gell Mann-Levy (GML) model with partially conserved axial-vector currents (PCAC), tadpole renormalization (a Higgs Vacuum Stability Condition) forces all S-matrix ultra-violet quadratic divergences (UVQD) to be absorbed into the physical renormalized pseudo-scalar pion (pole) mass squared. We show that this includes "new" UVQD (widely unfamiliar to modern audiences). We also show that tadpole renormalization is an automatic consequence of Ward-Takahashi identities. We prove that all UVQD therefore vanish identically in the Goldstone-mode limit, where pions are Nambu-Goldstone Bosons (NGB), and where Lee and Symanzik's Goldstone Symmetry Restoration Condition (a renormalization prescription) enforces spontaneous symmetry breaking and the massless-ness of NGB. Axial-vector current conservation is restored as is SU(2)(L-R) chiral symmetry: the vanishing of UVQD is therefore achieved in the Goldstone-mode by restoration of an exact symmetry, and therefore (by definition) without fine-tuning! A weak-scale Higgs mass is therefore not UVQD fine-tuned in the spontaneously broken GML LSM. That is simply another (albeit unfamiliar) consequence of the Goldstone Theorem. Hence Goldstone-mode O(4) LSM symmetries are sufficient to ensure that the theory does not suffer from the Higgs Fine Tuning Problem. This is contrary to the widely accepted belief that UVQD in the Higgs mass lead to such problems in the O(4) LSM, which are then presumed to be inherited by the Standard Model (SM). The key observation is to regard the spontaneously broken O(4) LSM as the Goldstone-mode limit of the GML LSM. We prove this first at 1-loop then at all loop orders for the pure scalar GML model. We then break the O(4) symmetry to SU(2)L with SM Yukawa couplings, and show that the above remains true.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Real Space Approach to CMB deboosting

The effect of our Galaxy's motion through the Cosmic Microwave Background rest frame, which aberrates and Doppler shifts incoming photons measured by current CMB experiments, has been shown to produce mode-mixing in the multipole space temperature coefficients. However, multipole space determinations are subject to many difficulties, and a real-space analysis can provide a straightforward alternative. In this work we describe a numerical method for removing Lorentz- boost effects from real-space temperature maps. We show that to deboost a map so that one can accurately extract the temperature power spectrum requires calculating the boost kernel at a finer pixelization than one might naively expect. In idealized cases that allow for easy comparison to analytic results, we have confirmed that there is indeed mode mixing among the spherical harmonic coefficients of the temperature. We find that using a boost kernel calculated at Nside=8192 leads to a 1% bias in the binned boosted power spectrum at l~2000, while individual Cls exhibit ~5% fluctuations around the binned average. However, this bias is dominated by pixelization effects and not the aberration and Doppler shift of CMB photons that causes the fluctuations. Performing analysis on maps with galactic cuts does not induce any additional error in the boosted, binned power spectra over the full sky analysis. For multipoles that are free of resolution effects, there is no detectable deviation between the binned boosted and unboosted spectra. This result arises because the power spectrum is a slowly varying function of and does not show that, in general, Lorentz boosts can be neglected for other cosmological quantities such as polarization maps or higher-point functions.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Brane Localization and Stabilization via Regional Physics

Extra-dimensional scenarios have become widespread among particle and gravitational theories of physics to address several outstanding problems, including cosmic acceleration, the weak hierarchy problem, and the quantization of gravity. In general, the topology and geometry of the full spacetime manifold will be non-trivial, even if our ordinary dimensions have the topology of their covering space. Most compact manifolds are inhomogeneous, even if they admit a homogeneous geometry, and it will be physically relevant where in the extra-dimensions one is located. In this letter, we explore the use of both local and global effects in a braneworld scenario to naturally provide position-dependent forces that determine and stabilize the location of a single brane. For illustrative purposes, we consider the 2-dimensional hyperbolic horn and the Euclidean cone as toy models of the extra-dimensional manifold, and add a brane wrapped around one of the two spatial dimensions. We calculate the total energy due to brane tension and bending (extrinsic curvature) as well as that due to the Casimir energy of a bulk scalar satisfying a Dirchlet boundary condition on the brane. From the competition of at least two of these effects there can exist a stable minimum of the effective potential for the brane location. However, on more generic spaces (on which more symmetries are broken) any one of these effects may be sufficient to stabilize the brane. We discuss this as an example of physics that is neither local nor global, but regional.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Constraints on the Topology of the Universe: Extension to General Geometries

