Inflationary magnetogenesis has long been assumed to be the most promising mechanism for producing large-scale magnetic fields in our universe. However, generically, such models are plagued with either backreaction or strong coupling problems within the standard framework. This paper has shown that the reheating phase can play a crucial role in alleviating those problems along with CMB. Assuming the electrical conductivity to be negligible during the entire period of reheating, the classic Faraday electromagnetic induction changes the magnetic field's dynamics drastically. Our detailed analysis reveals that this physical phenomenon not only converts a large class of magnetogenesis model observationally viable without any theoretical problem but also can uniquely fix the perturbative average inflaton equation of state, $ω_ϕ = (p+2)/(p+2)$ during reheating given a specific value of the large scale magnetic field. This observation hints the inflaton to assume the potential of form $V(ϕ) \sim ϕ^p$ near its minimum with $p \gtrsim 3.5$ if one considers the limit of the present-day strength of the large scale magnetic field to be $\mathcal{P}_{B0}^{\frac{1}{2}} \gtrsim 10^{-18}$ G. Our analysis opens up a new avenue towards constraining the inflationary and magnetogenesis model together via reheating.
We study the impacts of reheating temperature on the inflationary predictions of the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio. Assuming sinusoidal oscillations and that reheating process is very fast, the reheating temperature can be constrained for sinusoidal oscillation within a factor of 10 - 100 or even better with the prospect of future observations. Beyond this, we find that the predictions can also be insensitive to the reheating temperature in certain models, including Higgs inflation.
We propose a two-phase reheating scenario where the initial preheating dynamics is described by an effective dynamics followed by the standard perturbative reheating. Some of the important universal results of lattice simulation during preheating have been considered as crucial inputs in our two-phase dynamics. In this framework, detailed phenomenological constraints have been obtained on the inflaton couplings with reheating fields, and dark matter parameters in terms of CMB constrained inflationary scalar spectral index. It is observed that the conventional reheating scenario generically pre…
We present the first Bayesian constraints on the single field inflationary reheating era obtained from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. After demonstrating that this epoch can be fully characterized by the so-called reheating parameter, we show that it is constrained by the seven years Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropies Probe (WMAP7) data for all large and small field models. An interesting feature of our approach is that it yields lower bounds on the reheating temperature which can be combined with the upper bounds associated with gravitinos production. For large field models, we find th…
In inflationary cosmology, cosmic reheating after inflation sets the initial conditions for the hot big bang. We investigate how CMB data can be used to study the effective potential and couplings of the inflaton during reheating and constrain the underlying microphysics. If there is a phase of preheating that is driven by a parametric resonance or other instability, then the thermal history and expansion history during the reheating era depend on a large number of microphysical parameters in a complicated way. In this case the connection between CMB observables and microphysical parameters ca…
In the recent paper by Mielczarek \emph{et al.} (JCAP {\bf 1007} (2010) 004) an idea of the method which can be used to put some constraint for the reheating phase was proposed. Another method of constraining the reheating temperature has been recently studied by Martin and Ringeval (Phys.\ Rev.\ D {\bf 82} (2010) 023511). Both methods are based on observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. In this paper, we develop the idea introduced in this first article to put constraint on the reheating after the slow-roll inflation. We restrict our considerations to the case of a ma…
Primordial gravitational waves (GWs) carry the imprints of the dynamics of the universe during its earliest stages. With a variety of GW detectors being proposed to operate over a wide range of frequencies, there is great expectation that observations of primordial GWs can provide us with an unprecedented window to the physics operating during inflation and reheating. In this work, we closely examine the effects of the regime of reheating on the spectrum of primordial GWs observed today. We consider a scenario wherein the phase of reheating is described by an averaged equation of state (EoS) p…
We study reheating in $α$-attractor models of inflation in which the inflaton couples to other scalars or fermions. We show that the parameter space contains viable regions in which the inflaton couplings to radiation can be determined from the properties of CMB temperature fluctuations, in particular the spectral index. This may be the only way to measure these fundamental microphysical parameters, which shaped the universe by setting the initial temperature of the hot big bang and contain important information about the embedding of a given model of inflation into a more fundamental theory o…
After Planck 2013, a broad class of inflationary models called α-attractors was developed which has universal observational predictions. For small values of the parameter α, the models have good consistency with the recent CMB data. In this work, we first calculate analytically (and verify numerically) the predictions of these models for spectral index, n_s and tensor-to-scalar ratio, r and then using BICEP2/Keck 2015 data we impose constraints on α-attractors. Then, we study the reheating in α-attractors. The reheating temperature, T_{re} and the number of e-folds during reheating, N_{re} are…
