arXiv subjects

Heliudson Bernardo

Publications and source records attributed to Heliudson Bernardo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Four-Fermion Condensates in Curved Spacetimes: A Functional Approach

Four-fermion interactions appear in effective descriptions of particle physics, many-body systems, and gravitational theories with fermions. Although the same local operator may enter perturbative scattering, a vacuum Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) instability, or finite-density Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) pairing, these regimes are distinguished by their interaction channels, quadratic kernels, and quantum states. We give a pedagogical functional account of these distinctions and compute the local one-loop contribution of a scalar-channel NJL mean field to the energy-momentum tensor in curved spacetime. We first display the state data in the in-out functional and construct the closed-time-path functional required for an in-in expectation value. For the NJL saddle, a Hubbard-Stratonovich field shifts the fermion mass, and the parity-even Dirac determinant generates local volume, curvature, and curvature-squared operators. We find the covariant quantum effective action before specializing to a spatially flat FLRW background and derive the corresponding energy density and pressure. The constant-condensate limit agrees with the direct flat-space mean-field calculation. We also explain which additional state and channel data are required for finite-density BCS pairing and comment on renormalization conditions in curved spacetimes.

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arXiv2026

Coherent states versus Glauber-Sudarshan States: Bootstrapping, Schwinger-Keldysh Contours and Lefschetz Thimbles

We investigate how, in a highly constrained system such as a four-dimensional diffeomorphism-invariant theory with vanishing bulk Hamiltonian and non-trivial interactions between the metric and additional degrees of freedom, transient excited states--called Glauber-Sudarshan states--can be constructed over supersymmetric minima. These states are generically non-supersymmetric and, although they are not minima of any potential, they admit positive-energy metric configurations that effectively mimic four-dimensional quasi-de Sitter backgrounds. We analyze how such states differ from conventional coherent states by studying their time evolution both in the canonical formalism--via boundary Hamiltonians--and in the in-in path-integral framework through Schwinger-Keldysh contours. We also examine the consistency of the construction across three complementary descriptions: the 1PI effective action, the Wilsonian (or exact renormalization group) effective action, and the Picard-Lefschetz (Lefschetz-thimble) decomposition of the Schwinger-Keldysh path integral, which provides the trans-series organization of the theory. In the presence of gauge-fixing and ghost sectors, we show that the dynamics of these transient configurations are governed by a nontrivial bootstrap relation that simultaneously constrains their behavior near supersymmetric Minkowski vacua and along quasi-de Sitter-like trajectories. Finally, we examine the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, the notion of time in the presence of transient excited states, and the emergence of the bulk Schrodinger equation. We further show that these states admit a natural structural interpretation analogous to the vertex operators that arise in the two-dimensional world-sheet formulation of string theory.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Gravity, de Sitter Space, and Normalizability

We propose a resolution to the longstanding problem of perturbative normalizability in canonical quantum gravity of the Lorentzian Chern-Simons-Kodama (CSK) state with a positive cosmological constant in four dimensions. While the CSK state is an exact solution to the Hamiltonian constraint in the self-dual formulation and semiclassically describes de Sitter spacetime, its physical viability has been questioned due to apparent nonnormalizability and CPT asymmetry. Starting from a nonperturbative holomorphic inner product derived from the reality conditions of the self-dual Ashtekar variables, we show that the linearization, in terms of gravitons, of the CSK state is perturbatively normalizable for super-Planckian cosmological constant. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a rotation in phase space, a generalization of Thiemann's complexifier, can render the full perturbative state normalizable for all $Λ$ by analytically continuing the non-convergent modes in phase space. This provides the first concrete realization of a CPT-breaking, yet normalizable, gravitational vacuum state rooted in a nonperturbative quantum gravity framework. Our results establish the CSK state-long thought formal-as a viable candidate for the ground state of quantum gravity in de Sitter space.

