Generation of magnetic field during inflation can explain its presence over a wide range of scales in the Universe. In Ref.\cite{sharma2017}, we proposed a model to generate these fields during inflation. These fields have nonzero anisotropic stress which lead to the generation of a stochastic background of gravitational waves (GW) in the early universe. Here we show that for a scenario of magnetogenesis where reheating takes place around QCD epoch, this stochastic GW background lies in the $95\%$ confidence region of the GW signal probed by NANOGrav collaboration. This is the case when the generated electromagnetic field (EM) energy density is $3-10\%$ of the background energy density at the end of reheating. For this case, the values of magnetic field strength $B_0 \sim (3.8-6.9) \times 10^{-11}$G and its coherence length $\sim 30$ kpc at the present epoch. These values are for the models in which EM fields are of nonhelical nature. For the helical nature of the fields, these values are $B_0 \sim (1.1-1.9) \times 10^{-9}$G and its coherence length $\sim 0.8$ Mpc.
We discuss the generation of primordial magnetic fields during inflation in the dilaton-axion electromagnetism, in which the dilaton and axion dynamics are introduced in terms of two time dependent functions of the cosmic scale factor, $I(a) F^2/4$ and $J(a) F\tilde{F}/4$, respectively, where $F$ is the electromagnetic field strength and $\tilde{F}$ is its dual. We study the form of $J(a)$ that can generate a large seed magnetic field in the weak coupling regime, $I(a)<1$. Although the $J(a)$ function is model dependent, the axion-photon coupling indeed opens up a new window for a successful i…
We consider the possibility of inflationary magnetogenesis due to dynamical couplings of the electromagnetic fields to gravity. We find that large primordial magnetic fields can be generated during inflation without the strong coupling problem, backreaction problem, or curvature perturbation problem, which seed large-scale magnetic fields with observationally interesting strengths.
We reconsider magnetogenesis in the context of three-form inflation, and its backreaction. In particular, we focus on first order perturbation theory during inflation and subsequent radiation era: we discuss the consistency of the perturbative approach, and elaborate on the possible non-Gaussian signatures of the model.
A non-conformally invariant coupling between the inflaton and the photon in the minimal Lorentz-violating standard model extension is analyzed. For specific forms of the Lorentz-violating background tensor, the strong-coupling and backreaction problems of magnetogenesis in de Sitter inflation with scale $\sim 10^{16}$GeV are evaded, the electromagnetic-induced primordial spectra of (Gaussian and non-Gaussian) scalar and tensor curvature perturbations are compatible with cosmic microwave background observations, and the inflation-produced magnetic field directly accounts for cosmic magnetic fie…
We study the generation of helical magnetic fields in a model of inflationary magnetogenesis which is free from the strong coupling and back-reaction problems. To generate helical magnetic fields, we add an $f^2 \tilde{F}^{μν} F_{μν}$ term to the lagrangian of Ratra model. The strong coupling and back-reaction problems are avoided if we take a particular behaviour of coupling function $f$, in which $f$ increases during inflation and decreases post inflation to reheating. The generated magnetic field is fully helical and has a blue spectrum, $dρ_B/d\ln k \propto k^4$. This spectrum is obtained …
The $R^2$ term in the Starobinsky inflationary model can be regarded as a leading quantum correction to the gravitational effective action. We assume that parity-preserving and parity-violating (axial) non-minimal couplings between curvature and electromagnetic field are also present in the effective action. In the Einstein frame, they turn into non-trivial couplings of the scalaron and curvature to the electromagnetic field. We make an assessment of inflationary magnetogenesis in this model. In the case of parity-preserving couplings, amplification of magnetic field is negligibly small. In th…
We derive a simple model-independent upper bound on the strength of magnetic fields obtained in inflationary and post-inflationary magnetogenesis taking into account the constraints imposed by the condition of weak coupling, back-reaction and Schwinger effect. This bound turns out to be rather low for cosmologically interesting spatial scales. Somewhat higher upper bound is obtained if one assumes that some unknown mechanism suppresses the Schwinger effect in the early universe. Incidentally, we correct our previous estimates for this case.
We consider helical coupling to electromagnetism and present a simple scenario of evolution of the coupling function leading to a viable inflationary magnetogenesis without the problem of back-reaction. In this scenario, helical magnetic fields of strength of order up to $10^{- 7}\,\text{G}$, when extrapolated to the current epoch, can be generated in a narrow spectral band centered at any reasonable wavenumber by adjusting the model parameters. We discuss implications of this model for baryogenesis, which impose additional constraints on the strength and correlation length of magnetic field.
