arXiv subjects

Hassan Firouzjahi

Publications and source records attributed to Hassan Firouzjahi.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Clustering Fossil from Primordial Gravitational Waves in Anisotropic Inflation

Inflationary models can correlate small-scale density perturbations with the long-wavelength gravitational waves (GW) in the form of the Tensor-Scalar-Scalar (TSS) bispectrum. This correlation affects the mass-distribution in the Universe and leads to the off-diagonal correlations of the density field modes in the form of the quadrupole anisotropy. Interestingly, this effect survives even after the tensor mode decays when it re-enters the horizon, known as the fossil effect. As a result, the off-diagonal correlation function between different Fourier modes of the density fluctuations can be thought as a way to probe the large-scale GW and the mechanism of inflation behind the fossil effect. Models of single field slow roll inflation generically predict a very small quadrupole anisotropy in TSS while in models of multiple fields inflation this effect can be observable. Therefore this large scale quadrupole anisotropy can be thought as a spectroscopy for different inflationary models. In addition, in models of anisotropic inflation there exists quadrupole anisotropy in curvature perturbation power spectrum. Here we consider TSS in models of anisotropic inflation and show that the shape of quadrupole anisotropy is different than in single field models. In addition in these models the quadrupole anisotropy is projected into the preferred direction and its amplitude is proportional to $g_* N_e$ where $N_e$ is the number of e-folds and $g_*$ is the amplitude of quadrupole anisotropy in curvature perturbation power spectrum. We use this correlation function to estimate the large scale GW as well as the preferred direction and discuss the detectability of the signal in the galaxy surveys like Euclid and 21 cm surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Effective Field Theory of non-Attractor Inflation

We present the model-independent studies of non attractor inflation in the context of effective field theory (EFT) of inflation. Within the EFT approach two independent branches of non-attractor inflation solutions are discovered in which a near scale-invariant curvature perturbation power spectrum is generated from the interplay between the variation of sound speed and the second slow roll parameter η. The first branch captures and extends the previously studied models of non-attractor inflation in which the curvature perturbation is not frozen on super-horizon scales and the single field non-Gaussianity consistency condition is violated. We present the general expression for the amplitude of local-type non-Gaussianity in this branch. The second branch is new in which the curvature perturbation is frozen on super-horizon scales and the single field non-Gaussianity consistency condition does hold in the squeezed limit. Depending on the model parameters, the shape of bispectrum in this branch changes from an equilateral configuration to a folded configuration while the amplitude of non-Gaussianity is less than unity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

Fingerprints of Anomalous Primordial Universe on the Abundance of Large Scale Structures

We study the predictions of anomalous inflationary models on the abundance of structures in large scale structure observations. The anomalous features encoded in primordial curvature perturbation power spectrum are (a): localized feature in momentum space, (b): hemispherical asymmetry and (c): statistical anisotropies. We present a model-independent expression relating the number density of structures to the changes in the matter density variance. Models with localized feature can alleviate the tension between observations and numerical simulations of cold dark matter structures on galactic scales as a possible solution to the missing satellite problem. In models with hemispherical asymmetry we show that the abundance of structures becomes asymmetric depending on the direction of observation to sky. In addition, we study the effects of scale-dependent dipole amplitude on the abundance of structures and, using the quasars data, we find the upper bound $n_A<0.6$ for the spectral index of the dipole asymmetry. In all cases there is a critical mass scale $M_c$ in which for $M M_c)$ the enhancement in variance induced from anomalous feature decreases (increases) the abundance of dark matter structures in Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Inflationary power asymmetry from primordial domain walls

We study the asymmetric primordial fluctuations in a model of inflation in which translational invariance is broken by a domain wall. We calculate the corrections to the power spectrum of curvature perturbations; they are anisotropic and contain dipole, quadrupole, and higher multipoles with non-trivial scale-dependent amplitudes. Inspired by observations of these multipole asymmetries in terms of two-point correlations and variance in real space, we demonstrate that this model can explain the observed anomalous power asymmetry of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky, including its characteristic feature that the dipole dominates over higher multipoles. We test the viability of the model and place approximate constraints on its parameters by using observational values of dipole, quadrupole, and octopole amplitudes of the asymmetry measured by a local-variance estimator. We find that a configuration of the model in which the CMB sphere does not intersect the domain wall during inflation provides a good fit to the data. We further derive analytic expressions for the corrections to the CMB temperature covariance matrix, or angular power spectra, which can be used in future statistical analysis of the model in spherical harmonic space.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry from general initial state during inflation

We consider a general initial state for inflation as the mechanism for generating scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry. An observable scale-dependent non-Gaussianity is generated that leads to observable hemispherical asymmetry from the super-horizon long mode modulation. We show that the amplitude of dipole asymmetry falls off exponentially on small angular scales which can address the absence of dipole asymmetry at these scales.In addition, depending on the nature of non-vaccum initial state, the amplitude of the dipole asymmetry has oscillatory features which can be detected in a careful CMB map analysis. Furthermore, we show that the non-vacuum initial state provides a natural mechanism for enhancing the super horizon long mode perturbation as required to generate the dipole asymmetry.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

