arXiv subjects

Misao Sasaki

Publications and source records attributed to Misao Sasaki.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Singular instantons with finite action

Recently, it was shown that in the absence of gravity there exist non-$O(4)$-symmetric instanton solutions with finite action beyond Coleman's instantons. In this paper, focusing on the false-vacuum decay in a single scalar field in flat Euclidean space, we provide a general discussion on $O(4)$-symmetric instantons that are singular at the true-vacuum bubble. We find that, for the action to remain finite without introducing a UV cutoff, the potential must be unbounded from below, thereby evading Coleman's theorem. We then consider two explicit examples of such instantons and perturbatively analyze the dynamics of small deformations around them. We find that one of them does not allow regular deformations, which indicates that the $O(4)$ symmetric solution still gives the minimum action, while the other one is found to allow regular deformations that cost no additional action at second order in perturbation. The latter example opens up the possibility of the existence of non-linear non-$O(4)$-symmetric solutions with lower action if we allow singular instantons with finite action.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Dip and non-linearity in the curvature perturbation from inflation with a transient non-slow-roll stage

We consider models of inflation that contain a transient non-slow-roll stage and investigate the conditions under which a dip appears in the power spectrum of the curvature perturbation. Using the $δN$ formalism, we derive a general relation between the comoving curvature perturbation ${\cal{R}}$ and the scalar field perturbation $δφ$ and its velocity perturbation $δπ$. Compared with the result obtained in linear perturbation theory, it turns out that properly taking account of the $δπ$ contribution is essential to reproduce the dip in the power spectrum. Namely, the curvature perturbation is proportional to a specific linear combination of $δφ$ and $δπ$ at the linear order. We also investigate the non-linearity at the dip scale and find that models with a bump or an upward step exhibit much larger non-linearity than ultra-slow-roll and Starobinsky's linear potential models. Finally, we demonstrate the importance of non-linearity by computing the probability density functions (PDFs) for the above-mentioned models and show that highly asymmetric PDFs are realised for models with a bump or a step.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Gravitational wave constraints on the primordial black hole dominated early universe

We calculate the gravitational waves (GWs) induced by the density fluctuations due to inhomogeneous distribution of primordial black holes (PBHs) in the case where PBHs eventually dominate and reheat the universe by Hawking evaporation. The initial PBH density fluctuations are isocurvature in nature. We find that most of the induced GWs are generated right after evaporation, when the universe transits from the PBH dominated era to the radiation dominated era and the curvature perturbation starts to oscillate wildly. The strongest constraint on the amount of the produced GWs comes from the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). We improve previous constraints on the PBH fraction and find that it cannot exceed $10^{-3}$. Furthermore, this maximum fraction decreases as the mass increases and reaches $10^{-9}$ for $M_{\rm PBH}\sim 5\times10^8 {\rm g}$, which is the largest mass allowed by the BBN constraint on the reheating temperature. Considering that PBH may cluster above a given clustering scale, we also derive a lower bound on the scale of clustering. Interestingly, the GW spectrum for $M_{\rm PBH}\sim 10^4 -10^8 {\rm g}$ enters the observational window of LIGO and DECIGO and could be tested in the future. Although we focus on the PBH dominated early universe in this paper, our methodology is applicable to any model with early isocurvature perturbation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Halo Formation from Yukawa Forces in the Very Early Universe

If long-range attractive forces exist and are stronger than gravity then cosmic halo formation can begin in the radiation-dominated era. We study a simple realization of this effect in a system where dark matter fermions have Yukawa interactions mediated by scalar particles, analogous to the Higgs boson in the standard model. We develop a self-consistent description of the system including exact background dynamics of the scalar field, and precise modelling of the fermion density fluctuations. For the latter, we provide accurate approximations for the linear growth as well as quantitative modelling of the nonlinear evolution using N-body simulations. We find that halo formation occurs exponentially fast and on scales substantially larger than simple estimates predict. The final fate of these halos remains uncertain, but could be annihilation, dark stars, primordial black holes, or even the existence of galaxy-sized halos at matter-radiation equality. More generally, our results demonstrate the importance of mapping scalar-mediated interactions onto structure formation outcomes and constraints for beyond the standard model theories.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

The Dual Primordial Black Hole Formation Scenario

We report a novel mechanism where two families of primordial black holes (PBHs) may form at nearly the same comoving scales but at two different epochs. It is realized in two-stage inflation where a non-inflationary stage is sandwiched by the two inflationary stages. In this case, smaller PBHs form when the comoving scale of interest re-enters the horizon during the break period, and larger PBHs form when the scale re-enters the horizon after inflation. This mechanism may realize both reheating of the universe through the evaporation of ultralight PBHs formed during the break stage and the dark matter by those formed after inflation. We show that this scenario may give rise to a distinctive signature in the stochastic gravitational wave background that can be tested by the near-future gravitational wave observatories such as LISA and DECIGO. Our work thus provides a unified observational window into the physics of inflation, reheating, and dark matter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Universal Gravitational Wave Signatures of Cosmological Solitons