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arXiv2025

Heterotic Warm Inflation

We propose a two-field model of warm inflation motivated by a heterotic string construction, involving an axion and a dilaton-like scalar field with non-trivial kinetic mixing. Gauge-field interactions generate dissipation and thermal corrections affecting both fields. A systematic numerical analysis reveals a range of dynamical regimes, including effectively single-field and multi-field behavior. We find that warm inflation is typically realized along the axion direction, while thermal corrections tend to hinder sustained dilaton-driven inflation over most of the parameter space. Although configurations exist in which the dilaton becomes dynamically relevant, particularly near the end of inflation, the majority of viable solutions are effectively single-field and axion-dominated. These results point to a dynamical mechanism in heterotic-inspired models that naturally favors axion-driven warm inflation while limiting the role of the dilaton.

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arXiv2025

Can weak-gravity, causality-violation arguments constrain modified gravity?

We investigate limitations of causality arguments from flat-spacetime amplitudes, based on the eikonal limit of gravitational scattering, to place constraints on modified gravity. We show that causality constraints are only valid in the weak-gravity regime even for transplanckian scattering, and that such constraints are much less stringent than astrophysical ones, obtained for example from gravitational waves emitted in black hole coalescence. Special attention is given to the weakness of causality constraints on dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, but our results apply to other modified gravity theories as well. In the context of that theory, we also discuss how to obtain a time-delay formula from black hole, neutron stars, and shockwave solutions. For scattering with compact objects, we explicitly show that time delays are greatly suppressed by the ratio of the object's mass to the impact parameter, so time advances only occur greatly outside the cut off of the theory. For the shockwave solution, we find that the time delay is always positive within the regime of validity of the solution. We also comment on the impact of graviton nonlinearities for time-delay calculations in the nonlinear, strong gravity regime. We conclude that amplitude-based causality constraints on modified gravity are typically not stringent relative to other experimental and observational bounds.

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arXiv2025

A Dark Matter Fermionic Quantum Fluid from Standard Model Dynamics

We present a model of dark matter as a superconducting fluid of Cooper pairs of right handed neutrinos or of vector-like quarks. The superconducting dark matter is induced by attractive channels in the Standard Model Higgs and color sectors of the Standard Model, respectively. We show that, for each case, the solution to the gap equation provides viable dark matter candidates for suitable chemical potential values. The mechanism yields an ultra-light neutrino condensate with a mass of $m_{\rm DM} \sim 10^{-19} \text{eV}$ or a vector-like quark condensate with wide range of possible masses. Both cosmological and particle physics constraints on the model lead to a connection between the number of effective relativistic species $N_{\rm eff}$, and the chemical potential and CMB temperature at the time of fermion creation. We also find a relation between the superconducting fermion and baryon densities, with implications for the coincidence between the dark matter and baryon densities in standard cosmology. Given the natural $\text{eV}$ scale of neutrinos, this mechanism may have implications for the Hubble tension.

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arXiv2025

The Cosmological Constant from a Quantum Gravitational $θ$-Vacua and the Gravitational Hall Effect

We provide a new perspective on the cosmological constant by exploring the background-independent Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of general relativity. The Chern-Simons-Kodama state of quantum gravity, a generalization of the Hartle-Hawking and Vilenkin states, has a striking structural similarity to the topological field theory of the quantum Hall effect. As a result, we study the gravitational topological $θ$-sectors in analogy to Yang-Mills theory. We find that the cosmological constant $Λ$ is intimately linked to the $θ$-parameter by $θ=12π^2/(Λ\ell^2_{\rm Pl}) \mod 2π$ due to the fact that Chern-Simons-Kodama state must live in a particular $θ$-sector. This result is shown in the canonical, non-perturbative formalism. Furthermore, we explain how the physics of the Hamiltonian constraint is analogous to the quantum Hall effect, with the cosmological constant playing the role of a quantum gravitational Hall resistivity. These relations suggest that $Λ$ is topologically protected against perturbative graviton loop corrections, analogous to the robustness of quantized Hall conductance against disorder in a metal.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Vacuum Amplification of Chiral Gravitational Waves and the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background

We investigate cosmological vacuum amplification of gravitational waves in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We develop a comprehensive framework to compute graviton production induced by the parity violating Pontryagin coupling and study its imprint on the stochastic gravitational wave background energy power spectrum. We explore gravitational vacuum amplification in four concrete scenarios for the evolution of the Chern-Simons pseudoscalar. We show that a parity-violating contribution dominates over an initially flat spectrum when the velocity of the pseudoscalar quickly interpolates between two asymptotically constant values or when it is nonvanishing and constant through a finite period of time. This is also the case when we parametrize the pseudoscalar evolution by a perfect fluid with radiation- and dust-like equations of state for large enough values of its energy density. The resulting spectra are compared with the sensitivity curves of current and future gravitational wave observational searches.

