arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R. Brandenberger.
Assuming that Dark Matter is an ultralight scalar field which is coupled to electromagnetism via a gauge-kinetic function and which at the time of recombination is oscillating coherently over a Hubble patch, we show that there is a tachyonic instability for the gauge field modes which leads to the generation of magnetic fields on cosmological scales of sufficient amplitude to explain observations.
We study the proposal by Mersini et al. that the observed dark energy might be explained by the back-reaction of the set of tail modes in a theory with a dispersion relation in which the mode frequency decays exponentially in the trans-Planckian regime. The matter tail modes are frozen out, however they induce metric fluctuations. The energy-momentum tensor with which the tail modes effect the background geometry obtains contributions from both metric and matter fluctuations. We calculate the equation of state induced by the tail modes taking into account the gravitational contribution. We find that, in contrast to the case of frozen super-Hubble cosmological fluctuations, in this case the matter perturbations dominate, and they yield an equation of state which to leading order takes the form of a positive cosmological constant.
We study cosmological perturbations in Hořava-Lifshitz Gravity. We consider scalar metric fluctuations about a homogeneous and isotropic space-time. Starting from the most general metric, we work out the complete second order action for the perturbations. We then make use of the residual gauge invariance and of the constraint equations to reduce the number of dynamical degrees of freedom. After introducing the Sasaki-Mukhanov variable, the combination of spatial metric fluctuation and matter inhomogeneity for which the action in General Relativity has canonical form, we find that this variable has the standard time derivative term in the second order action, and that the extra degree of freedom is non-dynamical. The limit $λ\to 1$ is well-behaved, unlike what is obtained when performing incomplete analyses of cosmological fluctuations. Thus, there is no strong coupling problem for Hořava-Lifshitz gravity when considering cosmological solutions. We also compute the spectrum of cosmological perturbations. If the potential in the action is taken to be of "detailed balance" form, we find a cancelation of the highest derivative terms in the action for the curvature fluctuations. As a consequence, the initial spectrum of perturbations will not be scale-invariant in a general spacetime background. As an application, we consider fluctuations in an inflationary background and draw connections with the "trans-Planckian problem" for cosmological perturbations. In the special case in which the potential term in the action is of detailed balance form and in which $λ= 1$, the equation of motion for cosmological perturbations in the far UV takes the same form as in GR. However, in general the equation of motion is characterized by a modified dispersion relation.
There are large classes of inflationary models, particularly popular in the context of string theory and brane world approaches to inflation, in which the ratio of linearized tensor to scalar metric fluctuations is very small. In such models, however, gravitational waves produced by scalar modes cannot be neglected. We derive the lower bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio by considering the back-reaction of the scalar perturbations as a source of gravitational waves. These results show that no cosmological model that is compatible with a metric scalar amplitude of $\approx 10^{-5}$ can have a ratio of the tensor to scalar power spectra less than $\approx 10^{-8}$ at recombination and that higher-order terms leads to logarithmic growth for r during radiation domination. Our lower bound also applies to non-inflationary models which produce an almost scale-invariant spectrum of coherent super-Hubble scale metric fluctuations.
We present a solution to the dark energy problem in terms of the Effective Energy Momentum Tensor (EMT) of cosmological perturbations. The approach makes use of the gravitational back-reaction of long wavelength (super-Hubble) fluctuation modes on the background metric. Our results indicate that, following preheating, the energy density associated with back-reaction is sub-dominant and behaves as a tracker during the radiation era. At the onset of matter domination, however, the effects of back-reaction begin to grow relative to the matter density and the associated equation of state quickly approaches that of a cosmological constant. Using standard values for the preheating temperature and the amplitude of the inflaton following preheating, we show that this mechanism leads to a very natural explanation of dark energy. We comment on other recent attempts to explain the dark energy using back-reaction and their relation to our work.