We show that breaking of the conformal invariance of electromagnetic Lagrangian which is required for inflationary magnetogenesis arises naturally in the Poincar{é} Gauge Theory. We use the minimal coupling prescription to introduce the electromagnetic gauge fields as well as non-abelian gauge fields in this theory. Due to the addition of non-abelian gauge fields, we show that the solar constraints on this model can be naturally evaded. We find that in the minimal version of this model the generated magnetic field is too small to explain the observations. We discuss some generalizations of the…
We point out that a successful inflationary magnetogenesis could be realised if we break the local U(1) gauge symmetry during inflation. The effective electric charge is fixed as a fundamental constant, which allows us to obtain an almost scale invariant magnetic spectrum avoiding both the strong coupling and back reaction problems. We examine the corrections to the primordial curvature perturbation due to these stochastic electromagnetic fields and find that, at both linear and non-linear orders, the contributions from the electromagnetic field are negligible compared to those created from va…
The magnetogenesis scenarios triggered by the early variation of the gauge coupling are critically analyzed. In the absence of sources, it is shown that the electric and magnetic power spectra can be explicitly computed by means of electric-magnetic duality transformations. The remnants of a pre-inflationary expansion and the reheating process break explicitly electric-magnetic duality by inducing Ohmic currents. The generation of large-scale magnetic field and the physical distinction between electric and magnetic observables stems, in this class of models, from the final value reached by the…
Models of inflationary magnetogenesis with a coupling to the electromagnetic action of the form $f^2 F_{μν}F^{μν}$, are known to suffer from several problems. These include the strong coupling problem, the back reaction problem and also strong constraints due to Schwinger effect. We propose a model which resolves all these issues. In our model, the coupling function, $f$, grows during inflation and transits to a decaying phase post inflation. This evolutionary behaviour is chosen so as to avoid the problem of strong coupling. By assuming a suitable power law form of the coupling function, we c…
The post-inflationary evolution of inflation-produced magnetic fields, conventional or not, can change dramatically when two fundamental issues are accounted for. The first is causality, which demands that local physical processes can never affect superhorizon perturbations. The second is the nature of the transition from inflation to reheating and then to the radiation era, which determine the initial conditions at the start of these epochs. Causality implies that inflationary magnetic fields dot not freeze into the matter until they have re-entered the causal horizon. The nature of the cosmo…
As soon as the geometry expands quasi-exponentially the plasma sources are customarily tuned to zero as if the duration of the inflationary phase was immaterial for the gauge field fluctuations at large-scale. The serendipitous disappearance of the plasma (or even the partial neglect of its effects) depends on the symmetries of the system which are, in four space-time dimensions and in the simplest Abelian case, the invariance under Weyl rescaling and the electromagnetic duality symmetry. The quantum, thermal and conducting initial conditions of inflationary magnetogenesis are classified and d…
Recent observational claims of magnetic fields stronger than $10^{-16}$ G in the extragalactic medium motivate a new look for their origin in the inflationary magnetogenesis models. In this work we shall review the constraints on the simplest gauge invariant model $f^2(ϕ)F_{μν}F^{μν}$ of inflationary magnetogenesis, and show that in the optimal region of parameter space the anisotropic constraints coming from the induced bispectrum, due to the generated electromagnetic fields, yield the strongest constraints. In this model, only a very fine tuned scenario at an energy scale of inflation as low…
In previous work, two of us have proposed a model of inflationary magnetogenesis based on a rolling auxiliary field able both to account for the magnetic fields inferred by the (non) observation of gamma-rays from blazars, and to start the galactic dynamo, without incurring in any strong coupling or strong backreaction regime. Here we evaluate the correction to the scalar spectrum and bispectrum with respect to single-field slow-roll inflation generated in that scenario. The strongest constraints on the model originate from the non-observation of a scalar bispectrum. Nevertheless, even when th…
We describe a simple scenario of inflationary magnetogenesis based on a helical coupling to electromagnetism. It allows to generate helical magnetic fields of strength of order up to $10^{- 7}\,\text{G}$, when extrapolated to the current epoch, in a narrow spectral band centered at any physical wavenumber by adjusting the model parameters. Additional constraints on magnetic fields arise from the considerations of baryogenesis and, possibly, from the Schwinger effect of creation of charged particle-antiparticle pairs.
