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Razieh Emami

Publications and source records attributed to Razieh Emami.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Stable solutions of inflation driven by vector fields

Many models of inflation driven by vector fields alone have been known to be plagued by pathological behaviors, namely ghost and/or gradient instabilities. In this work, we seek a new class of vector-driven inflationary models that evade all of the mentioned instabilities. We build our analysis on the Generalized Proca Theory with an extension to three vector fields to realize isotropic expansion. We obtain the conditions required for quasi de-Sitter solutions to be an attractor analogous to the standard slow-roll one and those for their stability at the level of linearized perturbations. Identifying the remedy to the existing unstable models, we provide a simple example and explicitly show its stability. This significantly broadens our knowledge on vector inflationary scenarios, reviving potential phenomenological interests for this class of models.

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Cosmological tests of an axiverse-inspired quintessence field

Inspired by the string axiverse idea, it has been suggested that the recent transition from decelerated to accelerated cosmic expansion is driven by an axion-like quintessence field with a sub-Planckian decay constant. The scenario requires that the axion field be rather near the maximum of its potential, but is less finely tuned than other explanations of cosmic acceleration. The model is parametrized by an axion decay constant $f$, the axion mass $m$, and an initial misalignment angle $|θ_i|$ which is close to $π$. In order to determine the $m$ and $θ_{i}$ values consistent with observations, these parameters are mapped onto observables: the Hubble parameter $H(z)$ at and angular diameter distance $d_{A}(z)$ to redshift $z= 0.57$, as well as the angular sound horizon of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measurements of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale at $z\simeq 0.57$ by the BOSS survey and Planck measurements of CMB temperature anisotropies are then used to probe the $\left\{m,f,θ_i\right\}$ parameter space. With current data, CMB constraints are the most powerful, allowing a fraction of only $\sim 0.2$ of the parameter-space volume. Measurements of the BAO scale made using the SPHEREx or SKA experiments could go further, observationally distinguishing all but $\sim 10^{-2}$ or $\sim 10^{-5}$ of the parameter-space volume (allowed by simple priors) from the $Λ$CDM model.

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Correlating CMB Spectral Distortions with Temperature: what do we learn on Inflation?

Probing correlations among short and long-wavelength cosmological fluctuations is known to be decisive for deepening the current understanding of inflation at the microphysical level. Spectral distortions of the CMB can be caused by dissipation of cosmological perturbations when they re-enter Hubble after inflation. Correlating spectral distortions with temperature anisotropies will thus provide the opportunity to greatly enlarge the range of scales over which squeezed limits can be tested, opening up a new window on inflation complementing the ones currently probed with CMB and LSS. In this paper we discuss a variety of inflationary mechanisms that can be efficiently constrained with distortion-temperature correlations. For some of these realizations (representative of large classes of models) we derive quantitative predictions for the squeezed limit bispectra, finding that their amplitudes are above the sensitivity limits of an experiment such as the proposed PIXIE.

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Primordial Statistical Anisotropies: The Effective Field Theory Approach

In this work we present the effective field theory of primordial statistical anisotropies generated during anisotropic inflation involving a background $U(1)$ gauge field. Besides the usual Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of time diffeomorphism we have two additional Goldstone bosons associated with the breaking of spatial diffeomorphisms. We further identify these two new Goldstone bosons with the expected two transverse degrees of the $U(1)$ gauge field fluctuations. Upon defining the appropriate unitary gauge, we present the most general quadratic action which respects the remnant symmetry in the unitary gauge. The interactions between various Goldstone bosons leads to statistical anisotropy in curvature perturbation power spectrum. Calculating the general results for power spectrum anisotropy, we recover the previously known results in specific models of anisotropic inflation. In addition, we present novel results for statistical anisotropy in models with non-trivial sound speed for inflaton fluctuations. Also we identify the interaction which leads to birefringence-like effects in anisotropic power spectrum in which the speed of gauge field fluctuations depends on the direction of the mode propagation and the two polarization of gauge field fluctuations contribute differently in statistical anisotropy. As another interesting application, our EFT approach naturally captures interactions generating parity violating statistical anisotropies.

