| 1. |
- Freese, Katherine, et al.
(författare)
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Natural Chain Inflation
- 2022
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Ingår i: Physics Letters B. - : Elsevier BV. - 0370-2693 .- 1873-2445. ; 829
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Chain Inflation the universe tunnels along a series of false vacua of ever-decreasing energy. The main goal of this paper is to embed Chain Inflation in high energy fundamental physics. We begin by illustrating a simple effective formalism for calculating Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observables in Chain Inflation. Density perturbations seeding the anisotropies emerge from the probabilistic nature of tunneling (rather than from quantum fluctuations of the inflation). To obtain the correct normalization of the scalar power spectrum and the scalar spectral index, we find an upper limit on the scale of inflation at horizon crossing of CMB scales, V-*(1/4) < 10(12) GeV. We then provide an explicit realization of chain inflation, in which the inflaton is identified with an axion in supergravity. The axion enjoys a perturbative shift symmetry which is broken to a discrete remnant by instantons. The model, which we dub 'natural chain inflation' satisfies all cosmological constraints and can be embedded into a standard Lambda CDM cosmology. Our work provides a major step towards the ultraviolet completion of chain inflation in string theory.
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| 2. |
- Litsa, Aliki, 1994-
(författare)
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Effects of the Higgs field on Inflation and Reheating.
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The model of inflation - a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe - was introduced to give solutions to a number of problems encountered in the Standard Big Bang paradigm. Additionally, due to its quantum nature, inflation is able to generate the necessary primordial inhomogeneity “seeds”, which eventually evolve into large-scale structures. The particular primordial inhomogeneities are imprinted on the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) as very small deviations (temperature fluctuations) from a perfect blackbody spectrum. If the Standard Model (SM) Higgs is a light spectator field during inflation, it can, also, acquire quantum fluctuations and seed additional, potentially observable, fluctuations. This takes place via an effective breaking of electroweak symmetry at very high energy scales, which results in the reheating process being different in different regions of the Universe. We develop methods for calculating the amplitude, as well as the non-Gaussianity, of such Higgs-induced temperature fluctuations in the CMB. In the case of reheating via resonant inflaton decays to Abelian gauge bosons, we show that the amplitude of the Higgs-induced temperature fluctuations always exceeds the observed value and that, therefore, such decays cannot be the main reheating channel. In the case of reheating via perturbative inflaton decays to SM fermions, we place strong constraints on the relevant SM parameters, using the amplitude of the Higgs temperature fluctuations. By additionally using the associated non-Gaussianity, we are able to strengthen the particular constraints even further. Having made a connection between cosmological observations and SM parameters, such as the Higgs self-coupling, we suggest a way to probe the SM Higgs potential at very high energy scales and constrain New Physics.
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