The temperature and polarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background are analyzed under the hypothesis that the same inflationary seed accounting for protogalactic magnetism also affects the Einstein-Boltzmann hierarchy whose initial conditions are assigned for typical correlation scales larger than the Hubble radius after matter-radiation equality but before decoupling. Since the primordial gauge spectrum depends on a combination of pivotal parameters of the concordance model, the angular power spectra of the temperature and of the polarization are computed, for the first time, in…
Recently, there are several reports that the cosmic magnetic fields on Mpc scale in void region is larger than $\sim 10^{-15}$G with an uncertainty of a few orders from the current blazar observations. On the other hand, in inflationary magnetogenesis models, additional primordial curvature perturbations are inevitably produced from iso-curvature perturbations due to generated electromagnetic fields. We explore such induced curvature perturbations in a model independent way and obtained a severe upper bound for the energy scale of inflation from the observed cosmic magnetic fields and the obse…
Cosmological magnetic fields pervade the entire universe, from small to large scales. Since they apparently extend into the intergalactic medium, it is tantalizing to believe that they have a primordial origin, possibly being produced during inflation. However, finding consistent scenarios for inflationary magnetogenesis is a challenging theoretical problem. The requirements to avoid an excessive production of electromagnetic energy, and to avoid entering a strong coupling regime characterized by large values for the electromagnetic coupling constant, typically allow one to generate only a tin…
The effective approach is applied to the analysis of inflationary magnetogenesis. Rather than assuming a particular underlying description, all the generally covariant terms potentially appearing with four space-time derivatives in the effective action have been included and weighted by inflaton-dependent couplings. The higher derivatives are suppressed by the negative powers of a typical mass scale whose specific values ultimately depend on the tensor to scalar ratio. During a quasi-de Sitter stage the corresponding corrections always lead to an asymmetry between the hypermagnetic and the hyp…
Recent blazar observations provide growing evidence for the presence of magnetic fields in the extragalactic regions. While a natural speculation is to associate the production to inflationary physics, it has been known that magnetogenesis solely from inflation is quite challenging. We therefore study a model in which a non-inflaton field $χ$ coupled to the electromagnetic field through its kinetic term, $-I^2(χ) F^2 /4$, continues to move after inflation until the completion of reheating. This leads to a post-inflationary amplification of the electromagnetic field. We compute all the relevant…
Provided the quantum fluctuations are amplified in the presence of a classical gauge field configuration the resulting curvature perturbations exhibit a mild statistical anisotropy which should be sufficiently weak not to conflict with current observational data. The curvature power spectra induced by weakly anisotropic initial states are computed here for the first time when the electric and the magnetic gauge couplings evolve at different rates as it happens, for instance, in the relativistic theory of van der Waals interactions. After recovering the results valid for coincident gauge coupli…
We discuss the possibility of explaining the recent NANOGrav results by inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs) with a blue-tilted primordial spectrum. Although such IGWs can account for the NANOGrav signal without contradicting the upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio at the cosmic microwave background scale, the predicted spectrum is in strong tension with the upper bound on the amplitude of the stochastic gravitational wave background by big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the second LIGO-Virgo observation run. However, the thermal history of the Universe, such as reheating and late-tim…
Inflation has long been thought as the best way of producing primordial large-scale magnetic fields. To achieve fields strong enough to seed the galactic dynamo, most of the mechanisms operate outside conventional electromagnetic theory. The latter is typically restored after the end of the de Sitter phase. Breaking away from standard electromagnetism can lead to substantially stronger magnetic fields by the end of inflation, thus compensating for the their subsequent adiabatic depletion. We argue that the drastic magnetic enhancement during the de Sitter era may no longer be necessary because…
The simplest model of primordial magnetogenesis can provide scale-invariant magnetic fields that can explain the present abundances of it in the cosmic scales. Two kinds of solutions of the coupling function can lead to such phenomena and both of them suffer from the problems of either strong-coupling or large backreaction. In this work, we consider the coupling function as a linear combination of both kinds with a model parameter. We find that the parameter needs to be as small as $\sim 10^{-20}$ in order to evade the backreaction problem. On the other hand, requiring that the modes above Mpc…
Using numerical simulations of helical inflationary magnetogenesis in a low reheating temperature scenario, we show that the magnetic energy spectrum is strongly peaked at a particular wavenumber that depends on the reheating temperature. Gravitational waves (GWs) are produced at frequencies between 3 nHz and 50 mHz for reheating temperatures between 150 MeV and 3x10^5 GeV, respectively. At and below the peak frequency, the stress spectrum is always found to be that of white noise. This implies a linear increase of GW energy per logarithmic wavenumber interval, instead of a cubic one, as previ…
Inflationary magnetogenesis from non-minimal coupling in large- and small-field potentials
Università di Camerino（卡梅里诺大学）；University at Albany-SUNY（奥尔巴尼州立大学（纽约州立大学））；INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera（意大利国家天体物理研究所布雷拉天文台）；Al-Farabi Kazakh National University（阿尔法拉比哈萨克国立大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Perugia（意大利国家核物理学院佩鲁吉亚分部）
We present three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of the production of magnetic fields and gravitational waves (GWs) in the early Universe during a low energy scale matter-dominated post-inflationary reheating era, and during the early subsequent radiative era, which is strongly turbulent. The parameters of the model are determined such that it avoids a number of known physical problems and produces magnetic energy densities between 0.2% and 2% of the critical energy density at the end of reheating. During the subsequent development of a turbulent magnetohydrodynamic cascade, magnetic …
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…
The occupation number of a field is a sound discriminator between classical and quantum regimes. In this pamphlet we give an overview of what we can learn about inflationary magnetogenesis just by looking at the occupation numbers of the classical magnetic fields observed today, and those of the quantum electromagnetic field during inflation. The sole occupation number behaviour dictates that for a pure Maxwell theory in de Sitter space it appears impossible to match the two epochs.
