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Silvia Mollerach

Publications and source records attributed to Silvia Mollerach.

50 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2000

Fermion production during preheating after hybrid inflation

At the end of inflation, the coherent oscillations of the inflaton field may resonantly amplify the long wavelength modes of both bosons and fermions coupled to it. We study the resonant production of both kinds of particles during preheating in a model of hybrid inflation. The coherent time evolution of the inflaton and the Higgs fields after inflation induce a very different production of fermions depending on whether they are coupled to the Higgs or to the inflaton. For reasonable values of the model parameters, the fermion production through parametric resonance can be very efficient. We study the relative growth of the fermion and boson energy densities during preheating in hybrid models. During the initial stage of preheating, fermion production dominates the relative energy density, while the exponential growth of bosonic modes soon takes over.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2000

Signatures of galactic magnetic lensing upon ultra high energy cosmic rays

We analyse several implications of lensing by the regular component of the galactic magnetic field upon the observed properties of ultra high energy cosmic rays. Magnetic fields deflect cosmic ray trajectories, causing flux (de)magnification, formation of multiple images of a single source, and time delays. We derive the energy dependence of these effects near the caustics at which the flux amplification of a point source diverges. We show that the large magnification of images around caustics leads to an amplification bias, which can make them dominate the flux in some energy ranges. We argue that clustering in the arrival directions of UHECRs of comparable energy may be due to magnetic lensing around caustics. We show that magnetic lensing can also significantly alter the observed composition of cosmic rays at the highest energies. We also show that the time delay between events from a single image may monotonically decrease with decreasing energy in the neighborhood of a caustic, opposite to its behaviour in normal regions.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

The toes of the ultra high energy cosmic ray spectrum

We study the effects of the galactic magnetic field on the ultra high energy cosmic ray propagation. We show that the deflections of the cosmic ray trajectories can have many important implications such as (de)magnification of the cosmic ray fluxes by lensing effects (which can modify the spectrum of individual sources), the formation of multiple images of a source or the existence of regions of the sky to which the Earth is almost blind. The appearance of image pairs is related to the existence of critical curves in the magnification maps, which divide regions in the sky where the images have opposite parities. The results are pictorially illustrated as the stretching and folding of a `sheet' describing the sky seen on Earth. Making use of the most energetic AGASA events we emphasize the need to know the cosmic ray composition and the structure of the magnetic field when attempting to do detailed cosmic ray astronomy.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

Gravitational lensing as folds in the sky

We revisit the gravitational lensing phenomenon using a new visualization technique. It consists in projecting the observers sky into the source plane, what gives rise to a folded and stretched surface. This provides a clear graphical tool to visualize some interesting well-known effects, such as the development of multiple images of a source, the structure of the caustic curves, the parity of the images and their magnification as a function of the source position.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

The roughness of the last scattering surface

We propose an alternative analysis of the microwave background temperature anisotropy maps that is based on the study of the roughness of natural surfaces. We apply it to large angle anisotropies, such as those measured by COBE-DMR. We show that for a large signal to noise experiment, the spectral index can be determined independently of the normalization. We then analyze the 4 yr COBE map and find for a flat $Ω=1$ universe, that the best-fitting value for the spectral index is $n = 1.15^{+0.39}_{-0.34}$ and for the amplitude $Q_{rms-PS}= 14.1^{+3.9}_{-3.5}μK$. For $n=1$, the best-fitting normalization is $Q_{rms-PS}|_{n=1}= 16.2^{+1.4}_{-1.3}μK$.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1999

On the disintegration of cosmic ray nuclei by solar photons

We discuss in detail the possibility of observing pairs of simultaneous parallel air showers produced by the fragments of cosmic ray nuclei which disintegrated in collisions with solar photons. We consider scenarios with different cosmic ray compositions, exploring the predicted rates for existing and planned detectors and looking for methods to extract information on the initial composition from the characteristics of the signal. In particular, we find that fluorescence detectors, such as HiRes or the Telescope Array, due to their low threshold ($\sim 10^{17}$ eV) and large area ($\sim 10^4 km^2$) may observe several events per year if cosmic rays at those energies are indeed heavy nuclei. The possibility of exploiting the angular orientation of the plane containing the two showers to further constrain the cosmic ray composition is also discussed.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1997