The question of how perturbations evolve through a bounce in the Cyclic and Ekpyrotic models of the Universe is still a matter of ongoing debate. In this report we show that the collision between boundary branes is in most cases singular even in the full 5-D formalism, and that first order perturbation theory breaks down for at least one perturbation variable. Only in the case that the boundary branes approach each other with constant velocity shortly before the bounce, can a consistent, non singular solution be found. It is then possible to follow the perturbations explicitly until the actual collision. In this case, we find that if a scale invariant spectrum developed on the hidden brane, it will get transferred to the visible brane during the bounce.
String theory gives rise to various mechanisms to generate primordial inflation, of which ``brane inflation'' is one of the most widely considered. In this scenario, inflation takes place while two branes are approaching each other, and the modulus field representing the separation between the branes plays the role of the inflaton field. We study the phase space of initial conditions which can lead to a sufficiently long period of cosmological inflation, and find that taking into account the possibility of nonvanishing initial momentum can significantly change the degree of fine tuning of the required initial conditions.
We consider the four-dimensional effective field theory which has been used in previous studies of perturbations in the Ekpyrotic Universe, and discuss the spectrum of cosmological fluctuations induced on large scales by quantum fluctuations of the bulk brane. By matching cosmological fluctuations on a constant energy density hypersurface we show that the growing mode during the very slow collapsing pre-impact phase couples only to the decaying mode in the expanding post-impact phase, and that hence no scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic fluctuations is generated. Note that our conclusions may not apply to improved toy models for the Ekpyrotic scenario.
There is increasing evidence that conventional cold dark matter (CDM) models lead to conflicts between observations and numerical simulations of dark matter halos on sub-galactic scales. Spergel and Steinhardt showed that if the CDM is strongly self-interacting, then the conflicts disappear. However, the assumption of strong self-interaction would rule out the favored candidates for CDM, namely weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), such as the neutralino. In this paper we propose a mechanism of non-thermal production of WIMPs and study its implications on the power spectrum. We find that the non-vanishing velocity of the WIMPs suppresses the power spectrum on small scales compared to what it obtained in the conventional CDM model. Our results show that, in this context, WIMPs as candidates for dark matter can work well both on large scales and on sub-galactic scales.
Over the past decade it has become clear that fundamental strings are not the only fundamental degrees of freedom in string theory. D-branes are also part of the spectrum of fundamental states. In this paper we explore some possible effects of D-branes on early Universe string cosmology, starting with two key assumptions: firstly that the initial state of the Universe corresponded to a dense, hot gas in which all degrees of freedom were in thermal equilibrium, and secondly that the topology of the background space admits one-cycles. We argue by t-duality that in this context the cosmological singularities are not present. We derive the equation of state of the brane gases and apply the results to suggest that, in an expanding background, the winding modes of fundamental strings will play the most important role at late times. In particular, we argue that the string winding modes will only allow four space-time dimensions to become large. The presence of brane winding modes with $p > 1$ may lead to a hierarchy in the sizes of the extra dimensions.
This investigation is concerned with cosmological scenarios based on particle physics theories that give rise to superconducting cosmic strings (whose subsequent evolution may produce stable loop configurations known as vortons). Cases in which electromagnetic coupling of the string current is absent or unimportant have been dealt with in previous work. The purpose of the present work is to provide quantitative estimates for cases in which electromagnetic interaction with the surrounding plasma significantly affects the string dynamics. In particular it will be shown that the current can become sufficiently strong for the initial period of friction dominated string motion to be substantially prolonged, which would entail a reinforcement of the short length scale end of the spectrum of the string distribution, with potentially observable cosmological implications if the friction dominated scenario lasts until the time of plasma recombination.
We study the class of two-field inflationary Universe models λϕ^4/4 + g^2χ^2ϕ^2/2, in which parametric resonance during the initial stages of reheating can lead to an exponential amplification of the amplitude of cosmological fluctuations. Employing both analytical arguments and numerical simulations, we determine the time at which backreaction of fluctuations on the background fields shuts off the exponential growth, making use of the Hartree approximation, and including scalar metric perturbations. For the case g^2/λ=2, we find that the amplitude of fluctuations after preheating will exceed the observational upper bound independent of the value of λ, unless the duration of inflation is very long. Cosmological fluctuations are acceptably small for g^2/λ>=8. We also find that the addition of χ-field self-interaction can limit the growth of fluctuations, and in the negative-coupling case the system can become effectively single-field, removing the resonance.
