arXiv subjects

Jun'ichi Yokoyama

Publications and source records attributed to Jun'ichi Yokoyama.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Magneto-reheating constraints from curvature perturbations

As additional perturbative degrees of freedom, it is known that magnetic fields of inflationary origin can source curvature perturbations on super-Hubble scales. By requiring the magnetic generated curvature to remain smaller than its inflationary adiabatic counterpart during inflation and reheating, we derive new constraints on the maximal field value today, the reheating energy scale and its equation of state parameter. These bounds end up being stronger by a few order of magnitude than those associated with a possible backreaction of the magnetic field onto the background. Our results are readily applicable to any slow-roll single field inflationary models and any magnetic field having its energy density scaling as a^gamma during inflation. As an illustrative example, massive inflation is found to remain compatible with a magnetic field today Bo = 5 x 10^(-15) G for some values of gamma only if a matter dominated reheating takes place at energies larger than 10^5 GeV. Conversely, assuming gamma=-1, massive inflation followed by a matter dominated reheating cannot explain large scale magnetic fields larger than 10^(-20) G today.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Evading the pulsar constraints on the cosmic string tension in supergravity inflation

The cosmic string is a useful probe of the early Universe and may give us a clue to physics at high energy scales where any artificial particle accelerators cannot reach. Although one of the most promising tools is the cosmic microwave background, the constraint from gravitational waves is becoming so stringent that one may not hope to detect its signatures in the cosmic microwave background. In this paper, we construct a scenario that contains cosmic strings observable in the cosmic microwave background while evading the constraint imposed by the recent pulsar timing data. We argue that cosmic strings with relatively large tension are allowed by delaying the onset of the scaling regime. We also show that this scenario is naturally realized in the context of chaotic inflation in supergravity, where the phase transition is governed by the Hubble induced mass.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Consequences of a stochastic approach to the conformal invariance of inflationary correlators

We provide a general formalism to calculate the infrared correlators of multiple interacting scalar fields in the de Sitter space by means of the stochastic approach. These scalar fields are treated as test fields and hence our result is applicable to the models such as the curvaton scenario where the fields that yield initially isocurvature modes do not contribute to the cosmic energy density during inflationary expansion. The stochastic formalism combined with the argument of conformal invariance of the correlators reflecting the de Sitter isometries allows us to fix the form and amplitude of the three-point functions completely and partially for the four-point functions in terms of calculable quantities. It turns out that naive scaling argument employed in the previous literature does not necessarily hold and we derive the necessary and sufficient condition for the correlator to obey the naive scaling. We also find that correlation functions can in principle exhibit more complicated structure than argued in the literature.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Self-consistent initial conditions for primordial black hole formation

For an arbitrary strong, spherically symmetric super-horizon curvature perturbation, we present analytical solutions of the Einstein equations in terms of asymptotic expansion over the ratio of the Hubble radius to the length-scale of the curvature perturbation under consideration. To obtain this solution we develop a recursive method of quasi-linearization which reduces the problem to a system of coupled ordinary differential equations for the $N$-th order terms in the asymptotic expansion with sources consisting of a non-linear combination of the lower order terms. We use this solution for setting initial conditions for subsequent numerical computations. For an arbitrary precision requirement predetermined by the intended accuracy and stability of the computer code, our analytical solution yields optimal truncated asymptotic expansion which can be used to find the upper limit on the moment of time when the initial conditions expressed in terms of such truncated expansion should be set. Examples of how these truncated (up to eighth order) solutions provide initial conditions with given accuracy for different radial profiles of curvature perturbations are presented.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2012

Higgs condensation as an unwanted curvaton

During inflation in the early universe, the Higgs field continuously acquires long-wave quantum fluctuations. They accumulate to yield a non-vanishing value with an exponentially large correlation length. We study consequences of such Higgs condensations to show that, in inflation models where the universe is reheated through gravitational particle production at the transition to the kination regime, they not only contribute to reheat the universe but also act as a curvaton. Unfortunately, however, for parameters of the Standard Model Higgs field, this curvaton produces density fluctuations too large, so the inflation models followed by a long kination regime are ruled out.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Generalized Higgs inflation

We study Higgs inflation in the context of generalized G-inflation, i.e. the most general single-field inflation model with second-order field equations. The four variants of Higgs inflation proposed so far in the literature can be accommodated at one time in our framework. We also propose yet another class of Higgs inflation, the running Einstein inflation model, that can naturally arise from the generalized G-inflation framework. As a result, five Higgs inflation models in all should be discussed on an equal footing. Concise formulas for primordial fluctuations in these generalized Higgs inflation models are provided, which will be helpful to determine which model is favored from the future experiments and observations such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Planck satellite.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Resonant Signatures of Heavy Scalar Fields in the Cosmic Microwave Background