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Anisotropic Inflation and Cosmological Observations

Recent observations opened up a new window on the inflationary model building. As it was firstly reported by the WMAP data, there may be some indications of statistical anisotropy on the CMB map, although the statistical significance of these findings are under debate. Motivated by these observations, people begun considering new inflationary models which may lead to statistical anisotropy. The simplest possible way to construct anisotropic inflation is to introduce vector fields. During the course of this thesis, we study models of anisotropic inflation and their observational implications such as power spectrum, bispectrum etc. Firstly we build a new model, which contains the gauge field which breaks the conformal invariance while preserving the gauge invariance. We show that in these kind of models, there can be an attractor phase in the evolution of the system when the back-reaction of the gauge field becomes important in the evolution of the inflaton field. We then study the cosmological perturbation theory in these kind of models. More specifically, we calculate the anisotropic corrections due to the presence of the vector field. We then generalize the separate universe formalism to our anisotropic set up and use it in some specific examples of anisotropic inflation. Finally, we connect the primordial anisotropies to the specific examples and to CMB observations. We calculate the TT, TE, TB, EB and BB correlation in the model of charged scalar field model and look for the unique signatures that the anisotropic inflation can have on the CMB map. Any future detection of these statistical anisotropies would rule out the isotropic FRW models.

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Clustering Fossil from Primordial Gravitational Waves in Anisotropic Inflation

Inflationary models can correlate small-scale density perturbations with the long-wavelength gravitational waves (GW) in the form of the Tensor-Scalar-Scalar (TSS) bispectrum. This correlation affects the mass-distribution in the Universe and leads to the off-diagonal correlations of the density field modes in the form of the quadrupole anisotropy. Interestingly, this effect survives even after the tensor mode decays when it re-enters the horizon, known as the fossil effect. As a result, the off-diagonal correlation function between different Fourier modes of the density fluctuations can be thought as a way to probe the large-scale GW and the mechanism of inflation behind the fossil effect. Models of single field slow roll inflation generically predict a very small quadrupole anisotropy in TSS while in models of multiple fields inflation this effect can be observable. Therefore this large scale quadrupole anisotropy can be thought as a spectroscopy for different inflationary models. In addition, in models of anisotropic inflation there exists quadrupole anisotropy in curvature perturbation power spectrum. Here we consider TSS in models of anisotropic inflation and show that the shape of quadrupole anisotropy is different than in single field models. In addition in these models the quadrupole anisotropy is projected into the preferred direction and its amplitude is proportional to $g_* N_e$ where $N_e$ is the number of e-folds and $g_*$ is the amplitude of quadrupole anisotropy in curvature perturbation power spectrum. We use this correlation function to estimate the large scale GW as well as the preferred direction and discuss the detectability of the signal in the galaxy surveys like Euclid and 21 cm surveys.

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Probing the scale dependence of non-Gaussianity with spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background

Many inflation models predict that primordial density perturbations have a nonzero three-point correlation function, or bispectrum in Fourier space. Of the several possibilities for this bispectrum, the most commmon is the local-model bispectrum, which can be described as a spatial modulation of the small-scale (large-wavenumber) power spectrum by long-wavelength density fluctuations. While the local model predicts this spatial modulation to be scale-independent, many variants have some scale-dependence. Here we note that this scale dependence can be probed with measurements of frequency-spectrum distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), in particular highlighting Compton-$y$ distortions. Dissipation of primordial perturbations with wavenumbers $50\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1} \lesssim k \lesssim 10^4\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ give rise to chemical-potential ($μ$) distortions, while those with wavenumbers $1\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1} \lesssim k \lesssim 50\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ give rise to Compton-$y$ distortions. With local-model non-Gaussianity, the distortions induced by this dissipation can be distinguished from those due to other sources via their cross-correlation with the CMB temperature $T$. We show that the relative strengths of the $μT$ and $yT$ correlations thus probe the scale-dependence of non-Gaussianity and estimate the magnitude of possible signals relative to sensitivities of future experiments. We discuss the complementarity of these measurements with other probes of squeezed-limit non-Gaussianity.