We present an update to the search for a non-trivial topology of the universe by searching for matching circle pairs in the cosmic microwave background using the WMAP 7 year data release. We extend the exisiting bounds to encompass a wider range of possible topologies by searching for matching circle pairs with opening angles 10 degree < α< 90 degree and separation angles 11 degree < θ< 180 degree. The extended search reveal two small anomalous regions in the CMB sky. Numerous pairs of well-matched circles are found where both circles pass through one or the other of those regions. As this is not the signature of any known manifold, but is a likely consequence of contamination in those sky regions, we repeat the search excluding circle pairs where both pass through either of the two regions. We then find no statistically significant pairs of matched circles, and so no hints of a non-trivial topology. The absence of matched circles increases the lower limit on the length of the shortest closed null geodesic that self-intersects at our location in the universe (equivalently the injectivity radius at our location) to 98.5% of the diameter of the last scattering surface or approximately 26 Gpc. It extends the limit to any manifolds in which the intersecting arcs of said geodesic form an angle greater than 10^o.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Using quasars as standard clocks for measuring cosmological redshift

We report hitherto unnoticed patterns in quasar light curves. We characterize segments of quasars' light curves with the slopes of the straight lines fit through them. These slopes appear to be directly related to the quasars' redshifts. Alternatively, using only global shifts in time and flux, we are able to find significant overlaps between the light curves of different pairs of quasars by fitting the ratio of their redshifts. We are then able to reliably determine the redshift of one quasar from another. This implies that one can use quasars as standard clocks, as we explicitly demonstrate by constructing two independent methods of finding the redshift of a quasar from its light curve.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

First second of leptons

A poorly constrained parameter in the Standard Model of Cosmology is the lepton asymmetry l = \sum_f l_f=\sum_f(n_f+n_{ν_f})/s. Each flavour asymmetry l_f with f=e, μ, τ is the sum of the net particle density of the charged leptons n_f and their corresponding neutrinos, normalized with the entropy density s. Constraints on l_f \leq O(0.1) from BBN and CMB allow for lepton flavour asymmetries orders of magnitudes larger then the baryon asymmetry b ~ 10^{-10}. In this article we show how such large lepton (flavour) asymmetries influence the early universe, in particular the freeze out of WIMPs and the cosmic QCD transition.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

The Oddly Quiet Universe: How the CMB challenges cosmology's standard model

We discuss selected large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Specfically, these include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with one another and with the geometry and direction of motion of the Solar System, and the unexpected absence of two-point angular corellations especially outside the region of the sky most contaminated by the Galaxy. We discuss these findings in relation to expectations from standard inflationary cosmology. This paper is adapted from a talk given by one of us (GDS) at the SEENET-2011 meeting in August 2011 on the Serbian bank of the Danube River.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Modifying Gravity: You Can't Always Get What You Want

The combination of GR and the Standard Model disagrees with numerous observations on scales from our Solar System up. In the concordance model of cosmology, these contradictions are removed or alleviated by the introduction of three completely independent new components of stress-energy -- the inflaton, dark matter, and dark energy. Each of these in its turn is meant to have (or to currently) dominate the dynamics of the universe. There is still no non-gravitational evidence for any of these dark sectors; nor for the required extensions of the standard model. An alternative is to imagine that GR itself must be modified. Certain coincidences of scale even suggest that one might expect not to have to make three independent. Because they must address the most different types of data, attempts to replace dark matter with modified gravity are the most controversial. A phenomenological model (or family of models), Modified Newtonian Dynamics, has, over the last few years seen several covariant realizations. We discuss a number of challenges that any model that seeks to replace dark matter with modified gravity must face: the loss of Birkhoff's Theorem, and the calculational simplifications it implies; the failure to explain clusters, whether static or interacting, and the consequent need to introduce dark matter of some form, whether hot dark matter neutrinos, or dark fields that arise in new sectors of the modified gravity theory; the intrusion of cosmological expansion into the modified force law, that arises precisely because of the coincidence in scale between the centripetal acceleration at which Newtonian gravity fails in galaxies, and the cosmic acceleration. We conclude with the observation that, although modified gravity may indeed manage to replace dark matter, it is likely to do so by becoming or incorporating, a dark matter theory itself.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2011