We investigate the possibility that a heavy scalar field, whose mass exceeds the Hubble scale during inflation, could leave non-negligible signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy power spectrum through the parametric resonance between its background oscillations and the inflaton fluctuations. By assuming the heavy scalar field couples with the inflaton derivatively, we show that the resonance can be efficient without spoiling the slow-roll inflation. The primordial power spectrum modulated by the resonance has a sharp peak at a specific scale and could be an origin of the anomalies observed in the angular power spectrum of the CMB. In some values of parameters, the modulated spectrum can fit the observed data better than the simple power-law power spectrum, though the resultant improvement of the fit is not large enough and hence other observations such as non-Gaussianity are necessary to confirm that the CMB anomalies are originated from the resonant effect of the heavy scalar field. The resonant signatures can provide an opportunity to observe heavy degrees of freedom during inflation and improve our understanding of physics behind inflation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Metric perturbation from inflationary magnetic field and generic bound on inflation models

There is an observational indication of extragalactic magnetic fields. No known astrophysical process can explain the origin of such large scale magnetic fields, which motivates us to look for their origin in primordial inflation. By solving the linearized Einstein equations, we study metric perturbations sourced by magnetic fields that are produced during inflation. This leads to a simple but robust bound on the inflation models by requiring that the induced metric perturbation should not exceed the observed value 10^-5. In case of the standard single field inflation model, the bound can be converted into a lower bound on the Hubble parameter during inflation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Phase transition and monopole production in supergravity inflation

In F-term supergravity inflation models, scalar fields other than the inflaton generically receive a Hubble induced mass, which may restore gauge symmetries during inflation and phase transitions may occur during or after inflation as the Hubble parameter decreases. We study monopole (and domain wall) production associated with such a phase transition in chaotic inflation in supergravity and obtain a severe constraint on the symmetry breaking scale which is related with the tensor-to-scalar ratio. Depending on model parameters, it is possible that monopoles are sufficiently diluted to be free from current constraints but still observable by planned experiments.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Generalized G-inflation: Inflation with the most general second-order field equations

We study generalized Galileons as a framework to develop the most general single-field inflation models ever, Generalized G-inflation, containing yet further generalization of G-inflation, as well as previous examples such as k-inflation, extended inflation, and new Higgs inflation as special cases. We investigate the background and perturbation evolution in this model, calculating the most general quadratic actions for tensor and scalar cosmological perturbations to give the stability criteria and the power spectra of primordial fluctuations. It is pointed out in the Appendix that the Horndeski theory and the generalized Galileons are equivalent. In particular, even the non-minimal coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet term is included in the generalized Galileons in a non-trivial manner.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

Primordial non-Gaussianities of gravitational waves in the most general single-field inflation model

We completely clarify the feature of primordial non-Gaussianities of tensor perturbations in generalized G-inflation, i.e., the most general single-field inflation model with second order field equations. It is shown that the most general cubic action for the tensor perturbation (gravitational wave) $h_{ij}$ is composed only of two contributions, one with two spacial derivatives and the other with one time derivative on each $h_{ij}$. The former is essentially identical to the cubic term that appears in Einstein gravity and predicts a squeezed shape, while the latter newly appears in the presence of the kinetic coupling to the Einstein tensor and predicts an equilateral shape. Thus, only two shapes appear in the graviton bispectrum of the most general single-field inflation model, which could open a new clue to the identification of inflationary gravitational waves in observations of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as well as direct gravitational wave detection experiments.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Temporal enhancement of super-horizon curvature perturbations from decays of two curvatons and its cosmological consequences

If more than one curvaton dominate the Universe at different epochs from each other, curvature perturbations can be temporarily enhanced to a value much larger than the observed one 10^{-5}. The traces of the enhancement may be left as higher order correlation functions, that is, as non-Gaussianity, the stochastic gravitational waves that are sourced by scalar-scalar mode couplings, as well as the primordial black holes that are formed by the gravitational collapse of the enhanced curvature perturbations. We first confirm that such a temporal enhancement indeed occurs by solving the linearized perturbation equations both numerically and analytically. We then derive an analytic expression of the full-order curvature perturbation which does not rely on the frequently used sudden decay approximation and is exact on super-horizon scales. By using this analytic formula, we provide expressions of the non-linearity parameters f_nl, tau_nl and g_nl. If both two curvatons contribute to the final curvature perturbations, the strong non-Gaussianity appears in the trispectrum rather than in the bispectrum. We also find a unique consistency relation between tau_nl and g_nl without f_nl. By using the second-order perturbation theory, we numerically show that the spectrum of the induced gravitational waves has a plateau corresponding to duration of the enhancement and such gravitational waves can be probed by ultimate-DECIGO and space-based atomic interferometers. We finally calculate the abundance of the primordial black holes and put a constraint on the amplitude of the enhanced curvature perturbations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Gravitational wave background as a probe of the primordial black hole abundance