Gravitational lensing on the Cosmic Microwave Background by gravity waves

We study the effect of a stochastic background of gravitational waves on the gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. It has been shown that matter density inhomogeneities produce a smoothing of the acoustic peaks in the angular power spectrum of the CMB anisotropies. A gravitational wave background gives rise to an additional smoothing of the spectrum. For the most simple case of a gravitational wave background arising during a period of inflation, the effect results to be three to four orders of magnitude smaller than its scalar counterpart, and is thus undetectable. It could play a more relevant role in models where a larger background of gravitational waves is produced.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1997

Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies from second order gravitational perturbations

This paper presents a complete analysis of the effects of second order gravitational perturbations on Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, taking explicitly into account scalar, vector and tensor modes. We also consider the second order perturbations of the metric itself obtaining them, for a universe dominated by a collision-less fluid, in the Poisson gauge, by transforming the known results in the synchronous gauge. We discuss the resulting second order anisotropies in the Poisson gauge, and analyse the possible relevance of the different terms. We expect that, in the simplest scenarios for structure formation, the main effect comes from the gravitational lensing by scalar perturbations, that is known to give a few percent contribution to the anisotropies at small angular scales.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1997

Perturbations of spacetime: gauge transformations and gauge invariance at second order and beyond

We consider in detail the problem of gauge dependence that exists in relativistic perturbation theory, going beyond the linear approximation and treating second and higher order perturbations. We first derive some mathematical results concerning the Taylor expansion of tensor fields under the action of one-parameter families (not necessarily groups) of diffeomorphisms. Second, we define gauge invariance to an arbitrary order $n$. Finally, we give a generating formula for the gauge transformation to an arbitrary order and explicit rules to second and third order. This formalism can be used in any field of applied general relativity, such as cosmological and black hole perturbations, as well as in other spacetime theories. As a specific example, we consider here second order perturbations in cosmology, assuming a flat Robertson-Walker background, giving explicit second order transformations between the synchronous and the Poisson (generalized longitudinal) gauges.

gr-qc↗
arXiv1997

The stochastic gravitational-wave background produced by non-linear cosmological perturbations

The cosmological stochastic gravitational-wave background produced by the mildly non-linear evolution of density fluctuations is analyzed, in the frame of an Einstein-de Sitter model, by means of a fully relativistic perturbation expansion up to second order. The form of these gravitational-instability-induced gravitational waves is gauge-dependent. In the synchronous gauge, where the second-order expansion is most easily carried out, the transverse and traceless tensor modes which are produced also contain a Newtonian and post-Newtonian piece, whose interpretation as gravitational waves is non-trivial. A more direct physical understanding of this background is obtained in the so-called Poisson gauge, where it is seen to consist of a constant term plus an oscillating piece whose amplitude decays inside the Hubble radius.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1996

Kicked neutron stars and microlensing

Due to the large kick velocities with which neutron stars are born in supernovae explosions, their spatial distribution is more extended than that of their progenitor stars. The large scale height of the neutron stars above the disk plane makes them potential candidates for microlensing of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Adopting for the distribution of kicks the measured velocities of young pulsars, we obtain a microlensing optical depth of $τ\sim 2 N_{10} \times 10^{-8}$ (where $N_{10}$ is the total number of neutron stars born in the disk in units of $10^{10}$). The event duration distribution has the interesting property of being peaked at $T \sim 60$--80 d, but for the rates to be relevant for the present microlensing searches would require $N_{10} \gtap 1$, a value larger than the usually adopted ones ($N_{10} \sim 0.1$--0.2).

astro-ph↗
arXiv1996

Cosmic Microwave Background non-Gaussian signatures from analytical texture models

Using an analytical model for the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies produced by textures, we compute the resulting collapsed three--point correlation function and the {\it rms} expected value due to the cosmic variance. We apply our calculations to the {\sl COBE}--DMR experiment and test the consistency of the model with the observational results. We also show that an experiment with smaller angular resolution can put bounds to the model parameters.

astro-ph↗
arXiv1995

Contribution to the Three--Point Function of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the Rees--Sciama Effect

We compute the contribution to the three--point temperature correlation function of the Cosmic Microwave Background coming from the non--linear evolution of Gaussian initial perturbations, as described by the Rees--Sciama (or integrated Sachs--Wolfe) effect. By expressing the collapsed three--point function in terms of multipole amplitudes, we are able to calculate its expectation value for any power spectrum and for any experimental setting on large angular scales. We also give an analytical expression for the {\it rms} collapsed three--point function arising from the cosmic variance of a Gaussian fluctuation field. In the case of {\it COBE} DMR, we find that the predicted signal is about three orders of magnitude below that expected from the cosmic variance.

astro-ph↗