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arXiv2024

Nonrelativistic superfluids in cosmology from a relativistic approach: Revisiting two formulations of superfluidity

Two formulations of superfluidity are reviewed: Landau's phenomenological two-fluid model and a relativistic effective field theory description. We demonstrate how the two-fluid formalism can be recovered from the nonrelativistic limit of the relativistic effective theory at finite temperatures. We show how self-gravitating, nonrelativistic superfluids are obtained from the Newtonian limit of the relativistic approach on curved spaces. The concepts are presented in an accessible manner for readers who may not be deeply familiar with superfluidity from a condensed matter perspective.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

The Non-triviality of Dynamical Chern-Simons Gravity and the Standard Model

Given the growing interest in gravitational-wave and cosmological parity-violating effects in dynamical Chern-Simons (dCS) gravity, it is crucial to investigate whether the scalar-gravitational Pontryagin term in dCS persists when formulated in the context of the $\text{U(1)}_{\text{B}-\text{L}}$ anomaly in the Standard Model (SM). In particular, it has been argued that dCS gravity can be reduced to Einstein gravity after ''rotating away'' the gravitational-Pontryagin coupling into the phase of the Weinberg operator $\unicode{x2013}$ analogous to the rotation of the axion zero-mode into the quark mass matrix. We find that dCS is nontrivial if the scalar field $ϕ$ has significant space-time dependence from dynamics. We provide a comprehensive consideration of the dCS classical and quantum symmetries relevant for embedding a dCS sector in the SM. We find that, because of the B-L chiral gravitational anomaly, the scalar-Pontryagin term cannot be absorbed by a field redefinition. Assuming a minimal extension of the SM, we also find that a coupling of the dCS scalar with right-handed neutrinos induces both the scalar-Pontryagin coupling and an axion-like phase in the dimension-five Weinberg operator. We comment on the issue of gauging the $\text{U(1)}_{\text{B}-\text{L}}$, the observational effects with these two operators present for upcoming experiments, and the origin of dCS gravity in string theory.

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arXiv2023

The inheritance of energy conditions: Revisiting no-go theorems in string compactifications

One of the fundamental challenges in string theory is to derive realistic four-dimensional cosmological backgrounds from it despite strict consistency conditions that constrain its possible low-energy backgrounds. In this work, we focus on energy conditions as covariant and background-independent consistency requirements in order to classify possible backgrounds coming from low-energy string theory in two steps. Firstly, we show how supergravity actions obey many relevant energy conditions under some reasonable assumptions. Remarkably, we find that the energy conditions are satisfied even in the presence of objects which individually violate them due to the tadpole cancellation condition. Thereafter, we list a set of conditions for a higher-dimensional energy condition to imply the corresponding lower-dimensional one, thereby categorizing the allowed low-energy solutions. As for any no-go theorem, our aim is to highlight the assumptions that must be circumvented for deriving four-dimensional spacetimes that necessarily violate these energy conditions, with emphasis on cosmological backgrounds.

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arXiv2023

Brane motion in a compact space: adiabatic perturbations of brane-bulk coupled fluids

When a brane is moving in a compact space, bulk-probing signals originating at the brane can arrive back at the brane outside the lightcone of the emitting event. In this letter, we study how adiabatic perturbations in the brane fluid, coupled to a bulk fluid, propagate in the moving brane. In the non-dissipative regime, we find an effective sound speed for such perturbations, depending on the brane and bulk fluid energy densities, equations of state, and brane speed. In the tight-coupling approximation, the effective sound speed might be superluminal for brane and bulk fluids that satisfy the strong energy condition. This has immediate consequences for brane-world cosmology models.