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The TT, TB, EB and BB correlations in anisotropic inflation

The ongoing and future experiments will measure the B-mode from different sky coverage and frequency bands, with the potential to reveal non-trivial features in polarization map. In this work we study the TT, TB, EB and BB correlations associated with the B-mode polarization of CMB map in models of charged anisotropic inflation. The model contains a chaotic-type large field complex inflaton which is charged under the $U(1)$ gauge field. We calculate the statistical anisotropies generated in the power spectra of the curvature perturbation, the tensor perturbation and their cross-correlation. It is shown that the asymmetry in tensor power spectrum is a very sensitive probe of the gauge coupling. While the level of statistical anisotropy in temperature power spectrum can be small and satisfy the observational bounds, the interactions from the gauge coupling can induce large directional dependence in tensor modes. This will leave interesting anisotropic fingerprints in various correlations involving the B-mode polarization such as the TB cross-correlation which may be detected in upcoming Planck polarization data. In addition, the TT correlation receives an anisotropic contribution from the tensor sector which naturally decays after $l \gtrsim 100$. We expect that the mechanism of using tensor sector to induce asymmetry at low $l$ to be generic which can also be applied to address other low $l$ CMB anomalies.

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CMB statistical anisotropies of classical and quantum origins

We examine the impact of different anisotropic relics on inflation, in particular the predictions on the density perturbations. These relics can be the source of the large scale anomalies in the cosmic microwave background. There are two different types of background relics, one from the matter sector and the other purely from the metric. Although the angular-dependence of the statistical anisotropy in both cases are degenerate, the scale-dependence are observationally distinctive. In addition, we demonstrate that non-Bunch-Davies vacuum states can extend the statistical anisotropy to much shorter scales, and leave a scale-dependence that is insensitive to the different backgrounds but sensitive to the initial quantum state.

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Statistical Anisotropies in Gravitational Waves in Solid Inflation

Solid inflation can support a long period of anisotropic inflation. We calculate the statistical anisotropies in the scalar and tensor power spectra and their cross-correlation in anisotropic solid inflation. The tensor-scalar cross-correlation can either be positive or negative, which impacts the statistical anisotropies of the TT and TB spectra in CMB map more significantly compared with the tensor self-correlation. The tensor power spectrum contains potentially comparable contributions from quadrupole and octopole angular patterns, which is different from the power spectra of scalar, the cross-correlation or the scalar bispectrum, where the quadrupole type statistical anisotropy dominates over octopole.

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Primordial Anisotropies in Gauged Hybrid Inflation

We study primordial anisotropies generated in the model of gauged hybrid inflation in which the complex waterfall field is charged under a $U(1)$ gauge field. Primordial anisotropies are generated either actively during inflation or from inhomogeneities modulating the surface of end of inflation during waterfall transition. We present a consistent $δN$ mechanism to calculate the anisotropic power spectrum and bispectrum. We show that the primordial anisotropies generated at the surface of end of inflation do not depend on the number of e-folds and therefore do not produce dangerously large anisotropies associated with the IR modes. Furthermore, one can find the parameter space that the anisotropies generated from the surface of end of inflation cancel the anisotropies generated during inflation, therefore relaxing the constrains on model parameters imposed from IR anisotropies. We also show that the gauge field fluctuations induce a red-tilted power spectrum so the averaged power spectrum from the gauge field can change the total power spectrum from blue to red. Therefore, hybrid inflation, once gauged under a $U(1)$ field, can be consistent with the cosmological observations.

hep-th↗

Spectroscopy of Masses and Couplings during Inflation

In this work, we extend the idea of Quasi Single Field inflation to the case of multiple isocurvaton fields with masses of order of Hubble, which are coupled kinetically to the inflaton field and have some interactions among themselves. We consider the effects of these massive modes in both the size and the shape of the bispectrum. We show that the shape of the bispectrum in the squeezed limit is dominated by the lightest field and is the same as in Quasi Single Field inflation. This is a generic feature of multiple isocurvaton fields and is independent of the details of the interactions among the massive fields. When the isocurvaton fields have similar masses, we can potentially distinguish two different shapes in the squeezed limit so that the shape of the bispectrum can act as a particle detector. However, in the presence of hierarchy among the massive fields, the dominant effect is due to the lightest field.

