arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Qing-Guo Huang.
We investigate the non-Gaussian signatures of ultra slow-roll inflation. The bispectrum and the trispectrum are calculated with general initial conditions. The trispectrum is of local shape, as in the case of the bispectrum. We show that the prediction of local non-Gaussianity is robust again generalizing the Bunch-Davies vacuum. The Suyama-Yamaguchi relation is saturated in this scenario.
We study the Standard Model Higgs field as a source for the primordial curvature perturbation, particularly in the curvaton and modulated reheating scenario. We conclude that the Higgs cannot play as a curvaton due to the small energy density when it decays, however the modulated reheating by Higgs can be a viable scenario. In the latter case, the non-Gaussianity is inevitably generated and strongly constrains the type of potential of inflaton field and Higgs-dependent interaction term. For the quadratic potential of the inflaton field with decay rate which non-linearly depends on the Higgs vacuum expectation value, the contribution of Higgs field to the primordial curvature perturbation must be less than 8%.
In this paper we investigate the perturbation theory of the asymptotically safe inflation and we find that all modes of gravitational waves perturbation become ghosts in order to achieve a large enough number of e-folds. Formally we can calculate the power spectrum of gravitational waves perturbation, but we find that it is negative. It indicates that there is serious trouble with the asymptotically safe inflation.
We make a comprehensive investigation of the observational effect of the inflation consistency relation. We focus on the general single-field inflation model with the consistency relation $r=-8c_s n_t$, and investigate the observational constraints of sound speed $c_s$ by using the Seven-Year WMAP data, the BICEP tensor power spectrum data, and the constraints on $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm equil.}$ and $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm orth.}$ from the Five-Year WMAP observations. We find that the constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ is much tighter if $c_s$ is small, since a large tilt $n_t$ is strongly constrained by the observations. We obtain $r<0.37, 0.27$ and 0.09 ($dn_s/d\ln k=0$) for $c_s$=1, 0.1 and 0.01 models at 95.4% confidence level. When taking smaller values of $c_s$, the positive correlation between $r$ and $n_s$ also leads to slightly tighter constraint on the upper bound of $n_s$, while the running of scalar spectral index $dn_s/d\ln k$ is generally unaffected. For the sound speed $c_s$, it is not well constrained if only the CMB power spectrum data is used, while the constraints are obtainable by taking $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm equil.}$ and $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm orth.}$ priors into account. With the constraining data of $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm equil.}$ and $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm orth.}$, we find that, $c_s\lesssim 0.01$ region is excluded at 99.7% CL, and the $c_s=1$ case (the single-field slow-roll inflation) is slightly disfavored at 68.3% CL. In addition, the inclusion of $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm equil.}$ and $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm orth.}$ into the analysis can improve the constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. We further discuss the implications of our constraints on the test of inflation models.
We derive the Boltzmann equation in the synchronous gauge for massive neutrinos with a deformed dispersion relation. Combining the 7-year WMAP data with lower-redshift measurements of the expansion rate, we give constraints on the deformation parameter and find that the deformation parameter is strong degenerate with the physical dark matter density instead of the neutrino mass. Our results show that there is no evidence for Lorentz invariant violation in the neutrino sector. The ongoing Planck experiment could provide improved constraints on the deformation parameter.
We explore the cosmological implications of five modified gravity (MG) models by using the recent cosmological observational data, including the recently released SNLS3 type Ia supernovae sample, the cosmic microwave background anisotropy data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7-yr observations, the baryon acoustic oscillation results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 7, and the latest Hubble constant measurement utilizing the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. The MG models considered include the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati(DGP) model, two $f(R)$ models, and two $f(T)$ models. We find that compared with the $Λ$CDM model, MG models can not lead to a appreciable reduction of the $χ^2_{min}$. The analysis of AIC and BIC shows that the simplest cosmological constant model($Λ$CDM) is still most preferred by the current data, and the DGP model is strongly disfavored. In addition, from the observational constraints, we also reconstruct the evolutions of the growth factor in these models. We find that the current available growth factor data are not enough to distinguish these MG models from the $Λ$CDM model.
From the viewpoint of no-cloning theorem we postulate a relation between the current accelerated expansion of our universe and the inflationary expansion in the very early universe. It implies that the fate of our universe should be in a state with accelerated expansion. Quantitatively we find that the no-cloning theorem leads to a lower bound on the cosmological constant which is compatible with observations.
We explore the ultimate fate of the Universe by using a divergence-free parametrization for dark energy $w(z)=w_0+w_a({\ln (2+z)\over 1+z}-\ln2)$. Unlike the CPL parametrization, this parametrization has well behaved, bounded behavior for both high redshifts and negative redshifts, and thus can genuinely cover many theoretical dark energy models. After constraining the parameter space of this parametrization by using the current cosmological observations, we find that, at the 95.4% confidence level, our Universe can still exist at least 16.7 Gyr before it ends in a big rip. Moreover, for the phantom energy dominated Universe, we find that a gravitationally bound system will be destroyed at a time $t \simeq P\sqrt{2|1+3w(-1)|}/[6π|1+w(-1)|]$, where $P$ is the period of a circular orbit around this system, before the big rip.
We derive the spectral indices and their runnings of local form $f_{NL}$ and $g_{NL}$ from a DBI isocurvature field and we find that the indices are suppressed by the sound speed $c_s$. This effect can be interpreted by the Lorentz boost from the viewpoint in the frame where brane is moving.
