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Suddhasattwa Brahma

Publications and source records attributed to Suddhasattwa Brahma.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Thermal enhancement of inflationary magnetic fields

We investigate primordial magnetogenesis by assuming the gauge field is prepared in a thermal state during inflation rather than the standard Bunch-Davies vacuum. The temperature $\mathcal{T}$ introduces a physical scale that breaks conformal invariance at the level of the state while preserving the standard Maxwell action. This modification results in a {\it dissipative boost} that alters the magnetic energy density scaling from $a^{-4}$ to $a^{-3}$, resulting in a present-day magnetic field $B_0$ enhancement that can potentially range from about $10^{8}$ to $10^{12}$ on cosmological scales. While this toy model alone does not satisfy observational lower bounds, it demonstrates that thermal initial conditions can significantly mitigate the conformal obstruction. Our results suggest that embedding this mechanism within a fully dynamical warm inflation framework, where dissipation continuously maintains the thermal bath, provides a highly promising path towards successfully realizing a minimal model of inflationary magnetogenesis without the need to invoke non-minimal couplings, anomalous background dynamics or nonlinear extensions of electrodynamics.

astro-ph.CO

Hidden quantum-informatic symmetries of quasi-de Sitter backgrounds

We investigate how degeneracies in quasi-de Sitter backgrounds, in the sense of Wands' duality, are reflected in real-space quantum correlations of primordial perturbations. Using the continuous-variable Gaussian formalism for coarse-grained scalar fluctuations, we construct the covariance matrix of a pair of spatially localized modes in inflationary spacetime, and extract the symplectic invariants of the system. For a generic Wands-dual pair of backgrounds, we find that while the individual entries of the covariance matrix are highly background-dependent, the symplectic eigenvalues -- and hence the entanglement entropy, mutual information, quantum discord and log-negativity -- all coincide for the two dual realizations. Our results unveil a new ''quantum-informatic symmetry'' of the de Sitter vacuum, according to which local linear entanglement witnesses constructed from coarse-grained fields cannot distinguish between Wands-dual inflationary histories, even though their background trajectories differ. We show that the special nature of the Wands-duality symmetry (of being local, scale-independent canonical transformations) is at the heart of this duality.

hep-th

Heterotic Warm Inflation

We propose a two-field model of warm inflation motivated by a heterotic string construction, involving an axion and a dilaton-like scalar field with non-trivial kinetic mixing. Gauge-field interactions generate dissipation and thermal corrections affecting both fields. A systematic numerical analysis reveals a range of dynamical regimes, including effectively single-field and multi-field behavior. We find that warm inflation is typically realized along the axion direction, while thermal corrections tend to hinder sustained dilaton-driven inflation over most of the parameter space. Although configurations exist in which the dilaton becomes dynamically relevant, particularly near the end of inflation, the majority of viable solutions are effectively single-field and axion-dominated. These results point to a dynamical mechanism in heterotic-inspired models that naturally favors axion-driven warm inflation while limiting the role of the dilaton.

hep-th

Black holes in effective loop quantum gravity: Hawking radiation

Emergent modified gravity provides a covariant framework for holonomy effects in models of loop quantum gravity with consistent black hole solutions coupled to a scalar field. Several independent studies of the Hawking thermal distribution are shown here to lead to the same final result. This internal consistency is a direct consequence of general covariance, which is analogous to the situation in classical general relativity but highly nontrivial in the context of modified canonical gravity. Holonomy corrections to the evaporation rate enter through the greybody factor, slowing down the evaporation process when the holonomy modification function decreases monotonically. Accounting for backreaction, corrected covariant semi-classical stress-energy tensors are computed in various vacuum states. Thanks to these results, the new concept of a net stress-energy tensor makes it possible to compute evaporation rates directly from energy conservation laws.

gr-qc

Collective field theory of gauged multi-matrix models: Integrating out off-diagonal strings

We study a two-matrix toy model with a BFSS-like interaction term using the collective field formalism. The main technical simplification is obtained by gauge-fixing first, and integrating out the off-diagonal elements, before changing to the collective field variable. We show that the resulting $(2+1)$-dimensional collective field action has novel features with respect to non-locality, and that we need to add a mass term to get a time-local potential. As is expected, one recovers the single matrix quantum mechanical collective field Hamiltonian in the proper limit.