CMB hemispherical asymmetry from non-linear isocurvature perturbations

We investigate whether non-adiabatic perturbations from inflation could produce an asymmetric distribution of temperature anisotropies on large angular scales in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We use a generalised non-linear $δN$ formalism to calculate the non-Gaussianity of the primordial density and isocurvature perturbations due to the presence of non-adiabatic, but approximately scale-invariant field fluctuations during multi-field inflation. This local-type non-Gaussianity leads to a correlation between very long wavelength inhomogeneities, larger than our observable horizon, and smaller scale fluctuations in the radiation and matter density. Matter isocurvature perturbations contribute primarily to low CMB multipoles and hence can lead to a hemispherical asymmetry on large angular scales, with negligible asymmetry on smaller scales. In curvaton models, where the matter isocurvature perturbation is partly correlated with the primordial density perturbation, we are unable to obtain a significant asymmetry on large angular scales while respecting current observational constraints on the observed quadrupole. However in the axion model, where the matter isocurvature and primordial density perturbations are uncorrelated, we find it may be possible to obtain a significant asymmetry due to isocurvature modes on large angular scales. Such an isocurvature origin for the hemispherical asymmetry would naturally give rise to a distinctive asymmetry in the CMB polarisation on large scales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

The TT, TB, EB and BB correlations in anisotropic inflation

The ongoing and future experiments will measure the B-mode from different sky coverage and frequency bands, with the potential to reveal non-trivial features in polarization map. In this work we study the TT, TB, EB and BB correlations associated with the B-mode polarization of CMB map in models of charged anisotropic inflation. The model contains a chaotic-type large field complex inflaton which is charged under the $U(1)$ gauge field. We calculate the statistical anisotropies generated in the power spectra of the curvature perturbation, the tensor perturbation and their cross-correlation. It is shown that the asymmetry in tensor power spectrum is a very sensitive probe of the gauge coupling. While the level of statistical anisotropy in temperature power spectrum can be small and satisfy the observational bounds, the interactions from the gauge coupling can induce large directional dependence in tensor modes. This will leave interesting anisotropic fingerprints in various correlations involving the B-mode polarization such as the TB cross-correlation which may be detected in upcoming Planck polarization data. In addition, the TT correlation receives an anisotropic contribution from the tensor sector which naturally decays after $l \gtrsim 100$. We expect that the mechanism of using tensor sector to induce asymmetry at low $l$ to be generic which can also be applied to address other low $l$ CMB anomalies.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

CMB statistical anisotropies of classical and quantum origins

We examine the impact of different anisotropic relics on inflation, in particular the predictions on the density perturbations. These relics can be the source of the large scale anomalies in the cosmic microwave background. There are two different types of background relics, one from the matter sector and the other purely from the metric. Although the angular-dependence of the statistical anisotropy in both cases are degenerate, the scale-dependence are observationally distinctive. In addition, we demonstrate that non-Bunch-Davies vacuum states can extend the statistical anisotropy to much shorter scales, and leave a scale-dependence that is insensitive to the different backgrounds but sensitive to the initial quantum state.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

CMB Hemispherical Asymmetry: Long Mode Modulation and non-Gaussianity

The observed hemispherical asymmetry in CMB map can be explained by modulation from a long wavelength super horizon mode which non-linearly couples to the CMB modes. We address the criticism in [1] about the role of non-Gaussianities in squeezed and equilateral configurations in generating hemispherical asymmetry from the long mode modulation. We stress that the modulation is sensitive to the non-Gaussianity in the squeezed limit. In addition, we demonstrate the validity of our approach in providing a consistency condition relating the amplitude of dipole asymmetry to f_{NL} in the squeezed limit.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Statistical Anisotropies in Gravitational Waves in Solid Inflation

Solid inflation can support a long period of anisotropic inflation. We calculate the statistical anisotropies in the scalar and tensor power spectra and their cross-correlation in anisotropic solid inflation. The tensor-scalar cross-correlation can either be positive or negative, which impacts the statistical anisotropies of the TT and TB spectra in CMB map more significantly compared with the tensor self-correlation. The tensor power spectrum contains potentially comparable contributions from quadrupole and octopole angular patterns, which is different from the power spectra of scalar, the cross-correlation or the scalar bispectrum, where the quadrupole type statistical anisotropy dominates over octopole.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Primordial Anisotropies in Gauged Hybrid Inflation

We study primordial anisotropies generated in the model of gauged hybrid inflation in which the complex waterfall field is charged under a $U(1)$ gauge field. Primordial anisotropies are generated either actively during inflation or from inhomogeneities modulating the surface of end of inflation during waterfall transition. We present a consistent $δN$ mechanism to calculate the anisotropic power spectrum and bispectrum. We show that the primordial anisotropies generated at the surface of end of inflation do not depend on the number of e-folds and therefore do not produce dangerously large anisotropies associated with the IR modes. Furthermore, one can find the parameter space that the anisotropies generated from the surface of end of inflation cancel the anisotropies generated during inflation, therefore relaxing the constrains on model parameters imposed from IR anisotropies. We also show that the gauge field fluctuations induce a red-tilted power spectrum so the averaged power spectrum from the gauge field can change the total power spectrum from blue to red. Therefore, hybrid inflation, once gauged under a $U(1)$ field, can be consistent with the cosmological observations.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

