arXiv subjects

Luigi Pilo

Publications and source records attributed to Luigi Pilo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Dynamical Cosmological Constant

The dynamical realisation of the equation of state $p +\rho =0$ is studied. A non-pathological dynamics for the perturbations of such a system mimicking a dynamical cosmological constant (DCC) requires to go beyond the perfect fluid paradigm. It is shown that an anisotropic stress must be always present. The Hamiltonian of the system in isolation resembles the one of a Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator and linear stability requires that it cannot be positive definite. The dynamics of linear cosmological perturbations in a DCC dominated Universe is studied in detail showing that when DCC is minimally coupled to gravity no dramatic instability is present. In contrast to what happens in a cosmological constant dominated Universe, the non-relativistic matter contrast is no longer constant and exhibits an oscillator behaviour at small scales while it grows weakly at large scales. In the gravitational waves sector, at small scales, the amplitude is still suppressed as the inverse power of the scale factor while it grows logarithmically at large scales. Also the vector modes propagate, though no growing mode is found.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

The Physical Content of Long Tensor Modes in Cosmology

We analyze the physical content of squeezed bispectra involving long-wavelength tensor perturbations, showing that these modes cannot be gauged away, except for the exact (unphysical) limit of infinite wavelength, $k = 0$. This result has a direct implication on the validity of the Maldacena consistency relation, respected by a subclass of inflationary models. Consequently, in the squeezed limit, as in the case of the scalar-scalar-scalar bispectrum, squeezed mixed correlators could be observed by future experiments, remaining a key channel to study Early Universe physics and discriminate among different models of inflation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Classical and Quantum Dynamics of Gyroscopic Systems and Dark Energy

Gyroscopic systems in classical and quantum field theory are characterized by the presence of at least two scalar degrees of freedom and by terms that mix fields and their time derivatives in the quadratic Lagrangian. In Minkowski spacetime, they naturally appear in the presence of a coupling among fields with time-dependent vacuum expectation values and fields with space-dependent vacuum expectation values, breaking spontaneously Lorentz symmetry; this is the case for a supersolid. In a cosmological background a gyroscopic system can also arise from the time dependence of non-diagonal kinetic and mass matrices. We study the classical and quantum dynamics computing the correlation functions on the vacuum state that minimizes the energy. Two regions of stability in parameter space are found: in one region, dubbed normal, the Hamiltonian is positive defined, while in the second region, dubbed anomalous, it has no definite sign. Interestingly, in the anomalous region the 2-point correlation function exhibits a resonant behaviour in a certain region of parameter space. We show that dynamical dark energy models (with exact equation of state $w=-1$) can be realised as a gyroscopic system.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has two scientific objectives of cosmological focus: to probe the expansion rate of the universe, and to understand stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds and their implications for early universe and particle physics, from the MeV to the Planck scale. However, the range of potential cosmological applications of gravitational wave observations extends well beyond these two objectives. This publication presents a summary of the state of the art in LISA cosmology, theory and methods, and identifies new opportunities to use gravitational wave observations by LISA to probe the universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Corrections to the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background

We study 1-loop corrections to the primordial stochastic background of gravitational waves produced during inflation. While in single-clock, at the leading order in slow-roll, quantum corrections keep the amplitude scale-free this is not the case when the pattern of symmetry breaking is different. In particular, when spatial diffeomorphisms are also broken during inflation as for solid inflation, a log-running in the external momentum is generated. We relate the appearance of a log-running to the spontaneous breaking of dilatation invariance. The running could be instrumental to distinguish single-clock from alternative models of inflation in future high sensitivity CMB polarisation and GWs experiments.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Primordial Non-Gaussianity in Supersolid Inflation

We study primordial non-gaussianity in supersolid inflation. The dynamics of supersolid is formulated in terms of an effective field theory based on four scalar fields with a shift symmetric action minimally coupled with gravity. In the scalar sector, there are two phonon-like excitations with a kinetic mixing stemming from the completely spontaneous breaking of diffeomorphism. In a squeezed configuration, $f_{\text{NL}}$ of scalar perturbations is angle dependent and not proportional to slow-roll parameters showing a blunt violation of the Maldacena consistency relation. Contrary to solid inflation, the violation persists even after an angular average and generically the amount of non-gaussianity is significant. During inflation, non-gaussianity in the TSS and TTS sector is enhanced in the same region of the parameters space where the secondary production of gravitational waves is sizeable enough to enter in the sensitivity region of LISA, while the scalar $f_{\text{NL}}$ is still within the current experimental limits.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Boosting GWs in Supersolid Inflation