We study the formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) in the early Universe during a period of slow reheating after inflation. We demonstrate how the PBH formation mechanism may change even before the end of the matter-dominated phase and calculate the expected PBH mass function. We find that there is a threshold for the variance of the density contrast, $σ_c \simeq 0.05$, below which the transition occurs even before reheating, with this having important consequences for the PBH mass function. We also show that there is a maximum cut-off for the PBH mass at around $100\,M_{\odot}$, below wh…
We consider the presence and evolution of primordial density perturbations in a cosmological model based on a simple ansatz which captures -- by providing a set of effective gravitational field equations -- the strength of the enhanced quantum loop effects that can arise during inflation. After deriving the general equations that perturbations obey, we concentrate on scalar perturbations and show that their evolution is quite different than that of conventional inflationary models but still phenomenologically acceptable. The main reason for this novel evolution is the presence of an oscillatin…
Probing the small-scale primordial power spectrum via relic neutrinos and acoustic reheating
University of Zurich（苏黎世大学）；University of Trento（特伦托大学）；Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Applications (TIFPA)-INFN（基本物理与应用特伦托研究所（TIFPA）-意大利国家核物理研究所）；Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP)（巴黎天体物理学研究所）；The Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
We study the impact of perturbative reheating on primordial observables in models of multiple-field inflation. By performing a sudden decay calculation, we derive analytic expressions for the local-type non-linearity parameter $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local}$, the scalar spectral index $n_ζ$, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r_T$ as functions of the decay rates of the inflationary fields. We compare our analytic results to a fully numerical classical field theory simulation, finding excellent agreement. We find that the sensitivity of $f_{\rm NL}$, $n_ζ$, and $r_T$ to the reheating phase depends heavil…
In order to describe inflation in general relativity, scalar fields must inevitably be used, with all the setbacks of that description. On the other hand, $f(R)$ gravity and other modified gravity theories seem to provide a unified description of early and late-time dynamics without resorting to scalar or phantom theories. The question is, can modified gravity affect directly the mysterious radiation domination era? Addressing this question is the focus in this work, and we shall consider the case for which in the early stages of the radiation domination era, namely during the reheating era, t…
We show that the Planck 2015 and BICEP2/KECK measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies provide together an information gain of 0.82 +- 0.13 bits on the reheating history over all slow-roll single-field models of inflation. This corresponds to a 40% improvement compared to the Planck 2013 constraints on the reheating. Our method relies on an exhaustive CMB data analysis performed over nearly 200 models of inflation to derive the Kullback-Leibler entropy between the prior and the fully marginalized posterior of the reheating parameter. This number is a weighted average b…
In this paper we study the reheating constraints on inflationary models considering perturbatively decaying inflaton. Important difference with the existing analysis is the inclusion of explicit decaying dynamics of inflaton during reheating. One of the important findings of our analysis is the possible existence of maximum reheating temperature $T_{re}^{max}$ considering perturbative reheating scenario. For all the models under consideration the value of this temperature turned out to be $T_{re}^{max} \sim 10^{15}$ GeV. Corresponding to this value of reheating temperature the duration of rehe…
We give new constraints on small-scale non-Gaussianity of primordial curvature perturbations by the use of anisotropies in acoustic reheating. Mixing of local thermal or local kinetic equilibrium systems with different temperatures yields a locally averaged temperature rise, which is proportional to the square of temperature perturbations damping in the photon diffusion scale. Such secondary temperature perturbations are indistinguishable from the standard temperature perturbations linearly coming from primordial curvature perturbations and hence should be subdominant compared to the standard …
Galilean genesis is an alternative to inflation, in which the universe starts expanding from Minkowski with the stable violation of the null energy condition. In this paper, we discuss how the early universe is reheated through the gravitational particle production at the trasition from the genesis phase to the subsequent phase where the kinetic energy of the scalar field is dominant. We then study the consequences of gravitational reheating after Galilean genesis on the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves. The resultant spectrum is strongly blue, and at high frequencies $Ω_{\rm gw}\pro…
We study the generation of primordial black holes (PBH) in a single field inflection point model of inflation wherein the effective potential is expanded up to the sextic order and the inversion symmetry is imposed such that only even powers are retained in the potential. Such a potential allows the existence of an inflection point which leads to a dynamical phase of ultra slow roll evolution, thereby causing an enhancement of the primordial perturbation spectrum at smaller scales. Working with a quasi-inflection point in the potential, we find that PBHs can be produced in our scenario in the …
Reheating is the the epoch which connects inflation to the subsequent hot Big-Bang phase. Conceptually very important, this era is however observationally poorly known. We show that the current Planck satellite measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies constrain the kinematic properties of the reheating era for most of the inflationary models. This result is obtained by deriving the marginalized posterior distributions of the reheating parameter for about 200 models taken in Encyclopaedia Inflationaris. Weighted by the statistical evidence of each model to explain the …
