Mirror matter is a promising self-collisional dark matter candidate. Here we study the evolution of thermodynamical quantities in the early Universe for temperatures below ~100 MeV in presence of a hidden mirror sector with unbroken parity symmetry and with gravitational interactions only. This range of temperatures is interesting for primordial nucleosynthesis analyses, therefore we focus on the temporal evolution of number of degrees of freedom in both sectors. Numerically solving the equations, we obtain the interesting prediction that the effective number of extra-neutrino families raises for decreasing temperatures before and after Big Bang nucleosynthesis; this could help solving the discrepancy in this number computed at nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background formation epochs.
We investigate the mixing of heavy gauge singlet neutrinos in a mirror matter model employing the seesaw mechanism. The parameter constraints that must be satisfied to prevent the overproduction of mirror matter in the early universe are deduced. We find that no fine tuning in the heavy neutral fermion sector is required for this mirror matter model to satisfy cosmological constraints. Baryogenesis scenarios are briefly discussed in the context of the mirror model.
The idea of the universe with a mirror sector having all particles and forces identical to those in the familiar sector has been proposed in the context of neutrino physics as well as superstring theories. Assuming that all the quark and charged lepton masses in the mirror universe are scaled by a common factor, $ζ$, as is required in one interpretation of the neutrino data, we investigate domains of the parameter $ζ$ where physical conditions are favorable for cooling in the age of the universe that can lead to the formation of compact structures given the initial condition $Ω_B =Ω_{\tilde{B}…
Mirror dark matter provides a simple framework for which to explain the DAMA/Libra annual modulation signal consistently with the null results of the other direct detection experiments. The simplest possibility involves ordinary matter interacting with mirror dark matter via photon-mirror photon kinetic mixing of strength epsilon ~ 10^(-9). We confirm that photon-mirror photon mixing of this magnitude is consistent with constraints from ordinary Big Bang nucleosynthesis as well as the more stringent constraints from cosmic microwave background measurements and large scale structure considerati…
The Exact Parity Model (EPM) is, in part, a theory of neutrino mass and mixing that can solve the atmospheric, solar and LSND anomalies. The central feature of the neutrino sector is three pairs of maximally mixed ordinary and mirror neutrinos. It has been shown that ordinary-mirror neutrino oscillations can generate large neutrino asymmetries in the epoch of the early universe immediately prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). The large neutrino asymmetries generically suppress the production of mirror neutrinos, and a sufficiently large $ν_e$ asymmetry can directly affect light element syn…
There can exist a parallel `mirror' world which has the same particle physics as the observable world and couples the latter only gravitationally. The nucleosynthesis bounds demand that the mirror sector should have a smaller temperature than the ordinary one. By this reason its evolution should be substantially deviated from the standard cosmology as far as the crucial epochs like baryogenesis, nucleosynthesis etc. are concerned. Starting from an inflationary scenario which could explain the different initial temperatures of the two sectors, we study the time history of the early mirror unive…
This is somewhat extended version of the talk given at the Gran Sasso Summer Institute: Massive Neutrinos in Physics and Astrophysics. It describes general ideas about mirror world, extra spatial dimensions and dinosaur extinction. Some suggestions are made how these seemingly different things can be related to each other.