Inflation driven by a generic self-gravitating medium is an interesting alternative to study the impact of spontaneous spacetime symmetry breaking during a quasi de-Sitter phase, in particular the 4-dimensional diffeomorphism invariance of GR is spontaneously broken down to $ISO(3)$. The effective description is based on four scalar fields that describe the excitations of a supersolid. There are two phonon-like propagating scalar degrees of freedom that mix non-trivially both at early and late times and, after exiting the horizon, give rise to non-trivial correlations among the different scalar power spectra. The non-linear structure of the theory allows a secondary gravitational waves production during inflation, efficient enough to saturate the present experimental bound and with a blue-tilted spectral index.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Resilience of long modes in cosmological observables

By a careful implementation of gauge transformations involving long-wavelength modes, we show that a variety of effects involving squeezed bispectrum configurations, for which one Fourier mode is much shorter than the other two, cannot be gauged away, except for the unphysical exactly infinite-wavelength ($k=0$) limit. Our result applies, in particular, to the Maldacena consistency relation for single-field inflation, yielding a local non-Gaussianity strength $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local} = - (5/12)(n_S-1)$ (with $n_S$ the primordial spectral index of scalar perturbations), and to the $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm GR} = -5/3$ term, appearing in the dark matter bispectrum and in the halo bias, as a consequence of the general relativistic non-linear evolution of matter perturbations. Such effects are therefore physical and observable in principle by future high-sensitivity experiments.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Adiabatic Media Inflation

We study the dynamics of inflation driven by an adiabatic self-gravitating medium, extending the previous works on fluid and solid inflation. Such a class of media comprises perfect fluids, zero and finite temperature solids. By using an effective field theory description, we compute the power spectrum for the scalar curvature perturbation of constant energy density hypersurface $ζ$ and the comoving scalar curvature perturbation ${\cal R}$ in the case of slow-roll, super slow-roll and $w$-media inflation, an inflationary phase with $w$ constant in the range $-1 <w <-1/3$. A similar computation is done for the tensor modes. Adiabatic media are characterized by intrinsic entropy perturbations that can give a significant contribution to the power spectrum and can be used to generate the required seed for primordial black holes. For such a media, the Weinberg theorem is typically violated and on super horizon scales neither $ζ$ nor ${\cal R}$ are conserved and moreover $ζ\neq {\cal R}$. Reheating becomes crucial to predict the spectrum of the imprinted primordial perturbations. We study how the difference between $ζ$ and ${\cal R}$ during inflation gives rise to relative entropic perturbations in $Λ$CDM.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Self-gravitating $Λ$-media

We address the question whether a medium featuring $p + ρ= 0$, dubbed $Λ$- medium, has to be necessarily a cosmological constant. By using effective field theory, we show that this is not the case for a class of media comprising perfect fluids, solids and special super solids, providing an explicit construction. The low energy excitations are non trivial and lensing, the growth of large scale structures can be used to clearly distinguish $Λ$-media from a cosmological constant.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

$ΔN$ Formalism and Conserved Currents in Cosmology

The $ΔN$ formalism, based on the counting of the number of e-folds during inflation in different local patches of the Universe, has been introduced several years ago as a simple and physically intuitive approach to calculate (non-linear) curvature perturbations from inflation on large sales, without resorting to the full machinery of (higher-order) perturbation theory. Later on, it was claimed the equivalence with the results found by introducing a conserved fully non-linear current $ζ_μ$, thereby allowing to directly connect perturbations during inflation to late-Universe observables. We discus some issues arising from the choice of the initial hyper-surface in the $ΔN$ formalism. By using a novel exact expression for $ζ_μ$, valid for any barotropic fluid, we find that it is not in general related to the standard uniform density curvature perturbation $ζ$; such a result conflicts with the claimed equivalence with $ΔN$ formalism. Moreover, a similar analysis is done for the proposed non-perturbative generalization ${\cal R}_μ$ of the comoving curvature perturbation ${\cal R}$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

On the 6th Mode in Massive Gravity

Generic massive gravity models in the unitary gauge correspond to a self-gravitating medium with six degrees of freedom. It is widely believed that massive gravity models with six degrees of freedom have an unavoidable ghost-like instability; however, the corresponding medium has stable phonon-like excitations. The apparent contradiction is solved by the presence of a non-vanishing background pressure and energy density of the medium that opens up a stability window. The result is confirmed by looking at linear stability on an expanding Universe, recovering the flat space stability conditions in the small wavelength limit. Moreover, one can show that under rather mild conditions, no ghost-like instability is present for any wavelength. As a result, exploiting the medium interpretation, a generic massive gravity model with six degrees of freedom is perfectly viable.

hep-th↗

arXiv2017

Fluids, Superfluids and Supersolids: Dynamics and Cosmology of Self Gravitating Media