We have studied the preheating phase for a class of plateau inflationary model considering the four-legs interaction term $(1/2)g^2ϕ^2χ^2$ between the inflaton $(ϕ)$ and reheating field $(χ)$. We specifically focus on the effects of a parameter $ϕ_*$ that controls inflationary dynamics and the shape of the inflaton potential. For $ϕ_* < M_p$, the departure of the inflaton potential from the usual power-law behavior $ϕ^n$ significantly modifies the microscopic behavior of the preheating dynamics. We analyze and compare the efficiency of production, thermalization and the final equation of state…
We study the effects of the Gauss-Bonnet term on the energy spectrum of inflationary gravitational waves. The models of inflation are classified into two types based on their predictions for the tensor power spectrum: red-tilted ($n_T<0$) and blue-tilted spectra ($n_T>0$), respectively, and then the energy spectra of the gravitational waves are calculated for each type of model. We find that the gravitational wave spectra are enhanced depending on the model parameter if the predicted inflationary tensor spectra have a blue tilt, whereas they are suppressed for the spectra that have a red tilt.…
Among primordial magnetogenesis models, inflation is a prime candidate to explain the current existence of cosmological magnetic fields. Assuming conformal invariance to be restored after inflation, their energy density decreases as radiation during the decelerating eras of the universe, and in particular during reheating. Without making any assumptions on inflation, on the magnetogenesis mechanism and on how the reheating proceeded, we show that requiring large scale magnetic fields to remain subdominant after inflation gives non-trivial constraints on both the reheating equation of state par…
We propose a new mechanism of generating the $μ$ distortion in cosmic microwave background (CMB) originated from primordial gravitational waves. Such $μ$ distortion is generated by the damping of the temperature anisotropies through the Thomson scattering, even on scales larger than that of Silk damping. This mechanism is in sharp contrast with that from the primordial curvature (scalar) perturbations, in which the temperature anisotropies mainly decay by Silk damping effects. We estimate the size of the $μ$ distortion from the new mechanism, which can be used to constrain the amplitude of pri…
We investigate the early universe evolution in the context of brane inflation driven by a supergravity-inspired $\arctan$ potential. We performed a slow-roll and a semi-analytical reheating analyses and obtained constraints on the inflationary parameters in agreement with Planck 2018 data. We also employed a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis to perform a parameter estimation of the cosmological parameters, obtaining results in good agreement with the currently available cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillation data. This work establishes the general theoretical predictions o…
Within the framework of RG improved inflationary cosmology motivated by asymptotically safe gravity, we study the dynamics of a scalar field which can be interpreted as the Higgs field. The background trajectories of this model can provide sufficient inflationary e-folds and a graceful exit to a radiation dominated phase. We study the possibility of generating primordial curvature perturbations through the Standard Model Higgs boson. This can be achieved under finely tuned parameter choices by making use of the modulated reheating mechanism. The primordial non-gaussianity is expected to be siz…
We investigate the power spectrum of the distortion of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) due to the decay of the primordial magnetic fields. It is known that there are two-types of the CMB distortions, so-called μ- and y-types and we find that the signal of the y-type distortion becomes larger than that of the μ-type one. We also discuss cross power spectra between the CMB distortions and the CMB temperature anisotropy, which are naturally generated due to the existence of the primordial magnetic fields. We find that such cross power spectra have small amplitudes compared with the auto-power s…
We propose a new model for the hemispherical power asymmetry of the CMB based on modulated reheating. Non-Gaussianity from modulated reheating can be small enough to satisfy the bound from Planck if the dominant modulation of the inflaton decay rate is linear in the modulating field $σ$. $σ$ must then acquire a spatially-modulated power spectrum with a red scale-dependence. This can be achieved if the primordial perturbation of $σ$ is generated via tachyonic growth of a complex scalar field. Modulated reheating due to $σ$ then produces a spatially modulated and scale-dependent sub-dominant con…
We investigate the inflationary predictions of a simple Horndeski theory where the inflaton scalar field has a non-minimal derivative coupling (NMDC) to the Einstein tensor. The NMDC is very motivated for the construction of successful models for inflation, nevertheless its inflationary predictions are not observationally distinct. We show that it is possible to probe the effects of the NMDC on the CMB observables by taking into account both the dynamics of the inflationary slow-roll phase and the subsequent reheating. We perform a comparative study between representative inflationary models w…
We exploit the complementarity among supersymmetry, inflation, axions, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) to constrain supersymmetric axion models in the light of the recent Planck and BICEP results. In particular, we derive BBN bounds coming from altering the light element abundances by taking into account hadronic and electromagnetic energy injection, and CMB constraints from black-body spectrum distortion. Lastly, we outline the viable versus excluded region of these supersymetric models that might account for the mild dark radiation observed.
