arXiv subjects

Mehrdad Mirbabayi

Publications and source records attributed to Mehrdad Mirbabayi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Markovian Dynamics in de Sitter

The equilibrium state of fields in the causal wedge of a dS observer is thermal, though realistic observers have only partial access to the state. To them, out-of-equilibrium states of a light scalar field appear to thermalize in a Markovian fashion. We show this by formulating a systematic expansion for tracing out the environment. As an example, we calculate the $O(λ)$ correction to the result of Starobinsky and Yokoyama for the relaxation exponents of $λϕ^4$ theory.

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arXiv2020

Uptunneling to de Sitter

We propose a Euclidean preparation of an asymptotically AdS$_2$ spacetime that contains an inflating dS$_2$ bubble. The setup can be embedded in a four dimensional theory with a Minkowski vacuum and a false vacuum. AdS$_2$ times 2-sphere approximate the near horizon geometry of a $4d$ near-extremal RN wormhole. Likewise, in the false vacuum the near-horizon geometry of a near-extremal black hole is approximately dS$_2$ times 2-sphere. We interpret the Euclidean solution as describing the decay of an excitation inside the wormhole to a false vacuum bubble. The result is an inflating region inside a non-traversable asymptotically Minkowski wormhole.

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arXiv2020

Infrared dynamics of a light scalar field in de Sitter

Inertial observers in de Sitter are surrounded by a horizon and see thermal fluctuations. To them, a massless scalar field appears to follow a random motion but any attractive potential, no matter how weak, will eventually stabilize the field. We study this thermalization process in the static patch (the spacetime region accessible to an individual observer) via a truncation to the low frequency spectrum. We focus on the distribution of the field averaged over a subhorizon region. At timescales much longer than the inverse temperature and to leading order in the coupling, we find the evolution to be Markovian, governed by the same Fokker-Planck equation that arises when the theory is studied in the inflationary setup.

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arXiv2020

A 2-Replica Wormhole

Replica geometries are not rigid when gravity is dynamical. We numerically construct $1<n\leq 2$ replica saddles in $2d$ gravity coupled to a CFT and compare the resulting Renyi entropies with the field theory result.

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arXiv2020

The Quasinormal Modes of Quasinormal Modes

Modifying black hole horizon can drastically change the spectrum of quasinormal modes. But if the modification is close enough to the horizon the ringdown signal remains almost unaltered, and well described by the quasinormal modes of the original GR solution. I show how the original quasinormal modes emerge in the sum over the new modes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Spin of Primordial Black Holes

Primordial black holes, formed from rare peaks in the primordial fluctuations $ζ$, are non-rotating at zeroth order in $ζ_{\rm rms}$. We show that the spin also vanishes at first order in $ζ_{\rm rms}$, suggesting the dimensionless spin parameter $a_{\rm rms} \sim ζ_{\rm rms}^2$. We identify one quadratic contribution to the spin by calculating (and extrapolating to the formation time) the torque on a black hole due to ambient acoustic waves. For a reasonable density of primordial black holes this implies a percent level spin parameter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Topology of Cosmological Black Holes

Motivated by the question of how generic inflation is, I study the time-evolution of topological surfaces in an inhomogeneous cosmology with positive cosmological constant $Λ$. If matter fields satisfy the Weak Energy Condition, non-spherical incompressible surfaces of least area are shown to expand at least exponentially, with rate $d \log A_{\rm min}/dλ\geq 8πG_NΛ$, under the mean curvature flow parametrized by $λ$. With reasonable assumptions about the nature of singularities this restricts the topology of black holes: (a) no trapped surface or apparent horizon can be a non-spherical, incompressible surface, and (b) the interior of black holes cannot contain any such surface.

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arXiv2019

A Weak Gravity Theorem

In a gravitational theory with a massless photon the maximum charge-to-mass ratio of black holes approaches the prediction of the Einstein-Maxwell theory as black hole mass increases: $Q_{\rm ext}/M =1+ α/M^2$ for some constant $α$. We will show that $α>0$ if below the quantum gravity scale $Λ$ there are many degrees of freedom with a hierarchically small mass gap $\log(Λ/m_{\rm gap})\gg 1$. In this regime one can treat gravity as a non-dynamical background field and derive field-theoretic sum-rules for the coefficients of the leading corrections to the Einstein-Maxwell theory. The positivity of $α$ follows from the sum-rules. As a consequence, gravitational attraction gets weaker than the electric force among maximally charged black holes as they become lighter, and large extremal black holes can decay into smaller black holes.