Cosmological solitonic objects such as monopoles, cosmic strings, domain walls, oscillons and Q-balls often appear in theories of the early Universe. We demonstrate that such scenarios are generically accompanied by a novel production source of gravitational waves stemming from soliton isocurvature perturbations. The resulting induced universal gravitational waves (UGWs) reside at lower frequencies compared to gravitational waves typically associated with soliton formation. We show that UGWs from axion-like particle (ALP) oscillons, originating from ALP misalignment, extend the frequency range of produced gravitational waves by more than two orders of magnitude regardless of the ALP mass and decay constant and can be observable in upcoming gravitational wave experiments. UGWs open a new route for gravitational wave signatures in broad classes of cosmological theories.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Axion-like Universal Gravitational Wave Interpretation of Pulsar Timing Array Data

Formation of cosmological solitons is generically accompanied by production of gravitational waves (GWs), with a universal GW background expected at frequency scales below that of non-linear dynamics. Beginning with a general phenomenological description of GWs associated with soliton formation, we demonstrate that universal GW background from axion-like particle (ALP) solitonic oscillons provides a viable interpretation to the recent NANOGrav 15 year pulsar timing array data, which does not suffer from the overproduction of primordial black holes. We show that pulsar timing array data displays preference for models where formed solitons do not strongly interact or cluster. Coincidence observations with Nancy Roman telescope will allow to discriminate between distinct scenarios of cosmological solitons.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Solving information loss paradox via Euclidean path integral

The information loss paradox associated with black hole Hawking evaporation is an unresolved problem in modern theoretical physics. In this paper, we revisit the entanglement entropy via the Euclidean path integral (EPI) of the quantum state and allow for the branching of semi-classical histories along the Lorentzian evolution. We posit that there exist at least two histories that contribute to EPI, where one is an information-losing history while the other is information-preserving. At early times, the former dominates EPI, while at late times the latter becomes dominant. By so doing we recover the essence of the Page curve and thus the unitarity, albeit with the turning point, i.e., the Page time, much shifted toward the late time. One implication of this modified Page curve is that the entropy bound may thus be violated. We comment on the similarity and difference between our approach and that of the replica wormholes and the island conjecture.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

A complete analysis of inflation with piecewise quadratic potential

We conduct a thorough study of the comoving curvature perturbation $\mathcal{R}$ in single-field inflation with two stages, represented by a piecewise quadratic potential, where both the first and second derivatives are allowed to be discontinuous at the transition point. We calculate the evolution of $\mathcal{R}$ by combining the perturbative and non-perturbative methods consistently, and obtain the power spectrum and the non-Gaussian features in the probability distribution function. We find that both the spectrum and the statistics of $\mathcal{R}$ depend significantly on the second derivatives of the potential at both the first and second stages. Furthermore, we find a new parameter constructed from the potential parameters, which we call $α$, plays a decisive role in determining various features in the spectrum such as the amplitude, the slope, and the existence of a dip. In particular, we recover the typical $k^4$ growth of the spectrum in most cases, but the maximum growth rate of $k^5(\log k)^2$ can be obtained by fine-tuning the parameters. Then, using the $δN$ formalism valid on superhorizon scales, we give fully nonlinear formulas for $\cal{R}$ in terms of the scalar field perturbation $δϕ$ and its time derivative. In passing, we point out the importance of the nonlinear evolution of $δϕ$ on superhorizon scales. Finally, using the Press-Schechter formalism for simplicity, we discuss the effect of the non-Gaussian tails of the probability distribution function on the primordial black hole formation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Gravitational waves from primordial black hole isocurvature: the effect of non-Gaussianities

Ultra-light primordial black holes (PBHs) with masses $M_{\rm PBH}<5\times 10^8\mathrm{g}$ can dominate transiently the energy budget of the Universe and reheat the Universe through their evaporation taking place before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The isocurvature energy density fluctuations associated to the inhomogeneous distribution of a population of such PBHs can induce an abundant production of GWs due to second-order gravitational effects. In this work, we discuss the effect of primordial non-Gaussianity on the clustering properties of PBHs and study the effect of a clustered PBH population on the spectral shape of the aforementioned induced GW signal. In particular, focusing on local-type non-Gaussianity we find a double-peaked GW signal with the amplitude of the low-frequency peak being proportional to the square of the non-Gaussian parameter $τ_\mathrm{NL}$. Remarkably, depending on the PBH mass $M_{\rm PBH}$ and the initial abundance of PBHs at formation time, i.e. $Ω_\mathrm{PBH,f}$, this double-peaked GW signal can lie well within the frequency bands of forthcoming GW detectors, namely LISA, ET, SKA and BBO, hence rendering this signal falsifiable by GW experiments and promoting it as a novel portal probing the primordial non-Gaussianity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Crunch from AdS bubble collapse in unbounded potentials