hep-th

Twisting inflation to sub-Planckian axion decay constants

We study pseudoscalar inflation in the Einstein-Cartan-Palatini (first-order) formulation of gravity while allowing for torsion. We introduce two non-minimal interactions in the gravitational sector: pseudoscalar couplings to the Pontryagin density (Chern-Simons term) and the Nieh-Yan topological invariant. In the presence of these terms, the rolling pseudoscalar sources non-trivial torsional fields during inflation. We show that pathological gradient and ghost instabilities limit the strength of the coupling to the Pontryagin density during inflation. Furthermore, we show that the interaction with the Nieh-Yan term induces a new contribution to the pseudoscalar kinetic term, which parametrically increases its decay constant and allows for inflation on steep potentials. The torsion field generated by the background is parity violating, which is manifest in the resulting chiral gravitational wave spectrum. We find that the scalar sector is largely unaffected beyond the remapping of the axion decay constant to a larger value. Consequently, we show that while natural inflation with a cosine potential remains inconsistent with observations, the squared quartic hilltop potential can be made consistent with Planck 2018 data even for sub-Planckian decay constants by coupling to the Nieh-Yan term.

gr-qc

Transient de Sitter and Quasi de Sitter States in SO(32) and E_8 x E_8 Heterotic String Theories

One of the long-standing puzzles in string theory has been on the existence of a four-dimensional de Sitter and quasi de Sitter configurations, the latter being defined with a temporally varying dark energy, in E_8 x E_8 and SO(32) heterotic theories. In this work, novel dynamical duality-sequences are devised that provide natural constructions of de Sitter and quasi de Sitter excited states in the aforementioned theories allowing no late-time singularities. The emergent positive dark energies -- including the intriguing possibility of their slow temporal variations -- appear from Borel resumming Gevrey series from the path-integral representations of such states. Additionally, precise ways to handle the equations of motion, Bianchi identities, flux quantizations and anomaly cancellations -- consistent with the underlying axionic cosmology, with the temporal dependence, and with the probability of forming wormholes that connect baby universes -- are presented for the SO(32) and the E_8 x E_8 theories within a framework that systematically incorporates perturbative and non-perturbative corrections in the far infrared. The temporally varying dark energy, which is much more natural in our set-up because of its emergent nature, surprisingly simplifies many of the aforementioned computations. Interestingly, our analysis also provides, probably for the first time, a set-up to consistently embed four-dimensional standard model degrees of freedom at late time in a realistic gravitational background with positive dark energy from string theory.

hep-th

The early universe is $\textit{ACT}$-ing $\textit{warm}$

The recently released data from the $\textit{Atacama Cosmology Telescope}$ (ACT) confirms that the primordial scalar spectrum is extremely flat. This, together with current upper bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, implies that the simplest models of inflation coming from particle physics (for instance, a minimally-coupled scalar with monomial potentials) need additional ingredients in order to make them compatible with observations. Instead of invoking arbitrary new couplings or new interactions that are not protected symmetries, we argue that dissipation of the inflaton field with the radiation bath should be added as a new physical principle. Accordingly, we show that warm inflation provides the correct paradigm to explain the current observations, given very natural choices of dissipative terms. The model analyzed here has mirror and $Z_4$ symmetries, which explicitly protect the inflaton potential from large quantum and thermal corrections. We use a recent precision numerical code designed for warm inflationary perturbations, improving on the determination of the cosmological observables previously obtained for such models.

hep-th

Probing the self-coherence of primordial quantum fluctuations with complexity

A smoking gun for our current paradigm of the early universe would be direct evidence for the quantum mechanical origin of density perturbations which are conjectured to seed the large scale structure of our universe. A recently-proposed novel phenomenon is that of recoherence, wherein a specific interaction between the adiabatic and the entropic sector leads to the adiabatic mode retaining a coherent state after a transient increase in linear entropy. In this paper, we choose the most general Gaussian action and analyze the evolution of linear entropy, complexity of purification (COP), and complexity of formation (COF) to capture the interplay between decoherence and recoherence in this model. In the presence of two types of couplings that drive these two opposing characteristics, we highlight how COF is an efficient tool for diagnosing dynamics for such an open quantum system.

hep-th

Finite complexity of the de Sitter vacuum

The ER=EPR conjecture states that quantum entanglement between boundary degrees of freedom leads to the emergence of bulk spacetime itself. Although this has been tested extensively in String Theory for asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes, its implications for an accelerating universe, such as our own, remain less explored. Assuming a cosmic version of ER=EPR for de Sitter space, we explore computational complexity corresponding to long-range entanglement responsible for bulk states on spacelike hypersurfaces. Rather remarkably, we find that the complexity (per unit volume) of the Euclidean vacuum, as an entangled state over two boundary CFT vacua, is finite both in the UV and the IR, which provides additional evidence for cosmic ER=EPR. Our result seems to be a universal feature of spacetimes with horizons and, moreover, hints at new features of the thermofield double state for studying thermalization of any quantum system.

