Journal Club

Seminar Room

Monday 29th of April, 2019

Relaxation of the Cosmological Constant

Peter W. Graham, David E. Kaplan, Surjeet Rajendran
(Submitted on 18 Feb 2019)
We present a model that naturally tunes a large positive cosmological constant to a small cosmological constant. A slowly rolling scalar field decreases the cosmological constant to a small negative value, causing the universe to contract, thus reheating it. An expanding universe with a small positive cosmological constant can be obtained, respectively, by coupling this solution to any model of a cosmological bounce and coupling the scalar field to a sector that undergoes a technically natural phase transition at the meV scale. A robust prediction of this model is a rolling scalar field today with some coupling to the standard model. This can potentially be experimentally probed in a variety of cosmological and terrestrial experiments, such as probes of the equation of state of dark energy, birefringence in the cosmic microwave background and terrestrial tests of Lorentz violation.
Comments: 13 pages, 3 figures
Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Cite as: arXiv:1902.06793 [hep-ph]
  (or arXiv:1902.06793v1 [hep-ph] for this version)

 

Presented by RVM

 

Born Again Universe

Peter W. Graham, David E. Kaplan, Surjeet Rajendran
(Submitted on 6 Sep 2017 (v1), last revised 8 Feb 2018 (this version, v2))
We present a class of nonsingular, bouncing cosmologies that evade singularity theorems through the use of vorticity in compact extra dimensions. The vorticity combats the focusing of geodesics during the contracting phase. The construction requires fluids that violate the null energy condition (NEC) in the compact dimensions, where they can be provided by known stable NEC violating sources such as Casimir energy. The four dimensional effective theory contains an NEC violating fluid of Kaluza-Klein excitations of the higher dimensional metric. These spacetime metrics could potentially allow dynamical relaxation to solve the cosmological constant problem. These ideas can also be used to support traversable Lorentzian wormholes.
Comments: 12 pages, 1 figure. Minor change to title. Error in Appendix B was corrected
Subjects: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
Journal reference: Phys. Rev. D 97, 044003 (2018)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.97.044003
Cite as: arXiv:1709.01999 [hep-th]
 

(or arXiv:1709.01999v2 [hep-th] for this version

Presented by RVM

ν-Inflaton Dark Matter

Antonio Torres Manso, Joao G. Rosa
(Submitted on 6 Nov 2018)
We present a unified model where the same scalar field can drive inflation and account for the present dark matter abundance. This scenario is based on the incomplete decay of the inflaton field into right-handed neutrino pairs, which is accomplished by imposing a discrete interchange symmetry on the inflaton and on two of the right-handed neutrinos. We show that this can lead to a successful reheating of the Universe after inflation, while leaving a stable inflaton remnant at late times. This remnant may be in the form of WIMP-like inflaton particles or of an oscillating inflaton condensate, depending on whether or not the latter evaporates and reaches thermal equilibrium with the cosmic plasma. We further show that this scenario is compatible with generating light neutrino masses and mixings through the seesaw mechanism, predicting at least one massless neutrino, and also the observed baryon asymmetry via thermal leptogenesis.
Comments: 28 pages, 8 figures
Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Cite as: arXiv:1811.02302 [hep-ph]
  (or arXiv:1811.02302v1 [hep-ph] for this version)

 

presented by Antonio Manso