Formation of significant number of primordial black holes (PBHs) is realized if and only if primordial density fluctuations have a large amplitude, which means that tensor perturbations generated from these scalar perturbations as a second order effect are also large and comparable to the observational data. We show that pulsar timing observation could find/rule out PBHs with \sim 10^2 M_solar which are considered as a candidate of intermediate-mass black holes and that PBHs with mass range 10^{20-26} g, which serves as a candidate of dark matter, may be probed by future space-based laser interferometers and atomic interferometers.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2011

Gravitational-Wave Constraints on the Abundance of Primordial Black Holes

We investigate features of Gravitational Waves (GWs) induced by primordial density fluctuations with a large amplitude peak associated with formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs). It is shown that the spectrum of induced GW is insensitive to the width of the peak in wavenumber space provided it is below a certain value, but the amplitude of the spectrum reduces at the peak frequency and decreases faster at low frequencies for a larger width. A correspondence between the GW amplitude and PBH abundance is also investigated incorporating the peak width. We find that PBHs with masses 10^{20-26}g can be probed by space-based laser interferometers and atomic interferometers irrespective of whether the peak width is small or not. Further we obtain constraints on the abundance of the supermassive PBHs by comparing a low frequency tail of the GW spectrum with CMB observations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Improved estimation of radiated axions from cosmological axionic strings

Cosmological evolution of axionic string network is analyzed in terms of field-theoretic simulations in a box of 512^3 grids, which are the largest ever, using a new and more efficient identification scheme of global strings. The scaling parameter is found to be ξ=0.87 +- 0.14 in agreement with previous results. The energy spectrum is calculated precisely using a pseudo power spectrum estimator which significantly reduces the error in the mean reciprocal comoving momentum. The resultant constraint on the axion decay constant leads to f_a <= 3*10^11 GeV. We also discuss implications for the early Universe.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Primordial non-Gaussianity from G-inflation

We present a comprehensive study of primordial fluctuations generated from G-inflation, in which the inflaton Lagrangian is of the form $K(ϕ, X)-G(ϕ, X)\Boxϕ$ with $X=-(\partialϕ)^2/2$. The Lagrangian still gives rise to second-order gravitational and scalar field equations, and thus offers a more generic class of single-field inflation than ever studied, with a richer phenomenology. We compute the power spectrum and the bispectrum, and clarify how the non-Gaussian amplitude depends upon parameters such as the sound speed. In so doing we try to keep as great generality as possible, allowing for non slow-roll and deviation from the exact scale-invariance.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

Future Oscillations around Phantom Divide in f(R) Gravity

It is known that scalar-tensor theory of gravity admits regular crossing of the phantom divide line $w_{\DE}=-1$ for dark energy, and existing viable models of present dark energy for its particular case -- $f(R)$ gravity -- possess one such crossing in the recent past, after the end of the matter dominated stage. It was recently noted that during the future evolution of these models the dark energy equation of state $w_{\DE}$ may oscillate with an arbitrary number of phantom divide crossings. In this paper we prove that the number of crossings can be infinite, present an analytical condition for the existence of this effect and investigate it numerically. With the increase of the present mass of the scalaron (a scalar particle appearing in $f(R)$ gravity) beyond the boundary of the appearance of such oscillations, their amplitude is shown to decrease very fast. As a result, the effect quickly becomes small and its beginning is shifted to the remote future.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

The effect of varying sound velocity on primordial curvature perturbations

We study the effects of sudden change in the sound velocity on primordial curvature perturbation spectrum in inflationary cosmology, assuming that the background evolution satisfies the slow-roll condition throughout. It is found that the power spectrum acquires oscillating features which are determined by the ratio of the sound speed before and after the transition and the wavenumeber which crosses the sound horizon at the transition, and their analytic expression is given. In some values of those parameters, the oscillating primordial power spectrum can better fit the observed Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropy power spectrum than the simple power-law power spectrum, although introduction of such a new degree of freedom is not justified in the context of Akaike's Information Criterion.

astro-ph.CO↗