We consider inflationary magnetogenesis where the conformal symmetry is broken by the term $f^2(ϕ) F_{αβ} F^{αβ}$. We assume that the magnetic field power spectrum today between 0.1 and $10^4$ Mpc is a power law, with upper and lower limits from observation. This fixes $f$ to be close to a power law in conformal time in the window during inflation when the modes observed today are generated. In contrast to previous work, we do not make any assumptions about the form of $f$ outside these scales. We cover all possible reheating histories, described by an average equation of state $-1/3 <\bar{w} …
Large-scale magnetogenesis is analyzed within the Palatini approach when the gravitational action is supplemented by a contribution that is nonlinear in the Einstein-Hilbert term. While the addition of the nonlinear terms does not affect the scalar modes of the geometry during the inflationary phase, the tensor-to-scalar ratio is nonetheless suppressed. In this context it is plausible to have a stiff phase following the standard inflationary stage provided the potential has a quintessential form. The large-scale magnetic fields can even be a fraction of the nG over typical length scales of the…
The most studied mechanism of inflationary magnetogenesis relies on the time-dependence of the coefficient of the gauge kinetic term $F_{μν}\,{F}^{μν}$. Unfortunately, only extremely finely tuned versions of the model can consistently generate the cosmological magnetic fields required by observations. We propose a generalization of this model, where also the pseudoscalar invariant $F_{μν}\,\tilde{F}^{μν}$ is multiplied by a time dependent function. The new parity violating term allows more freedom in tuning the amplitude of the field at the end of inflation. Moreover, it leads to a helical mag…
The simplest gauge invariant models of inflationary magnetogenesis are known to suffer from the problems of either large backreaction or strong coupling, which make it difficult to self-consistently achieve cosmic magnetic fields from inflation with a field strength larger than $10^{-32} G$ today on the $\Mpc$ scale. Such a strength is insufficient to act as seed for the galactic dynamo effect, which requires a magnetic field larger than $10^{-20} G$. In this paper we analyze simple extensions of the minimal model, which avoid both the strong coupling and back reaction problems, in order to ge…
Cosmological inflation provides the initial conditions for the structure formation. However, the origin of large-scale magnetic fields cannot be addressed in this framework. The key issue for this long-standing problem is the conformal invariance of the electromagnetic (EM) field in 4-D. While many approaches have been proposed in the literature for breaking conformal invariance of the EM action, here, we provide a completely new way of looking at the modifications to the EM action and generation of primordial magnetic fields during inflation. We explicitly construct a higher derivative EM act…
We explore cosmological magnetogenesis in the post-inflationary universe, when the inflaton oscillates around its potential minimum and the universe is effectively dominated by cold matter. During this epoch prior to reheating, large-scale magnetic fields can be significantly produced by the cosmological background. By considering magnetogenesis both during and after inflation, we demonstrate that magnetic fields stronger than 10^{-15} G can be generated on Mpc scales without having strong couplings in the theory, or producing too large electric fields that would dominate the universe.