We describe the implications on the structure formation, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large scale structure (LSS) for a Universe in which a significant part of dark matter is made of mirror baryons. Being the microphysics of the mirror baryons identical to the one of the usual baryons, we need only two extra thermodynamical parameters to describe our model: the temperature of the mirror plasma (limited by the BBN) and the amount of mirror baryonic matter. We extend the Jeans theory in order to study the structure formation mechanism in linear regime. Using a numerical code, we…
The existence of a shadow world (or mirror universe) with matter and forces identical to that of the visible world but interacting with the latter only via gravity can be motivated by superstring theories as well as by recent attempts to understand the nature of a sterile neutrino needed if all known neutrino data are to be consistent with each other. A simple way to reconcile the constraints of big bang nucleosynthesis in such a theory is to postulate that the reheating temperature after inflation in the mirror universe is lower than that in the visible one. We have constructed explicit model…
The Mirror Matter or Exact Parity Model sees every standard particle, including the physical neutral Higgs boson, paired with a parity partner. The unbroken parity symmetry forces the mass eigenstate Higgs bosons to be maximal mixtures of the ordinary and mirror Higgs bosons. Each of these mass eigenstates will therefore decay 50% of the time into invisible mirror particles, providing a clear and interesting signature for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which could thus establish the existence of the mirror world. However, for this effect to be observable the mass difference between the two ei…
A mirror sector of particles and forces provides a simple explanation of the inferred dark matter of the Universe. The status of this theory is reviewed - with emphasis on how the theory explains the impressive DAMA/NaI annual modulation signal, whilst also being consistent with the null results of the other direct detection experiments.
Parity and time reversal are obvious and plausible candidates for fundamental symmetries of nature. Hypothesising that these symmetries exist implies the existence of a new form of matter, called mirror matter. The mirror matter theory (or exact parity model) makes four main predictions: 1) Dark matter in the form of mirror matter should exist in the Universe (i.e. mirror galaxies, stars, planets, meteoroids...), 2) Maximal ordinary neutrino - mirror neutrino oscillations if neutrinos have mass, 3) Orthopositronium should have a shorter effective lifetime than predicted by QED (in "vacuum" exp…
A consequence of the evaporation of primordial black holes in the early universe may be the generation of mirror matter. This would have implications with regard to dark matter, and the number of light particle species in equilibrium at the time of big bang nucleosynthesis. The possibilities for the production of mirror matter by this mechanism are explored.
Mirror matter is a self-collisional dark matter candidate. If exact mirror parity is a conserved symmetry of the nature, there could exist a parallel hidden (mirror) sector of the Universe which has the same kind of particles and the same physical laws of our (visible) sector. The two sectors interact each other only via gravity, therefore mirror matter is naturally "dark". The most promising way to test this dark matter candidate is to look at its astrophysical signatures, as Big Bang nucleosynthesis, primordial structure formation and evolution, cosmic microwave background and large scale st…
It has been argued that the observed core density profile of galaxies is inconsistent with having a dark matter particle that is collisionless and alternative dark matter candidates which are self interacting may explain observations better. One new class of self interacting dark matter that has been proposed in the context mirror universe models of particle physics is the mirror hydrogen atom whose stability is guaranteed by the conservation of mirror baryon number. We show that the effective transport cross section for mirror hydrogen atoms, has the right order of magnitude for solving the `…
We investigate the point-parity and mirror-parity handedness of the large angle anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In particular we consider whether the observed low CMB quadrupole could more generally signal odd point-parity, i.e. suppression of even multipoles. Even though this feature is ``visually'' present in most renditions of the WMAP dataset we find that it never supports parity preference beyond the meagre 95% confidence level. This is fortunate as point parity handedness implies almost certainly a high level of galactic contamination. Mirror reflection parity, on th…
Recent observations show that our universe is accelerating by dark energy, so it is important to investigate the thermodynamical properties of it. The Undulant Universe is a model with equation of state $ω(a)=-\cos(b\ln a)$ for dark energy, where we show that there neither the event horizon nor the particle horizon exists. However, as a boundary of keeping thermodynamical properties, the apparent horizon is a good holographic screen. The Universe has a thermal equilibrium inside the apparent horizon, so the Unified First Law and the Generalized Second Law of thermodynamics are satisfied. As a …