Scalar-Tensor Anti-Cross-Correlation does not Help to Reconcile the Tension between BICEP2 and Planck

We examine the recent proposal [1] that the anti-cross-correlation of the scalar and tensor primordial fluctuations reconciles the tension between BICEP2 and Planck observations. We show that unfortunately the contribution from the scalar-tensor correlation to the CMB temperature power spectrum vanishes once summed over the angular mode $m$ so the tension between BICEP2 and Planck can not be reconciled. The reason is that one has to use the spin-weighted spherical harmonics when projecting fields with nonzero spins into the CMB sky. These nonzero spin-weighted spherical harmonics are subject to orthogonality conditions when summed over the angular direction and thus the desired cross-correlation between the scalar and tensor perturbations in CMB map vanishes.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Jump in fluid properties of inflationary universe to reconcile scalar and tensor spectra

The recent detection of the primordial gravitational waves from the BICEP2 observation seems to be in tension with the upper bound on the amplitude of tensor perturbations from the PLANCK data. We consider a phenomenological model of inflation in which the microscopical properties of the inflationary fluid such as the equation of state $w$ or the sound speed $c_s$ jump in a sharp manner. We show that the amplitude of the scalar perturbations is controlled by a non-trivial combination of $w$ and $c_s$ before and after the phase transition while the tensor perturbations remains nearly intact. With an appropriate choice of the fluid parameters $w$ and $c_s$ one can suppress the scalar perturbation power spectrum on large scales to accommodate a large tensor amplitude with $r=0.2$ as observed by BICEP2 observation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Anisotropic Inflation with the non-Vacuum Initial State

In this work we study models of anisotropic inflation with the generalized non-vacuum initial states for the inflaton field and the gauge field. The effects of non Bunch-Davies initial condition on the anisotropic power spectrum and bispectrum are calculated. We show that the non Bunch-Davies initial state can help to reduce the fine-tuning on the anisotropic power spectrum while reducing the level of anisotropic bispectrum.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

Asymmetric Sky from the Long Mode Modulations

The observed dipole asymmetry in Cosmic Microwave Background radiation may have originated from the modulations of super-horizon long wavelength modes. In this work we unveil different aspects of asymmetries generated from the long wavelength mode modulations. We show that the same mechanism which leads to the observed CMB power spectrum dipole asymmetry from the long mode modulations also yields dipole asymmetry in (a): tensor perturbations power spectrum and (b): the halo bias parameter. These are different phenomena relevant to different cosmological histories but both share the same underlying mechanism in generating asymmetries in the sky. We obtain the set of consistency conditions relating the amplitude of dipole asymmetries generated on tensor perturbations and halo bias parameter to the amplitude of dipole asymmetry generated on CMB power spectrum. In addition, we show that this mechanism does not produce dipole asymmetry in acceleration expansion in $ΛCDM$ universe because the super-horizon curvature perturbation is conserved in this background.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Large Scale Anisotropic Bias from Primordial non-Gaussianity

In this work we study the large scale structure bias in models of anisotropic inflation. We use the Peak Background Splitting method in Excursion Set Theory to find the scale-dependent bias. We show that the amplitude of the bias is modified by a direction- dependent factor. In the specific anisotropic inflation model which we study, the scale- dependent bias vanishes at leading order when the long wavelength mode in squeezed limit is aligned with the anisotropic direction in the sky. We also extend the scale-dependent bias formulation to the general situations with primordial anisotropy. We find some selection rules indicating that some specific parts of a generic anisotropic bispectrum is picked up by the bias parameter. We argue that the anisotropic bias is mainly sourced by the angle between the anisotropic direction and the long wavelength mode in the squeezed limit.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Curvature Perturbations in Anisotropic Inflation with Symmetry Breaking

We study curvature perturbations in the anisotropic inflationary model with a complex scalar field charged under a $U(1)$ gauge field in Bianchi I universe. Due to Abelian Higgs mechanism, the gauge field receives an additional longitudinal mode. We verify that the dominant contributions into statistical anisotropies come from matter fields perturbations and one can neglect the contributions from the metric perturbations. It is shown that the contribution of longitudinal mode into the statistical anisotropy power spectrum, though exponentially small, has an opposite sign compared to the corresponding contribution from the transverse mode. We obtain an upper bound on gauge coupling in order to satisfy the observational constraints on curvature perturbations anisotropy.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

dS Solutions with co-dimension two branes in six dimensions

We investigate 4D dS solutions with co-dimension two branes and finite 4D Planck mass in six dimensions. We present the conditions under which six-dimensional compactifications with holomorphic axion-dilaton field or models with pure gravity with local sources can yield 4D dS solutions. Different classes of solutions are specified by a holomorphic function describing different embeddings of multiple conical branes. Depending on the local singularities of this holomorphic function and the topology of the compact dimension one has to introduce D3-branes creating a deficit angle equal to πand/or D4-branes with positive tensions.

hep-th↗