Retarded Green's Functions In Perturbed Spacetimes For Cosmology and Gravitational Physics

Electromagnetic and gravitational radiation do not propagate solely on the null cone in a generic curved spacetime. They develop "tails," traveling at all speeds equal to and less than unity. If sizeable, this off-the-null-cone effect could mean objects at cosmological distances, such as supernovae, appear dimmer than they really are. Their light curves may be distorted relative to their flat spacetime counterparts. These in turn could affect how we infer the properties and evolution of the universe or the objects it contains. Within the gravitational context, the tail effect induces a self-force that causes a compact object orbiting a massive black hole to deviate from an otherwise geodesic path. This needs to be taken into account when modeling the gravitational waves expected from such sources. Motivated by these considerations, we develop perturbation theory for solving the massless scalar, photon and graviton retarded Green's functions in perturbed spacetimes, assuming these Green's functions are known in the background spacetime. In particular, we elaborate on the theory in perturbed Minkowski spacetime in significant detail; and apply our techniques to compute the retarded Green's functions in the weak field limit of the Kerr spacetime to first order in the black hole's mass and angular momentum. Our methods build on and generalizes work appearing in the literature on this topic to date, and lays the foundation for a thorough, first principles based, investigation of how light propagates over cosmological distances, within a spatially flat inhomogeneous Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) universe. This perturbative scheme applied to the graviton Green's function, when pushed to higher orders, may provide approximate analytic (or semi-analytic) results for the self-force problem in the weak field limits of the Schwarzschild and Kerr black hole geometries.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Testing the statistical isotropy of large scale structure with multipole vectors

A fundamental assumption in cosmology is that of statistical isotropy - that the universe, on average, looks the same in every direction in the sky. Statistical isotropy has recently been tested stringently using Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data, leading to intriguing results on large angular scales. Here we apply some of the same techniques used in the CMB to the distribution of galaxies on the sky. Using the multipole vector approach, where each multipole in the harmonic decomposition of galaxy density field is described by unit vectors and an amplitude, we lay out the basic formalism of how to reconstruct the multipole vectors and their statistics out of galaxy survey catalogs. We apply the algorithm to synthetic galaxy maps, and study the sensitivity of the multipole vector reconstruction accuracy to the density, depth, sky coverage, and pixelization of galaxy catalog maps.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Bias in low-multipole CMB reconstructions

The large-angle, low multipole cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a unique view of the largest angular scales in the Universe. Study of these scales is hampered by the facts that we have only one Universe to observe, only a few independent samples of the underlying statistical distribution of these modes, and an incomplete sky to observe due to the interposing Galaxy. Techniques for reconstructing a full sky from partial sky data are well known and have been applied to the large angular scales. In this work we critically study the reconstruction process and show that, in practise, the reconstruction is biased due to leakage of information from the region obscured by foregrounds to the region used for the reconstruction. We conclude that, despite being suboptimal in a technical sense, using the unobscured region without reconstructing is the most robust measure of the true CMB sky. We also show that for noise free data reconstructing using the usual optimal, unbiased estimator may be employed without smoothing thus avoiding the leakage problem. Unfortunately, directly applying this to real data with noise and residual, unmasked foregrounds yields highly biased reconstructions requiring further care to apply this method successfully to real-world CMB.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Degree-scale anomalies in the CMB: localizing the first peak dip to a small patch of the north ecliptic sky

Noticeable deviations from the prediction of the fiducial LCDM cosmology are found in the angular power spectrum of the CMB. Besides large-angle anomalies, the WMAP 1st year data revealed a dip in the power spectrum at l \sim 200, which seemed to disappear in the 3rd year and subsequent angular power spectra. Using the WMAP 1st, 3rd, and 5th year data as well as the 5 year coadded data, we study the intensity and spatial distribution of this feature in order to unveil its origin and its implications for the cosmological parameters. We show that in all WMAP data releases there is a substantial suppression of the first Doppler peak in a region near the north ecliptic pole.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Pre-Hawking Radiation from a Collapsing Shell