We have studied the feasibility and scientific potential of zenith observing liquid mirror telescopes having 20 to 100 m diameters located on the moon. They would carry out deep infrared surveys to study the distant universe and follow up discoveries made with the 6 m James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with more detailed images and spectroscopic studies. They could detect objects 100 times fainter than JWST, observing the first, high-red shift stars in the early universe and their assembly into galaxies. We explored the scientific opportunities, key technologies and optimum location of such te…
We discuss the concept of measurement in cosmology from the relativistic and quantum mechanical points of view. The uncertainty principle within the particle horizon, excludes the momentum of particles to be less than $π\hbar H/c$. This effect modifies the standard thermodynamics of early universe for the ultra-relativistic particles such that the equation of state as well as dependence of energy density and pressure to the temperature. We show that this modification to the thermodynamics of early universe is important for energies $E>10^{17} GeV$. During the inflation, the particle horizon in…
We establish a general thermodynamic scheme for cosmic fluids with internal self-interactions and discuss equilibrium and non-equilibrium aspects of such systems in connection with (generalized) symmetry properties of the cosmological dynamics. As an example we construct an exactly solvable gas dynamical model of a ``deflationary'' transition from an initial de Sitter phase to a subsequent Friedmann-Lema\^ıtre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) period. We demonstrate that this dynamics represents a manifestation of a conformal symmetry of an ``optical'' metric, characterized by a specific effective refra…
The thermodynamical properties of dark energy are usually investigated with the equation of state $ω=ω_{0}+ω_{1}z$. Recent observations show that our universe is accelerating, and the apparent horizon and the event horizon vary with redshift $z$. When definitions of the temperature and entropy of a black hole are used to the two horizons of the universe, we examine the thermodynamical properties of the universe which is enveloped by the apparent horizon and the event horizon respectively. We show that the first and the second laws of thermodynamics inside the apparent horizon in any redshift a…
We have investigated the thermodynamical properties of the Universe with dark energy. Adopting the usual assumption in deriving the constant co-moving entropy density that the physical volume and the temperature are independent, we observed some strange thermodynamical behaviors. However, these strange behaviors disappeared if we consider the realistic situation that the physical volume and the temperature of the Universe are related. Based on the well known correspondence between the Friedmann equation and the first law of thermodynamics of the apparent horizon, we argued that the apparent ho…
The influence of the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) and extended uncertainty principle (EUP) on the thermodynamics of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe has been investigated. It is shown that the entropy of the apparent horizon of the FRW universe gets a correction if one considers the effect of the GUP or EUP. Moreover, starting with the modified entropy and applying the first law of thermodynamics, $dE=TdS$, to the apparent horizon of the FRW universe, we obtain the modified Friedmann equations. The influence of the GUP or EUP on the thermodynamics of the FRW universe pr…
We show that a relativistic gas may be at ``global'' equilibrium in the expanding universe for any equation of state $0 < p \leq ρ/3$, provided that the gas particles move under the influence of a self-interacting, effective one-particle force in between elastic binary collisions. In the force-free limit we recover the equilibrium conditions for ultrarelativistic matter which imply the existence of a conformal timelike Killing vector.
Conventional thinking says the universe is infinite. But it could be finite and relatively small, merely giving the illusion of a greater one, like a hall of mirrors. Recent astronomical measurements add support to a finite space with a dodecahedral topology.
Motivated by the recent work of Wang, Lin, Pavon, and Abdalla [1], we generalize their work to the non-flat case. In particular, we provide a thermodynamical interpretation for the holographic dark energy model in a non-flat universe. For this case, the characteristic length is no more the radius of the event horizon (R_E) but the event horizon radius as measured from the sphere of the horizon (L). Furthermore, when interaction between the dark components of the holographic dark energy model in the non-flat universe is present its thermodynamical interpretation changes by a stable thermal fluc…
As it follows from the classical analysis, the typical final state of the dark energy universe where dominant energy condition is violated is finite time, sudden future singularity (Big Rip). For a number of dark energy universes (including scalar phantom and effective phantom theories as well as specific quintessence model) we demonstrate that quantum effects play the dominant role near Big Rip, driving the universe out of future singularity (or, at least, making it milder). As a consequence, the entropy bounds with quantum corrections become well-defined near Big Rip. Similarly, black holes …