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arXiv2019

Inflation and Dark Energy from spectroscopy at $z > 2$

The expansion of the Universe is understood to have accelerated during two epochs: in its very first moments during a period of Inflation and much more recently, at $z < 1$, when Dark Energy is hypothesized to drive cosmic acceleration. The undiscovered mechanisms behind these two epochs represent some of the most important open problems in fundamental physics. The large cosmological volume at $2 < z < 5$, together with the ability to efficiently target high-$z$ galaxies with known techniques, enables large gains in the study of Inflation and Dark Energy. A future spectroscopic survey can test the Gaussianity of the initial conditions up to a factor of ~50 better than our current bounds, crossing the crucial theoretical threshold of $σ(f_{NL}^{\rm local})$ of order unity that separates single field and multi-field models. Simultaneously, it can measure the fraction of Dark Energy at the percent level up to $z = 5$, thus serving as an unprecedented test of the standard model and opening up a tremendous discovery space.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Primordial Non-Gaussianity

Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of galaxies tracing the large scale structure (LSS) of the Universe. One key ingredient that underlies cosmological observables is that the field that sources the observed structure is assumed to be initially Gaussian with high precision. Nevertheless, a minimal deviation from Gaussianityis perhaps the most robust theoretical prediction of models that explain the observed Universe; itis necessarily present even in the simplest scenarios. In addition, most inflationary models produce far higher levels of non-Gaussianity. Since non-Gaussianity directly probes the dynamics in the early Universe, a detection would present a monumental discovery in cosmology, providing clues about physics at energy scales as high as the GUT scale.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Messengers from the Early Universe: Cosmic Neutrinos and Other Light Relics

The hot dense environment of the early universe is known to have produced large numbers of baryons, photons, and neutrinos. These extreme conditions may have also produced other long-lived species, including new light particles (such as axions or sterile neutrinos) or gravitational waves. The gravitational effects of any such light relics can be observed through their unique imprint in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the large-scale structure, and the primordial light element abundances, and are important in determining the initial conditions of the universe. We argue that future cosmological observations, in particular improved maps of the CMB on small angular scales, can be orders of magnitude more sensitive for probing the thermal history of the early universe than current experiments. These observations offer a unique and broad discovery space for new physics in the dark sector and beyond, even when its effects would not be visible in terrestrial experiments or in astrophysical environments. A detection of an excess light relic abundance would be a clear indication of new physics and would provide the first direct information about the universe between the times of reheating and neutrino decoupling one second later.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Solid Consistency

We argue that $isotropic$ scalar fluctuations in solid inflation are adiabatic in the super-horizon limit. During the solid phase this adiabatic mode has peculiar features: constant energy-density slices and comoving slices do not coincide, and their curvatures, parameterized respectively by $ζ$ and $\mathcal R$, both evolve in time. The existence of this adiabatic mode implies that Maldacena's squeezed limit consistency relation holds after angular average over the long mode. The correlation functions of a long-wavelength spherical scalar mode with several short scalar or tensor modes is fixed by the scaling behavior of the correlators of short modes, independently of the solid inflation action or dynamics of reheating.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Shaving off Black Hole Soft Hair

A recent, intriguing paper by Hawking, Perry and Strominger suggests that soft photons and gravitons can be regarded as black hole hair and may be relevant to the black hole information paradox. In this note we make use of factorization theorems for infrared divergences of the S-matrix to argue that by appropriately dressing in and out hard states, the soft-quanta-dependent part of the S-matrix becomes essentially trivial. The information paradox can be fully formulated in terms of dressed hard states, which do not depend on soft quanta.

hep-th↗

arXiv2016

Tensor Squeezed Limits and the Higuchi Bound

We point out that tensor consistency relations-i.e. the behavior of primordial correlation functions in the limit a tensor mode has a small momentum-are more universal than scalar consistency relations. They hold in the presence of multiple scalar fields and as long as anisotropies are diluted exponentially fast. When de Sitter isometries are approximately respected during inflation this is guaranteed by the Higuchi bound, which forbids the existence of light particles with spin: De Sitter space can support scalar hair but no curly hair. We discuss two indirect ways to look for the violation of tensor con- sistency relations in observations, as a signature of models in which inflation is not a strong isotropic attractor, such as solid inflation: (a) Graviton exchange contribution to the scalar four-point function; (b) Quadrupolar anisotropy of the scalar power spectrum due to super-horizon tensor modes. This anisotropy has a well-defined statistics which can be distinguished from cases in which the background has a privileged direction.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Effective Theory of Squeezed Correlation Functions