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arXiv2023

Superfluid dark matter flow around cosmic strings

We consider a cosmic string moving through a gas of superfluid dark matter (SFDM) particles and analyze how it affects the dark matter distribution. We look at two different cases: first, a cosmic string passing through an already condensed region, and second, through a region that is not yet condensed. In the former, the string induces a weak shock in the superfluid, and the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) survives. In the latter, a wake of larger density is formed behind the string, and we study under which conditions a BEC can be formed in the virialized region of the wake. By requiring the thermalization of the DM particles and the overlap of their de Broglie wavelengths inside the wake, we obtain an upper bound on the mass of the dark matter particles on the order of 10 eV, which is compatible with typical SFDM models.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Addressing the Hubble and $S_8$ Tensions with a Kinetically Mixed Dark Sector

We present a kinetically mixed dark sector (KMIX) model to address the Hubble and $S_8$ tensions. Inspired from string theory, our model includes two fields: an axion, which plays a role similar to the scalar field in early dark energy models, and a dilaton. This theory differs from other axio-dilaton models aimed at the Hubble tension in that there is necessarily kinetic mixing between the two fields which allows for efficient energy transfer from the axion into the dilaton which has $w\approx1$. As a direct consequence of these dynamics, we find the model does not need to resort to a fine-tuned potential to solve the Hubble tension and naturally accommodates a standard axion potential. Furthermore, the axion will necessarily makeup a small (fuzzy) fraction of $Ω_{\rm cdm}$ once it begins to oscillate at the bottom of its potential and will suppress the growth of perturbations on scales sensitive to $S_8$. Interestingly, the scale of the potential for the dilaton has to be small, $\lesssim \mathcal{O}(10~{\rm meV})^4$, suggesting the possibility for a connection to dark energy. Implementing the dynamics for the background and perturbations in a modified Boltzmann code we calculate the CMB and matter power spectra for our theory. Exploring the parameter space of our model, we find regions which can accommodate a $\sim 10\%$ increase in $H_0$ from the Planck inferred value and $S_8$ values that are consistent with large-scale structure constraints.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Non-linear stability of $α'$-corrected Friedmann equations

We study the non-linear stability of fixed-point solutions to the $α'$-exact equations from O$(d,d)$ invariant cosmology, with and without matter perturbations. Previous non-linear analysis in the literature is revisited, and its compatibility with known linear perturbation results is shown. Some formal aspects of cosmological perturbations in duality invariant cosmology are discussed, and we show the existence of time-reparameterization invariant variables for perturbations.

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arXiv2022

Modified gravity approaches to the cosmological constant problem

The cosmological constant and its phenomenology remain among the greatest puzzles in theoretical physics. We review how modifications of Einstein's general relativity could alleviate the different problems associated with it that result from the interplay of classical gravity and quantum field theory. We introduce a modern and concise language to describe the problems associated with its phenomenology, and inspect no-go theorems and their loopholes to motivate the approaches discussed here. Constrained gravity approaches exploit minimal departures from general relativity; massive gravity introduces mass to the graviton; Horndeski theories lead to the breaking of translational invariance of the vacuum; and models with extra dimensions change the symmetries of the vacuum. We also review screening mechanisms that have to be present in some of these theories if they aim to recover the success of general relativity on small scales as well. Finally, we summarise the statuses of these models in their attempt to solve the different cosmological constant problems while being able to account for current astrophysical and cosmological observations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Towards a Dark Sector Model from String Theory

An embedding of a unified dark sector model into string theory with the following features is proposed: The model-independent axion descending from the Kalb-Ramond 2-form field is identified with the dark-matter field, and the real part of a Kähler modulus field -- the ``radius'' of one of the extra spatial dimensions -- accounts for dark energy. The expectation value of the dilaton field is stabilized by a gaugino condensation mechanism. A dark-energy potential corresponding to a realistic low energy scale results from some gentle tuning of the stabilized expectation value of the dilaton. The resulting potential reproduces the one in a previous dark-sector model proposed by two of us.

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arXiv2021

Contracting Cosmologies and the Swampland

We consider the cosmology obtained using scalar fields with a negative potential energy, such as employed to obtain an Ekpyrotic phase of contraction. Applying the covariant entropy bound to the tower of states dictated by the distance conjecture, we find that the relative slope of the potential $|V^{\prime}| / |V|$ is bounded from below by a constant of the order one in Planck units. This is consistent with the requirement to obtain slow Ekpyrotic contraction. We also derive a refined condition on the potential which holds near local minima of a negative potential.

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