We investigate non-Gaussianity in the modulated reheating scenario where fluctuations of the decay rate of the inflaton generate adiabatic perturbations, paying particular attention to the non-linearity parameters $f_{\rm NL}, τ_{\rm NL}$ and $g_{\rm NL}$ as well as the scalar spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio which characterize the nature of the primordial power spectrum. We also take into account the pre-existing adiabatic perturbations produced from the inflaton fluctuations. It has been known that the non-linearity between the curvature perturbations and the fluctuations of the dec…
After the end of inflation, the inflaton field oscillates around a local minimum of its potential and decays into ordinary matter. These oscillations trigger a resonant instability for cosmological perturbations with wavelengths that exit the Hubble radius close to the end of inflation. In this paper, we study the formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) at these enhanced scales. We find that the production mechanism can be so efficient that PBHs subsequently dominate the content of the universe and reheating proceeds from their evaporation. Observational constraints on the PBH abundance als…
The residuals of the power spectra of WMAP and Planck's cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies data are known to exhibit a few interesting anomalies at different scales with marginal statistical significance. Combining bottom-up and top-down model-building approaches and using a pipeline that efficiently compares model predictions with data, we construct a model of primordial standard clock that is able to link and address the anomalies at both the large and small scales. This model, and its variant, provide some of the best fits to the feature anomalies in CMB. According to Bayes evid…
As a physical and sufficient compression of the full CMB data, the CMB distance priors, or shift parameters, have been widely used and provide a convenient way to include CMB data when obtaining cosmological constraints. In this paper, we revisit this data vector and examine its stability under different cosmological models. We find that the CMB distance priors are an accurate substitute for the full CMB data when probing dark energy dynamics. This is true when the primordial power spectrum model is directly generalized from the power spectrum of the model used in the derivation of the distanc…
Since the temperature fluctuations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) on large-angular scales probe length scales that were super-horizon sized at photon decoupling and hence insensitive to microphysical processes, the low-multipole CMB data are supposed to be a good probe to the physics of the primordial Universe. In this letter we will constrain the cosmological parameters in the base $Λ$CDM model with tensor perturbations by only using low-multipole CMB data, including Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (B2), Planck released in 2013 (P13) and Wilkinson Microwaves Anis…
We explore a plausible mechanism that the hemispherical power asymmetry in the CMB is produced by the spatial variation of the primordial sound speed parameter. We suggest that in a generalized approach of the $δN$ formalism the local e-folding number may depend on some other primordial parameters besides the initial values of inflaton. Here the $δN$ formalism is extended by considering the effects of a spatially varying sound speed parameter caused by a super-Hubble perturbation of a light field. Using this generalized $δN$ formalism, we systematically calculate the asymmetric primordial spec…
We propose a possible resolution to the cosmological constant problem through a scenario in which the universe is composed of three components: matter, radiation (CMB) and vacuum energy such that vacuum energy is not constant and is decaying into the matter component. Matter in this scenario consists of baryonic matter and primordial black holes (PBHs) as the dark matter. Local equilibrium condition between PBHs and CMB confines the mass and the radius of PBHs. The mechanism accounting for the decaying process is nothing but the absorption of vacuum energy modes by the PBHs up to a wavelength …
We propose a mechanism to evade the Lyth bound in models of inflation. We minimally extend the conventional single-field inflation model in general relativity (GR) to a theory with non-vanishing graviton mass in the very early universe. The modification primarily affects the tensor perturbation, while the scalar and vector perturbations are the same as the ones in GR with a single scalar field at least at the level of linear perturbation theory. During the reheating stage, the graviton mass oscillates coherently and leads to resonant amplification of the primordial tensor perturbation. After r…
We study temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation sourced from primordial cross-bispectra between metric perturbations and vector fields, which are generated from the inflation model where an inflaton and a vector field are coupled. In case the vector field survives after the reheating, both the primordial scalar and tensor fluctuations can be enhanced by the anisotropic stress composed of the vector fields during radiation dominated era. We show that through this enhancement the primordial cross-bispectra generate not only CMB bispectra but …
We demonstrate that a topological defect can explain the hemispherical power asymmetry of the CMB. The first point is that a defect configuration, which already exists prior to inflation, can source asymmetry of the CMB. The second point is that modulation mechanisms, such as the curvaton and other modulation mechanisms, can explain scale-dependence of the asymmetry. Using a simple analysis of the $δN$ formalism, we show models in which scale-dependent hemispherical power asymmetry is explained by primordial configuration of a defect.