Various inflationary scenarios can often be distinguished from one another by looking at the squeezed limit behavior of correlation functions. Therefore, it is useful to have a framework designed to study this limit in a more systematic and efficient way. We propose using an expansion in terms of weakly coupled super-horizon degrees of freedom, which is argued to generically exist in a near de Sitter space-time. The modes have a simple factorized form which leads to factorization of the squeezed-limit correlation functions with power-law behavior in $k_{\rm long}/k_{\rm short}$. This approach reproduces the known results in single-, quasi-single-, and multi-field inflationary models. However, it is applicable even if, unlike the above examples, the additional degrees of freedom are not weakly coupled at sub-horizon scales. Stronger results are derived in two-field (or sufficiently symmetric multi-field) inflationary models. We discuss the observability of the non-Gaussian 3-point function in the large-scale structure surveys, and argue that the squeezed limit behavior has a higher detectability chance than equilateral behavior when it scales as $(k_{\rm long}/k_{\rm short})^Δ$ with $Δ<1$ -- where local non-Gaussianity corresponds to $Δ=0$.

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arXiv2016

Productive Interactions: heavy particles and non-Gaussianity

We analyze the shape and amplitude of oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum and non-Gaussianity induced by periodic production of heavy degrees of freedom coupled to the inflaton $ϕ$. We find that non-adiabatic production of particles can contribute effects which are detectable or constrainable using cosmological data even if their time-dependent masses are always heavier than the scale $\dot ϕ^{1/2}$, much larger than the Hubble scale. This provides a new role for UV completion, consistent with the criteria from effective field theory for when heavy fields cannot be integrated out. This analysis is motivated in part by the structure of axion monodromy, and leads to an additional oscillatory signature in a subset of its parameter space. At the level of a quantum field theory model that we analyze in detail, the effect arises consistently with radiative stability for an interesting window of couplings up to of order $\lesssim 1$. The amplitude of the bispectrum and higher-point functions can be larger than that for Resonant Non-Gaussianity, and its signal/noise may be comparable to that of the corresponding oscillations in the power spectrum (and even somewhat larger within a controlled regime of parameters). Its shape is distinct from previously analyzed templates, but was partly motivated by the oscillatory equilateral searches performed recently by the {\it Planck} collaboration. We also make some general comments about the challenges involved in making a systematic study of primordial non-Gaussianity.

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arXiv2016

Radio Emission from Red-Giant Hot Jupiters

When planet-hosting stars evolve off the main sequence and go through the red-giant branch, the stars become orders of magnitudes more luminous and, at the same time, lose mass at much higher rates than their main-sequence counterparts. Accordingly, if planetary companions exist around these stars at orbital distances of a few AU, they will be heated up to the level of canonical hot Jupiters and also be subjected to a dense stellar wind. Given that magnetized planets interacting with stellar winds emit radio waves, such "Red-Giant Hot Jupiters" (RGHJs) may also be candidate radio emitters. We estimate the spectral auroral radio intensity of RGHJs based on the empirical relation with the stellar wind as well as a proposed scaling for planetary magnetic fields. RGHJs might be intrinsically as bright as or brighter than canonical hot Jupiters and about 100 times brighter than equivalent objects around main-sequence stars. We examine the capabilities of low-frequency radio observatories to detect this emission and find that the signal from an RGHJ may be detectable at distances up to a few hundred parsecs with the Square Kilometer Array.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

Weinberg Soft Theorems from Weinberg Adiabatic Modes

Soft theorems for the scattering of low energy photons and gravitons and cosmological consistency conditions on the squeezed-limit correlation functions are both understood to be consequences of invariance under large gauge transformations. We apply the same method used in cosmology -- based on the identification of an infinite set of "adiabatic modes" and the corresponding conserved currents -- to derive flat space soft theorems for electrodynamics and gravity. We discuss how the recent derivations based on the asymptotic symmetry groups (BMS) can be continued to a finite size sphere surrounding the scattering event, when the soft photon or graviton has a finite momentum. We give a finite distance derivation of the antipodal matching condition previously imposed between future and past null infinities, and explain why all but one radiative degrees of freedom decouple in the soft limit. In contrast to earlier works on BMS, we work with adiabatic modes which correspond to large gauge transformations that are $r$-dependent.

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