We consider a scalar field theory with a Minkowski false vacuum and an unbounded (or very deep) true vacuum. We show compelling evidence that an AdS bubble of vanishing total energy, embedded in asymptotically flat spacetime, generically undergoes a spherical collapse which leads to a space-like curvature singularity after the formation of trapped surfaces and apparent horizons. The crunch singularity, which is hided behind an apparent horizon, occurs before the true vacuum is reached, and the existence of a lower bound of the scalar field potential is not a necessary condition for its formation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

One-loop thermal radiation exchange in gravitational wave power spectrum

The radiation-dominated universe is a key ingredient of the standard Big Bang cosmology. Radiation comprises numerous quantum elementary particles, and the macroscopic behavior of radiation is described by taking the quantum thermal average of its constituents. While the interactions between individual particles and gravitational waves are often neglected in this context, it raises the question of whether these elementary particles interact with gravitational waves in the framework of quantum field theory. To address this question, this paper aims to explore the quantum mechanical aspects of gravitational waves in a universe dominated by a massless scalar field, whose averaged energy-momentum tensor plays the role of background radiation. We establish the equivalence between the classical Einstein equation and the mean-field approximation of the Heisenberg equation in a local thermal state. Beyond the mean-field approximation, we analyze the quantum corrections to gravitational waves, particularly focusing on the thermal radiation loop corrections. Interestingly, we find the 1-loop correction surpasses the tree-level spectrum of primordial gravitational waves, which is $O(α^2)$ where $α=H_{\rm inf}/M_{\rm pl}$ is the ratio of the inflationary Hubble parameter to the Planck mass. Then, to see if this result persists even if we take into account all the higher order loop corrections, the loop expansion is reorganized in the series expansion in $α$. We schematically discuss two-loop diagrams that may give $O(α^2)$ contributions. We leave explicit computations of these diagrams for future studies. Thus, although we cannot claim that the whole loop corrections exceed the tree-level spectrum at the moment, our findings highlight the significance of quantum effects when studying the interaction between radiation and gravitational waves in the cosmological context.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Black Holes Inside and Out 2024: visions for the future of black hole physics

The gravitational physics landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by our ability to study strong-field regions, in particular black holes. Black Holes Inside and Out gathered world experts to discuss the status of the field and prospects ahead. We hope that the ideas and perspectives are a source of inspiration. Structure: Black Hole Evaporation - 50 Years by William Unruh The Stability Problem for Extremal Black Holes by Mihalis Dafermos The Entropy of Black Holes by Robert M. Wald The Non-linear Regime of Gravity by Luis Lehner Black Holes Galore in D > 4 by Roberto Emparan Same as Ever: Looking for (In)variants in the Black Holes Landscape by Carlos A. R. Herdeiro Black Holes, Cauchy Horizons, and Mass Inflation by Matt Visser The Backreaction Problem for Black Holes in Semiclassical Gravity by Adrian del Rio Black Holes Beyond General Relativity by Enrico Barausse and Jutta Kunz Black Holes as Laboratories: Searching for Ultralight Fields by Richard Brito Primordial Black Holes from Inflation by Misao Sasaki Tests of General Relativity with Future Detectors by Emanuele Berti Black Holes as Laboratories: Tests of General Relativity by Ruth Gregory and Samaya Nissanke Simulating Black Hole Imposters by Frans Pretorius Black Hole Spectroscopy: Status Report by Gregorio Carullo VLBI as a Precision Strong Gravity Instrument by Paul Tiede Testing the nature of compact objects and the black hole paradigm by Mariafelicia De Laurentis and Paolo Pani Some Thoughts about Black Holes in Asymptotic Safety by Alessia Platania Black Hole Evaporation in Loop Quantum Gravity by Abhay Ashtekar How the Black Hole Puzzles are Resolved in String Theory by Samir D. Mathur Quantum Black Holes: From Regularization to Information Paradoxes by Niayesh Afshordi and Stefano Liberati

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Extracting parity-violating gravitational waves from projected tidal force tensor in three dimensions