When the gauge fields have derivative couplings to scalars, like in the case of the relativistic theory of Van der Waals (or Casimir-Polder) interactions, conformal invariance is broken but the magnetic and electric susceptibilities are not bound to coincide. We analyze the formation of large-scale magnetic fields in slow-roll inflation and find that they are generated at the level of a few hundredths of a nG and over typical length scales between few Mpc and $100$ Mpc. Using a new time parametrization that reduces to conformal time but only for coincident susceptibilities, the gauge action is…
Generation of magnetic fields during inflation is a promising mechanism for the origin of the observed large scale magnetic fields in the universe. Among several attempts, a popular model is one where the inflaton and the electromagnetic field are coupled through a coupling function $f$ leading to a term in the Lagrangian density of the form, $f^2 F^{μν} F_{μν}$. A number of potential difficulties with such models have been raised in the literature. In our earlier work, we have suggested viable models of inflationary magnetogenesis which avoid these problems and at the same time can lead to ei…
We explore the inflationary dynamics leading to formation of closed domain walls in course of evolution of an axion like particle (ALP) field whose Peccei-Quinn-like phase transition occurred well before inflationary epoch. Evolving after inflation, the domain walls may leave their imprint in stochastic gravitational waves background, in the frequency range accessible for the pulsar timing array measurements. We derive the characteristic strain power spectrum produced by the distribution of the closed domain walls and relate it with the recently reported NANOGrav signal excess. We found that t…
This analysis aims at exploring what can be said about the growth rate of magnetized inhomogeneities under two concurrent hypotheses: a phase of quasi-de Sitter dynamics driven by a single inflaton field and the simultaneous presence of a spectator field coupled to gravity and to the gauge sector. Instead of invoking ad hoc correlations between the various components, the system of scalar inhomogeneities is diagonalized in terms of two gauge-invariant quasi-normal modes whose weighted sum gives the curvature perturbations on comoving orthogonal hypersurfaces. The predominance of the convention…
The tensor to scalar ratio is affected by the evolution of the large-scale gauge fields potentially amplified during an inflationary stage of expansion. After deriving the exact evolution equations for the scalar and tensor modes of the geometry in the presence of dynamical gauge fields, it is shown that the tensor to scalar ratio is bounded from below by the dominance of the adiabatic contribution and it cannot be smaller than one thousands whenever the magnetogenesis is driven by a single inflaton field.
While during inflation a phase of increasing gauge coupling allows for a scale-invariant hyperelectric spectrum, when the coupling decreases a flat hypermagnetic spectrum can be generated for typical wavelengths larger than the effective horizon. After the gauge coupling flattens out the late-time hypermagnetic power spectra outside the horizon in the radiation epoch are determined by the hyperelectric fields at the end of inflation whereas the opposite is true in the case of decreasing coupling. Instead of imposing an abrupt freeze after inflation, we consider a smooth evolution of the mode f…
We study the primordial magnetic field generated by the simple model $f^2 FF$ in Starobinsky, $R^2$-inflationary, model. The scale invariant PMF is achieved at relatively high power index of the coupling function, $\left| α\right| \approx 7.44$. This model does not suffer from the backreaction problem as long as, the rate of inflationary expansion, $H$, is in the order of or less than the upper bound reported by Planck ($\le 3.6 \times 10^{-5} M_\rm{Pl}$) in both de Sitter and power law expansion, which show similar results. We calculate the lower limit of the reheating parameter, $R_\rm{rad} …
In this work we compute the production of magnetic fields in models of axion inflation coupled to the hypercharge sector of the Standard Model through a Chern-Simons interaction term. We make the simplest choice of a quadratic inflationary potential and use lattice simulations to calculate the magnetic field strength, helicity and correlation length at the end of inflation. For small values of the axion-gauge field coupling strength the results agree with no-backreaction calculations and estimates found in the literature. For larger couplings the helicity of the magnetic field differs from the…
Effective theory framework based on symmetry has recently gained widespread interest in the field of cosmology. In this paper, we apply the same idea on the genesis of the primordial magnetic field and its evolution throughout the cosmological universe. Given the broken time-diffeomorphism symmetry by the cosmological background, we considered the most general Lagrangian of electromagnetic and metric fluctuation up to second order, which naturally breaks conformal symmetry in the electromagnetic (EM) sector. We also include parity violation in the electromagnetic sector with the motivation tha…
We investigate pair creation by an electric field in four-dimensional de Sitter space. The expectation value of the induced current is computed, using the method of adiabatic regularization. Under strong electric fields the behavior of the current is similar to that in flat space, while under weak electric fields the current becomes inversely proportional to the mass squared of the charged field. Thus we find that the de Sitter space obtains a large conductivity under weak electric fields in the presence of a charged field with a tiny mass. We then apply the results to constrain electromagneti…