hep-th

Hawking evaporation and the fate of black holes in loop quantum gravity

A recent covariant formulation, that includes non-perturbative effects from loop quantum gravity (LQG) as self-consistent effective models, has revealed the possibility of non-singular black hole solutions. The new framework makes it possible to couple scalar matter to such LQG black holes and derive Hawking radiation in the presence of quantum space-time effects while respecting general covariance. Standard methods to derive particle production both within the geometric optics approximation and the Parikh-Wilczek tunneling approach are therefore available and confirm the thermal nature of Hawking radiation. The covariant description of scale-dependent decreasing holonomy corrections maintains Hawking temperature as well as universality of the low-energy transmission coefficients, stating that the absorption rates are proportional to the horizon area at leading order. Quantum-geometry effects enter the thermal distribution only through sub-leading corrections in the greybody factors. Nevertheless, they do impact energy emission of the black hole and its final state in a crucial way regarding one of the main questions of black-hole evaporation: whether a black-to-white-hole transition, or a stable remnant, is preferred. For the first time, a first-principles derivation, based on a discussion of backreaction, finds evidence that points to the former outcome.

gr-qc

Is the CMB revealing signs of pre-inflationary physics?

Given the latest observational constraints coming from the joint analyses of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the Planck Satellite and other missions, we point out the possibility of reconciling fundamental particle-physics models of inflation with data by considering non-Bunch-Davies initial conditions for primordial density perturbations.

astro-ph.CO

Benchmarking quantum chaos from geometric complexity

Recent studies have shown that there is a strong interplay between quantum complexity and quantum chaos. In this work, we consider a new method to study geometric complexity for interacting non-Gaussian quantum mechanical systems to benchmark the quantum chaos in a well-known oscillator model. In particular, we study the circuit complexity for the unitary time-evolution operator of a non-Gaussian bosonic quantum mechanical system. Our results indicate that, within some limitations, geometric complexity can indeed be a good indicator of quantum chaos.

hep-th

de Sitter Excited State in Heterotic E_8 x E_8 Theory

We devise a novel duality sequence to study late-time cosmology in the heterotic E_8 x E_8 setup of Horava and Witten with dynamical walls that are moving towards each other. Surprisingly, we find that the dimensionally reduced four-dimensional theory does not violate NEC and therefore we do not see either a bouncing or an ekpyrotic phase. Instead, our four-dimensional setup shows a transient de Sitter phase that lies well within the trans-Planckian bound. This opens up a myriad of possibilities of addressing both phenomenological and cosmological issues, and here we concentrate on one such interesting model, an axionic cosmology with temporally varying axionic coupling.

hep-th

Lessons for loop quantum gravity from emergent modified gravity

Most of the potential physical effects of loop quantum gravity have been derived in effective models that modify the constraints of canonical general relativity in specific forms. Emergent modified gravity evaluates important conditions that ensure the existence of a compatible geometrical space-time interpretation of canonical solutions, as well as phase-space covariance under different choices of canonical variables. This setting, specialized to modifications suggested by loop quantum gravity, is therefore an important contribution to physical evaluations of this approach to quantum gravity. Here, it is shown that emergent modified gravity restricts several ambiguities that existed in previous formulations, rules out several specific candidates, and provides a unified treatment of different types of (holonomy) modifications that had been thought to be physically distinct.

gr-qc

The special case of slow-roll attractors in de Sitter: Non-Markovian noise and evolution of entanglement entropy

We analyse the evolution of the reduced density matrix of inflationary perturbations, coupled to a heavy entropic field via the leading-order term within the Effective Field Theory of Inflation, for two nearly de Sitter backgrounds. We perform a full quantum treatment of the open system and derive a Fokker-Planck equation to describe decoherence and the entanglement structure of the adiabatic perturbations. We find that exotic phenomena, such as recoherence and transient negative growth of entanglement entropy, appearing for the attractor solution, are absent for the non-attractor background. We comment on the relationship of these to the non-Markovian nature of the system. Finally, we generalise to the case where a few e-folds of ultra-slow roll evolution are sandwiched between phases of slow-roll inflation to find its (memory) effects on the curvature perturbation.

hep-th

Glauber-Sudarshan States, Wave Functional of the Universe and the Wheeler-De Witt equation

One of the pertinent question in the analysis of de Sitter as an excited state is what happens to the Glauber-Sudarshan states that are off-shell, i.e. the states that do not satisfy the Schwinger-Dyson equations. We argue that these Glauber-Sudarshan states, including the on-shell ones, are controlled by a bigger envelope wave functional namely a wave functional of the universe which surprisingly satisfies a Wheeler-De Witt equation. We provide various justification of the aforementioned identification including the determination of the emergent Hamiltonian constraint appearing in the Wheeler-De Witt equation that is satisfied by both the on- and off-shell states. Our analysis provides further evidence of why a transient four-dimensional de Sitter phase in string theory should be viewed as an excited state over a supersymmetric warped Minkowski background and not as a vacuum state.

hep-th