Gravitational waves (GWs) may be produced by various mechanisms in the early universe. In particular, if parity is violated, it may lead to the production of parity-violating GWs. In this paper, we focus on GWs on the scale of the large-scale structure. Since GWs induce tidal deformations of the shape of galaxies, one can extract such GW signals by observing images of galaxies in galaxy surveys. Conventionally the detection of such signals is discussed by considering the three-dimensional power spectra of the $E/B$-modes. Here, we develop a complementary new technique to estimate the contribution of GWs to the tidal force tensor field projected on the celestial sphere, which is a directly observable quantity. We introduce two two-dimensional vector fields constructed by taking the divergence and curl of the projected tidal field in three dimensions. Their auto-correlation functions naturally contain contributions of the scalar-type tidal field. However, we find that the divergence of the curl of the projected tidal field, which is a pseudo-scalar quantity, is free from the scalar contribution and thus enables us to extract GW signals. We also find that we can detect parity-violating signals in the GWs by observing the nonzero cross-correlation between the divergence of the projected tidal field and the curl of it. It roughly corresponds to measuring the cross-power spectrum of E and B-modes, but these are complementary to each other in the sense that our estimator can be naturally defined locally in position space. Finally we present expressions of the correlation functions in the form of Fourier integrals, and discuss the properties of the kernels specific to the GW case, which we call the overlap reduction function, borrowing the terminology used in the pulsar timing array experiments.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

New shape for cross-bispectra in Chern-Simons gravity

Chern-Simons gravity is known to suffer from graviton ghost production during inflation, which suppresses the parity-violating power spectrum at scales relevant to cosmic microwave background observations. In this work, we show that allowing the initial conditions of inflation to deviate from the standard Bunch-Davies state can enhance parity-violating non-Gaussianity in the scalar-tensor cross-bispectra. Our results reveal a significant additional contribution to the cross-bispectra in the flattened configuration, offering a new avenue to constrain parity-violating gravity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

New probe of non-Gaussianities with primordial black hole induced gravitational waves

We propose a new probe of primordial non-Gaussianities (NGs) through the observation of gravitational waves (GWs) induced by ultra-light ($M_{\text{PBH}}< 10^{9}\rm{g}$) primordial black holes (PBHs). Interestingly enough, the existence of primordial NG can leave imprints on the clustering properties of PBHs and the spectral shape of induced GW signals. Focusing on a scale-dependent local-type NG, we identify a distinct double-peaked GW energy spectrum that, contingent upon $M_{\text{PBH}}$ and the abundance of PBHs at the time of formation, denoted as $Ω_\mathrm{PBH,f}$, may fall into the frequency bands of upcoming GW observatories, including LISA, ET, SKA, and BBO. Thus, such a signal can serve as a novel portal for probing primordial NGs. Intriguingly, combining BBN bounds on the GW amplitude, we find for the first time the joint limit on the product of the effective non-linearity parameter for the primordial tri-spectrum, denoted by $\barτ_\mathrm{NL}$, and the primordial curvature perturbation power spectrum $\mathcal{P}_{\cal R}(k)$, which reads as $\barτ_\mathrm{NL} \mathcal{P}_{\cal R}(k) < 4\times 10^{-20} Ω^{-17/9}_\mathrm{PBH,f} \left( \frac{M_{\rm PBH}}{10^4\mathrm{g}} \right)^{-17/9}$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Enhanced Curvature Perturbation and Primordial Black Hole Formation in Two-stage Inflation with a break

We investigate a model of $R^2$-gravity with a non-minimally coupled scalar field that gives rise to two-stage inflation with a break, that is, with an intermediate stage where inflation momentarily halts. We find that the power spectrum of the primordial curvature perturbation is significantly enhanced at the break scale, which can account for the primordial black hole (PBH) formation, without affecting the CMB constraint on large scales. The behavior of the curvature perturbation is carefully analyzed and we find a few notable new features in the spectrum. In particular, we find that the $k^3$ growth of the spectrum of toward the end of the first stage of inflation. We argue that this is a universal feature common to all two-stage models where the field dominating the second stage is heavy during the first stage. By appropriately tuning the model parameters, we find that our model can realize the scenario of PBHs as the cold dark matter of the Universe. We also find that we can choose the parameters so that the spectrum of the induced gravitational waves from the enhanced curvature perturbation fits the NANOGrav-15yr data of pulsar timing array observation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Revisiting the Ultraviolet Tail of the Primordial Gravitational Wave

High-frequency primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) with wave numbers larger than the Hubble parameter at the end of inflation are originated from the ultraviolet (UV) modes, which are never stretched out of the horizon. Such a UV tail of the PGW energy spectrum has a spurious logarithmic divergence. We study the origin of such a divergence, and find that it comes from the instantaneous inflation-to-post-inflation transition, which can be removed by considering a finite duration. For the first time, we obtain a semi-analytical expression for the PGW energy spectrum. We find that the UV tail decays exponentially, while the decay rate depends solely on the transition rate. When there is a stiff post-inflationary stage, the enhanced PGW displays a characteristic spectral shape of power-law increasing and exponential decaying. We propose a fitting formula which can be used for signal searching.

astro-ph.CO↗