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Scalar-Tensor Anti-Cross-Correlation does not Help to Reconcile the Tension between BICEP2 and Planck

We examine the recent proposal [1] that the anti-cross-correlation of the scalar and tensor primordial fluctuations reconciles the tension between BICEP2 and Planck observations. We show that unfortunately the contribution from the scalar-tensor correlation to the CMB temperature power spectrum vanishes once summed over the angular mode $m$ so the tension between BICEP2 and Planck can not be reconciled. The reason is that one has to use the spin-weighted spherical harmonics when projecting fields with nonzero spins into the CMB sky. These nonzero spin-weighted spherical harmonics are subject to orthogonality conditions when summed over the angular direction and thus the desired cross-correlation between the scalar and tensor perturbations in CMB map vanishes.

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ISO(4,1) Symmetry in the EFT of Inflation

In DBI inflation the cubic action is a particular linear combination of the two, otherwise independent, cubic operators \dot π^3 and \dot π(\partial_i π)^2. We show that in the Effective Field Theory (EFT) of inflation this is a consequence of an approximate 5D Poincaré symmetry, ISO(4,1), non-linearly realized by the Goldstone π. This symmetry uniquely fixes, at lowest order in derivatives, all correlation functions in terms of the speed of sound c_s. In the limit c_s \to 1, the ISO(4,1) symmetry reduces to the Galilean symmetry acting on π. On the other hand, we point out that the non-linear realization of SO(4,2), the isometry group of 5D AdS space, does not fix the cubic action in terms of c_s.

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Anisotropic Inflation with the non-Vacuum Initial State

In this work we study models of anisotropic inflation with the generalized non-vacuum initial states for the inflaton field and the gauge field. The effects of non Bunch-Davies initial condition on the anisotropic power spectrum and bispectrum are calculated. We show that the non Bunch-Davies initial state can help to reduce the fine-tuning on the anisotropic power spectrum while reducing the level of anisotropic bispectrum.

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Curvature Perturbations in Anisotropic Inflation with Symmetry Breaking

We study curvature perturbations in the anisotropic inflationary model with a complex scalar field charged under a $U(1)$ gauge field in Bianchi I universe. Due to Abelian Higgs mechanism, the gauge field receives an additional longitudinal mode. We verify that the dominant contributions into statistical anisotropies come from matter fields perturbations and one can neglect the contributions from the metric perturbations. It is shown that the contribution of longitudinal mode into the statistical anisotropy power spectrum, though exponentially small, has an opposite sign compared to the corresponding contribution from the transverse mode. We obtain an upper bound on gauge coupling in order to satisfy the observational constraints on curvature perturbations anisotropy.

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δN Formalism in Anisotropic Inflation and Large Anisotropic Bispectrum and Trispectrum

We present a consistent δN formalism for curvature perturbations in anisotropic cosmological backgrounds. We employ our δN formalism to calculate the power spectrum, the bispectrum and the trispectrum in models of anisotropic inflation with the background gauge fields in Bianchi I universe. Our results coincide exactly with the recent results obtained from in-in formalism. To satisfy the observational constraints the anisotropies generated on power spectrum are kept small but large orientation-dependent non-Gaussianities can be generated. We study the Suyama-Yamaguchi inequality for the amplitudes of the bispectrum and the trispectrum in the presence of anisotropic shapes.

astro-ph.CO↗

Issues on Generating Primordial Anisotropies at the End of Inflation

We revisit the idea of generating primordial anisotropies at the end of inflation in models of inflation with gauge fields. To be specific we consider the charged hybrid inflation model where the waterfall field is charged under a U(1) gauge field so the surface of end of inflation is controlled both by inflaton and the gauge fields. Using delta N formalism properly we find that the anisotropies generated at the end of inflation from the gauge field fluctuations are exponentially suppressed on cosmological scales. This is because the gauge field evolves exponentially during inflation while in order to generate appreciable anisotropies at the end of inflation the spectator gauge field has to be frozen and scale invariant. We argue that this is a generic feature, that is, one can not generate observable anisotropies at the end of inflation within an FRW background.

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