We compute cosmological perturbations for a generic self-gravitating media described by four derivatively- coupled scalar fields. Depending on the internal symmetries of the action for the scalar fields, one can describe perfect fluids, superfluids, solids and supersolids media. Symmetries dictate both dynamical and thermodynamical properties of the media. Generically, scalar perturbations include, besides the gravitational potential, an additional non-adiabatic mode associated with the entropy per particle σ. While perfect fluids and solids are adiabatic with σ constant in time, superfluids and supersolids feature a non-trivial dynamics for σ. Special classes of isentropic media with zero σ can also be found. Tensor modes become massive for solids and supersolids. Such an effective approach can be used to give a very general and symmetry driven modelling of the dark sector.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Intrinsic Entropy Perturbations from the Dark Sector

Perfect fluids are modeled by using an effective field theory approach which naturally gives a self-consistent and unambiguous description of the intrinsic non-adiabatic contribution to pressure variations. We study the impact of intrinsic entropy perturbation on the superhorizon dynamics of the curvature perturbation ${\cal R}$ in the dark sector. The dark sector, made of dark matter and dark energy is described as a single perfect fluid. The non-perturbative vorticity's dynamics and the Weinberg theorem violation for perfect fluids are also studied.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Massive and modified gravity as self-gravitating media

We study the effective field theory that describes the low-energy physics of self-gravitating media. The field content consists of four derivatively coupled scalar fields that can be identified with the internal comoving coordinates of the medium. Imposing SO(3) internal spatial invariance, the theory describes supersolids. Stronger symmetry requirements lead to superfluids, solids and perfect fluids, at lowest order in derivatives. In the unitary gauge, massive gravity emerges, being thus the result of a continuous medium propagating in spacetime. Our results can be used to explore systematically the effects and signatures of modifying gravity consistently at large distances. The dark sector is then described as a self-gravitating medium with dynamical and thermodynamic properties dictated by internal symmetries. These results indicate that the divide between dark energy and modified gravity, at large distance scales, is simply a gauge choice.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

Thermodynamics of perfect fluids from scalar field theory

The low-energy dynamics of relativistic continuous media is given by a shift-symmetric effective theory of four scalar fields. These scalars describe the embedding in spacetime of the medium and play the role of Stückelberg fields for spontaneously broken spatial and time translations. Perfect fluids are selected imposing a stronger symmetry group or reducing the field content to a single scalar. We explore the relation between the field theory description of perfect fluids to thermodynamics. By drawing the correspondence between the allowed operators at leading order in derivatives and the thermodynamic variables, we find that a complete thermodynamic picture requires the four Stuckelberg fields. We show that thermodynamic stability plus the null-energy condition imply dynamical stability. We also argue that a consistent thermodynamic interpretation is not possible if any of the shift symmetries is explicitly broken.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

New Branches of Massive Gravity

The basic building block for Lorentz invariant and ghost free massive gravity is the square root of the combination $g^{-1}η\,$, where $g^{-1}$ is the inverse of the physical metric and $η$ is a reference metric. Since the square root of a matrix is not uniquely defined, it is possible to have physically inequivalent potentials corresponding to different branches. We show that around Minkowski background the only perturbatively well defined branch is the potential proposed by de Rham, Gabadadze and Tolley. On the other hand, if Lorentz symmetry is broken spontaneously, other potentials exist with a standard perturbative expansion. We show this explicitly building new Lorentz invariant, ghost-free massive gravity potentials for theories that in the background preserve rotational invariance, but break Lorentz boosts.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Torsional oscillations of nonbare strange stars

Strange stars are one of the possible compact stellar objects that can be formed after a supernova collapse. We consider a model of strange star having an inner core in the color-flavor locked phase surmounted by a crystalline color superconducting layer. These two phases constitute the {\it quarksphere}, which we assume to be the largest and heaviest part of the strange star. The next layer consists of standard nuclear matter forming a ionic crust, hovering on the top of the quarksphere and prevented from falling by a strong dipolar electric field. The dipolar electric field arises because quark matter is confined in the quarksphere by the strong interaction, but electrons can leak outside forming a few hundreds Fermi thick electron layer separating the ionic crust from the underlying quark matter. The ionic matter and the crystalline color superconducting matter constitute two electromagnetically coupled crust layers. We study the torsional oscillations of these two layers. Remarkably, we find that if a fraction larger than $10^{-4}$ of the energy of a Vela-like glitch is conveyed to a torsional oscillation, the ionic crust will likely break. The reason is that the very rigid and heavy crystalline color superconducting crust layer will absorb only a small fraction of the glitch energy, leading to a large amplitude torsional oscillation of the ionic crust.

astro-ph.SR↗