We study the parametric amplification of super-Hubble-scale scalar metric fluctuations at the end of inflation in some specific two-field models of inflation, a class of which is motivated by hybrid inflation. We demonstrate that there can indeed be a large growth of fluctuations due to parametric resonance and that this effect is not taken into account by the conventional theory of isocurvature perturbations. Scalar field interactions play a crucial role in this analysis. We discuss the conditions under which there can be nontrivial parametric resonance effects on large scales.
In models in which some of the scalar field are charged and some uncharged, interactions with a finite temperature plasma will lead to corrections to the effective potential of the charged fields which may stabilize embedded defects made up of uncharged fields. In these models embedded defects, solutions of the field equations which are unstable at zero temperature, may thus be stable in the early Universe, and may then play an important role in cosmology. Two prototypical examples are the pion string in the theory of strong interactions, and the electroweak Z-string in the standard electroweak theory.
We propose a new mechanism for explaining the observed asymmetry between matter and antimatter, based on nonperturbative physics at the QCD scale. Our mechanism is a charge separation scenario, making use of domain walls separating the recently discovered long-lived metastable vacua from the lowest energy vacuum. The walls acquire a fractional negative baryon charge, leaving behind a compensating positive baryon charge in the bulk. The regions of metastable vacuum bounded by walls ("B-shells") will contribute to the dark matter of the Universe.
We propose a mechanism of nonthermal production of a neutralino cold dark matter particle, $χ$, from the decay of cosmic strings which form from the spontaneous breaking of a U(1) gauge symmetry, such as $U_{B-L}(1)$, in an extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). By explicit calculation, we point out that with a symmetry breaking scale $η$ of around $10^8$ GeV, the decay of cosmic strings can give rise to $Ω_χ\simeq 1$. This gives a new constraint on supersymmetric models. For example, the dark matter produced from strings will overclose the universe if $η$ is near the electroweak symmetry breaking scale. To be consistent with $Ω_χ\leq 1$, the mass of the new U(1) gauge boson must be much larger than the Fermi scale which makes it unobservable in upcoming accelerator experiments. In a supersymmetric model with an extra $U_{B-L}(1)$ symmetry, the requirement of $Ω_χ\leq 1$ puts an upper bound on the neutrino mass of about $30 eV$ provided neutrino masses are generated by the see-saw mechanism.
We propose a new baryosymmetric mechanism for baryogenesis which takes place at the QCD scale and is based on the existence of domain walls separating the metastable vacua from the lowest energy vacuum. The walls acquire fractional negative and positive baryon charges, while the observed baryon asymmetry is due to a non-zero value of the $ θ$ angle at the temperatures near the QCD chiral phase transition. The regions of metastable vacuum bounded by walls carry a negative baryon charge and may contribute a significant fraction of the dark matter of the Universe.
Explosive particle production due to parametric resonance is a crucial feature of reheating in an inflationary cosmology. Coherent oscillations of the inflaton field lead to a periodically varying mass in the evolution equation of matter and gravitational fluctuations and often induce a parametric resonance instability. In a previous paper (hep-ph/9709273) it was shown that homogeneous (i.e. space independent) noise leads to an increase of the generalized Floquet exponent for all modes, at least if the noise is temporally uncorrelated. Here we extend the results to the physically more realistic case of spatially inhomogeneous noise. We demonstrate - modulo some mathematical fine points which are addressed in a companion paper - that the Floquet exponent is a non- decreasing function of the amplitude of the noise. We provide numerical evidence for an even stronger statement, namely that in the presence of inhomogeneous noise, the Floquet exponent of each mode is larger than the maximal Floquet exponent of the system in the absence of noise.