We investigate the effect of induced massive radiation given off during the time of collapse of a massive spherically symmetric domain wall in the context of the functional Schrödinger formalism. Here we find that the introduction of mass suppresses the occupation number in the infrared regime of the induced radiation during the collapse. The suppression factor is found to be given by $e^{-βm}$, which is in agreement with the expected Planckian distribution of induced radiation. Thus a massive collapsing domain wall will radiate mostly (if not exclusively) massless scalar fields, making it difficult for the domain wall to shed any global quantum numbers and evaporate before the horizon is formed.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2010

Large-angle anomalies in the CMB

We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction of motion of the Solar System, and the unusually low power at these largest scales. We discuss these findings in relation to expectation from standard inflationary cosmology, their statistical significance, the tools to study them, and the various attempts to explain them.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Effects of a Cut, Lorentz-Boosted sky on the Angular Power Spectrum

The largest fluctuation in the observed CMB temperature field is the dipole, its origin being usually attributed to the Doppler Effect - the Earth's velocity with respect to the CMB rest frame. The lowest order boost correction to temperature multipolar coefficients appears only as a second order correction in the temperature power spectrum, $C_{\ell}$. Since v/c - 10-3, this effect can be safely ignored when estimating cosmological parameters [4-7]. However, by cutting our galaxy from the CMB sky we induce large-angle anisotropies in the data. In this case, the corrections to the cut-sky $C_{\ell}$s show up already at first order in the boost parameter. In this paper we investigate this issue and argue that this effect might turn out to be important when reconstructing the power spectrum from the cut-sky data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

It's Hard to Learn How Gravity and Electromagnetism Couple

We construct the most general effective Lagrangian coupling gravity and electromagnetism up to mass dimension 6 by enumerating all possible non-minimal coupling terms respecting both diffeomorphism and gauge invariance. In all, there are only two unique terms after field re-definitions; one is known to arise from loop effects in QED while the other is a parity violating term which may be generated by weak interactions within the standard model of particle physics. We show that neither the cosmological propagation of light nor, contrary to earlier claims, solar system tests of General Relativity are useful probes of these terms. These non-minimal couplings of gravity and electromagnetism may remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2010

Surprising phenomena in a rich new class of inflationary models

We report on a new class of fast-roll inflationary models. In a huge part of its parameter space, inflationary perturbations exhibit quite unusual phenomena such as scalar and tensor modes freezing out at widely different times, as well as scalar modes reentering the horizon during inflation. In another, narrower range of parameters, this class of models agrees with observations. One specific point in parameter space is characterized by extraordinary behavior of the scalar perturbations. Freeze-out of scalar perturbations as well as particle production at horizon crossing are absent. Also the behavior of the perturbations around this quasi-de Sitter background is dual to a quantum field theory in flat space-time. Finally, the form of the primordial power spectrum is determined by the interaction between different modes of scalar perturbations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Missing Power vs low-l Alignments in the Cosmic Microwave Background: No Correlation in the Standard Cosmological Model

On large angular scales (greater than about 60 degrees), the two-point angular correlation function of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as measured (outside of the plane of the Galaxy) by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, shows significantly lower large-angle correlations than expected from the standard inflationary cosmological model. Furthermore, when derived from the full CMB sky, the two lowest cosmologically interesting multipoles, the quadrupole (l=2) and the octopole (l=3), are unexpectedly aligned with each other. Using randomly generated full-sky and cut-sky maps, we investigate whether these anomalies are correlated at a statistically significant level. We conclusively demonstrate that, assuming Gaussian random and statistically isotropic CMB anisotropies, there is no statistically significant correlation between the missing power on large angular scales in the CMB and the alignment of the l=2 and l=3 multipoles. The chance to measure the sky with both such a lack of large-angle correlation and such an alignment of the low multipoles is thus quantified to be below 10^{-6}.

astro-ph.CO↗