Both the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and Planck observations reported the hemispherical asymmetry of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature fluctuation. The hemispherical asymmetry might be stemmed from the primordial statistical anisotropy during the inflationary era of the universe. In this paper, we study possible implications of the primordial power spectra with dipolar anisotropy on the CMB temperature fluctuation and polarizations. We explicitly show that the statistical dipolar anisotropy may induce the off-diagonal (\(\ell'\neq\ell\)) $TT$, $EE$, $BB$, and $T…
We investigate the generation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) with the aid of gravitationally increased friction mechanism originated from the NonMinimal field Derivative Coupling (NMDC) to gravity framework, with the quartic potential. Applying the coupling parameter as a two-parted function of inflaton field and fine-tuning of five parameter assortments we can acquire ultra slow-roll phase to slow down the inflaton field due to high friction. This enables us to achieve enough enhancement in the amplitude of curvature perturbations power spectra to generate PBHs with different masses. The re…
As an essential part of China’s Gravitational Waves Program, the Ali CMB Polarization Telescope (AliCPT) is a ground-based experiment aiming at the Primordial Gravitational Waves (PGWs) by measuring B-mode polarization of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). First proposed in 2014 and currently in fast construction phase, AliCPT is China’s first CMB project that plans for commissioning in 2019. Led by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the project is a worldwide collaboration of more than fifteen universities and research institutes. Ali …
The hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background may be explained by the modulation of some primordial cosmological parameter, such as the sound speed of the inflaton. This modulation can be achieved by the perturbation of a light field during inflation. We numerically examine this mechanism and show it can be consistent with current observations. Further, this model predicts that the power asymmetry also exists in the temperature-polarization correlation and polarization autocorrelation with the same shape, and in primordial non-gaussianity of equilateral type with a parti…
Primordial bubbles that possibly nucleate through quantum tunneling during inflation in a multidimensional potential might have left some relic detectable at the present time. These bubbles turn into black holes during the radiation era, which may account for the LIGO black holes, supermassive black holes, and may play an important role in dark matter. Typically, these black holes are surrounded by an energy deficit in the form of a spherical sound wave packet propagating outwards. In this work we study how this perturbation of the cosmic plasma dissipates before the time of recombination, lea…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of inflation. However, there are hints of anomalies in the CMB power spectrum and bispectrum. We check for the possibility that some of these anomalous features have a common physical origin in a transient reduction of the inflaton speed of sound. We do this by exploiting predicted correlations between the power spectrum and bispectrum. Our results suggest tha…
While observations indicate that the predominant source of cosmic inhomogeneities are adiabatic perturbations, there are a variety of candidates to provide auxiliary trace effects, including inflation-generated primordial tensors and cosmic defects which both produce B-mode cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization. We investigate whether future experiments may suffer confusion as to the true origin of such effects, focusing on the ability of Planck to distinguish tensors from cosmic strings, and show that there is no significant degeneracy.
Approaches to solutions of problems of the energy, time, Hamiltonian operator quantization of the General Relativity, the creation of the Universe from vacuum are considered in the frame of reference associated with the CMB radiation in order to describe parameters of this radiation in terms of the parameters of the Standard Model of elementary particles.
We study primordial density perturbations generated by the late decay of a curvaton field whose decay rate may be modulated by the local value of another isocurvature field, analogous to models of modulated reheating at the end of inflation. We calculate the primordial density perturbation and its local-type non-Gaussianity using the sudden-decay approximation for the curvaton field, recovering standard curvaton and modulated reheating results as limiting cases. We verify the Suyama-Yamaguchi inequality between bispectrum and trispectrum parameters for the primordial density field generated by…
We present trispectrum estimation methods which can be applied to general non-separable primordial and CMB trispectra. We present a general optimal estimator for the connected part of the trispectrum, for which we derive a quadratic term to incorporate the effects of inhomogeneous noise and masking. We describe a general algorithm for creating simulated maps with given arbitrary (and independent) power spectra, bispectra and trispectra. We propose a universal definition of the trispectrum parameter $T_{NL}$, so that the integrated bispectrum on the observational domain can be consistently comp…