We probe the cosmic acceleration by using the recently released SNLS3 sample of 472 type Ia supernovae. Combining this type Ia supernovae dataset with the cosmic microwave background anisotropy data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7-yr observations, the baryon acoustic oscillation results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 7, and the Hubble constant measurement from the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope, we measure the dark energy equation of state $w$ and the deceleration parameter $q$ as functions of redshift by using the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder parametrization. Our result is consistent with a cosmological constant at 1$σ$ confidence level, without evidence for the recent slowing down of the cosmic acceleration. Furthermore, we consider three binned parametrizations ($w$ is piecewise constant in redshift $z$) based on different binning methods. The similar results are obtained, i.e., the $Λ$CDM model is still nicely compatible with current observations.
It is possible that the primordial non-Gaussianity is dominated by the higher order terms, such as that set by $g_{NL}$, not $f_{NL}$. In this paper we derive the spectral index and running of $g_{NL}$ from a single isocurvature scalar field. The scale dependences of non-Gaussianity parameters are detectable if the mass of isocurvature field is not too small compared to the Hubble parameter during inflation. In addition, we also apply our results to investigate the curvaton model with near quadratic potential in detail.
We derive the evolution equation of growth factor for the matter over-dense perturbation in $f(T)$ gravity. For instance, we investigate its behavior in power law model at small redshift and compare it to the prediction of $Λ$CDM and dark energy with the same equation of state in the framework of Einstein general relativity. We find that the perturbation in $f(T)$ gravity grows slower than that in Einstein general relativity if $\p f/\p T>0$ due to the effectively weakened gravity.
Adopting the horizon-crossing approximation, we derive the spectral index of $f_{NL}$ in general N-flation model. Axion N-flation model is taken as a typical model for generating a large $f_{NL}$ which characterizes the size of local form bispectrum. We find that its tilt $n_{f_{NL}}$ is negligibly small when all inflatons have the same potential, but a negative detectable $n_{f_{NL}}$ can be achieved in the axion N-flation with different decay constants for different inflatons. The measurement of $n_{f_{NL}}$ can be used to support or falsify the axion N-flation in the near future.
We derive the spectral index of $f_{NL}$ and its running from isocurvature single field and investigate the curvaton models with a negative spectral index of $f_{NL}$ in detail. In particular, a numerical study of the axion-type curvaton model is illustrated, and we find that the spectral index of $f_{NL}$ is negative and its absolute value is maximized around $σ_*=πf/2$ for the potential $V(σ)=m^2f^2(1-\cos{σ\over f})$. The spectral index of $f_{NL}$ can be ${\cal O}(-0.1)$ for the axion-type curvaton model. A convincing detection of a positive $n_{f_{NL}}$ will rule out the axion-type curvaton model. In addition, we also give a general discussion about the detectable parameter space for the curvaton model with a polynomial potential.
We calculate the trispectrum in ghost inflation where both the contact diagram and scale-exchange diagram are taken into account. The shape of trispectrum is discussed carefully and we find that the local form is absent in ghost inflation. In general, for the non-local shape trispectrum there are not analogous parameters to $τ_{NL}^{loc.}$ and $g_{NL}^{loc.}$ which can completely characterize the size of local form trispectrum.
We demonstrate novel features in the behavior of the second and third order non-linearity parameters of the curvature perturbation, namely, $f_{NL}$ and $g_{NL}$, arising from non-linear motion of curvaton field. We investigate two classes of potentials for the curvaton - the first has tiny oscillations super-imposed upon the quadratic potential. The second is characterized by a single 'feature' separating two quadratic regimes with different mass scales. The feature may either be a bump or a flattening of the potential. In the case of the oscillatory potential we find that as the width and height of superimposed oscillations increase, both $f_{NL}$ and $g_{NL}$ deviate strongly from their expected values from a quadratic potential. $f_{NL}$ changes sign from positive to negative as the oscillations in the potential become more prominent. Hence, this model can be severely constrained by convincing evidence from observations that $f_{NL}$ is positive. $g_{NL}$, on the other hand, acquires very large negative values. For the the single feature potential, we find that $f_{NL}$ and $g_{NL}$ exhibit oscillatory behavior as a function of the parameter that controls the feature.
In this paper we compute the sizes of equilateral and orthogonal shape bispectrum for the general Lorentz invariant single-field inflation. The stability of field theory implies a non-negative square of sound speed which leads to a consistency relation between the sizes of orthogonal and equilateral shape bispectrum, namely $f_{NL}^{orth.}\lesssim -0.054 f_{NL}^{equil.}$. In particular, for the single-field Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) inflation, the consistency relation becomes $f_{NL}^{orth.}\simeq 0.070 f_{NL}^{equil.}\lesssim 0$. These consistency relations are also valid in the mixed scenario where the quantum fluctuations of some other light scalar fields contribute to a part of total curvature perturbation on the super-horizon scale and may generate a local form bispectrum. A distinguishing prediction of the mixed scenario is $τ_{NL}^{loc.}>({6\over 5}f_{NL}^{loc.})^2$. Comparing these consistency relations to WMAP 7yr data, there is still a big room for the Lorentz invariant inflation, but DBI inflation has been disfavored at more than 68% CL.
We construct the general renormalizable actions for the scalar field and the gauge field at a Lifshitz point characterized by the dynamical critical exponent $z$. The Lorentz invariance is broken down in the UV region, but is recovered in the IR limit. Even though the theories are UV complete, the speed of light is related to the momentum by $z(k/M)^{z-1}$ which can go to infinity in the UV limit for $z\geq 2$. Since the Lorentz invariance is broken down, the dispersion relation is modified and the time delays in Gamma-Ray bursts can be easily explained. In addition, we also discuss the thermal dynamics and the size of causal patch in a FRW universe for the field theory at a Lifshitz point.