Cosmology

Quasars observed at redshifts z∼6−7.5 are powered by supermassive black holes which are too large to have grown from early stellar remnants without efficient super-Eddington accretion. A proposal for alleviating this tension is for dust and metal-free gas clouds to have undergone a process of direct collapse, producing black hole seeds of mass Mseed∼105M⊙ around redshift z∼17. For direct collapse to occur, a large flux of UV photons must exist to photodissociate molecular hydrogen, allowing the gas to cool slowly and avoid fragmentation. We investigate the possibility of sub-keV mass dark matter decaying or annihilating to produce the UV flux needed to cause direct collapse. We find that annihilating dark matter with a mass in the range of 13.6 eV≤mdm≤20 eV can produce the required flux while avoiding existing constraints. A non-thermally produced dark matter particle which comprises the entire dark matter abundance requires a thermally averaged cross section of ⟨σv⟩∼10−35 cm3/s. Alternatively, the flux could originate from a thermal relic which comprises only a fraction ∼10−9 of the total dark matter density. Decaying dark matter models which are unconstrained by independent astrophysical observations are unable to sufficiently suppress molecular hydrogen, except in gas clouds embedded in dark matter halos which are larger, cuspier, or more concentrated than current simulations predict. Lastly, we explore how our results could change with the inclusion of full three-dimensional effects. Notably, we demonstrate that if the H2 self-shielding is less than the conservative estimate used in this work, the range of both annihilating and decaying dark matter models which can cause direct collapse is significantly increased.

We present the νφMTH, a Mirror Twin Higgs (MTH) model realizing asymmetric reheating, baryogenesis and twin-baryogenesis through the out-of-equilibrium decay of a right-handed neutrino without any hard Z2 breaking. The MTH is the simplest Neutral Naturalness solution to the little hierarchy problem and predicts the existence of a twin dark sector related to the Standard Model (SM) by a Z2 symmetry that is only softly broken by a higher twin Higgs vacuum expectation value. The asymmetric reheating cools the twin sector compared to the visible one, thus evading cosmological bounds on ∆Neff. The addition of (twin-)colored scalars allows for the generation of the visible baryon asymmetry and, by the virtue of the Z2 symmetry, also results in the generation of a twin baryon asymmetry. We identify a unique scenario with top-philic couplings for the new scalars that can satisfy all cosmological, proton decay and LHC constraints; yield the observed SM baryon asymmetry; and generate a wide range of possible twin baryon DM fractions, from negligible to unity. Implications of predicted atomic DM fractions will be discussed, as well as model-independent asymmetric reheating implications on the abundance of twin helium. These results motivate the search for the rich cosmological and astrophysical signatures of twin baryons, and atomic dark matter more generally, at cosmological, galactic and stellar scales.

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has ignited a revolution in our understanding of the early universe. Its exquisite infrared capabilities have allowed observers to find galaxies at higher redshifts than before and to measure their stellar masses. I will describe how we can use these observations to shed light on the nature of dark matter. For the JWST galaxies to form they ought to reside in dark-matter halos, allowing us to measure the clustering of dark matter in an unexplored region. I will discuss the JWST observations of ultra-massive galaxies recently argued to “break LCDM”, and how we recently disfavored a cosmological solution using HST data at the same redshifts. If time allows, I will review the path forward to measuring dark-matter clustering down to the first galaxies through 21-cm observations.

Atomic dark matter (ADM) is a simple extension to the Standard Model that is motivated by considerations in both particle and astrophysics. ADM can alter structure formation on subgalactic scales due to its ability to dissipate energy through cooling mechanisms, but is also one realisation of a possible complex dark sector. These dark sectors have been previously studied as a solution to the little hierarchy problem. Recently the first N-body simulations were completed, studying the effects of cold dark matter with a ADM subcomponent (6%) and are only beginning to be analysed. In this talk I present how the dissipative nature of ADM affects both the distribution and structure of subhalos in a Milky Way analogue, and outline how we may hope to constrain and probe the ADM parameter space.

Self interacting dark matter can form halos and compact objects in an early matter dominated era before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. This talk explores how an asymmetric dark fermion which self interacts via a heavy vector can undergo halo formation in an early matter dominated era. These halos then cool via bremsstrahlung until they either collapse into black holes or fragment into compact pressure support objects. Radiation domination is restored via a phase transition. This provides a simple new mechanism to produce both primordial black holes and dark compact objects.

A dissipative dark sector can result in the formation of compact objects with masses comparable to stars and planets. In this work, we investigate the formation of such compact objects from a subdominant inelastic dark matter model, and study the resulting distributions of these objects. In particular, we consider cooling from dark Bremsstrahlung and a rapid decay process that occurs after inelastic upscattering. Inelastic transitions introduce an additional radiative processes which can impact the formation of compact objects via multiple cooling channels. We find that having multiple cooling processes changes the mass and abundance of compact objects formed, as compared to a scenario with only one cooling channel. The resulting distribution of these astrophysical compact objects and their properties can be used to further constrain and differentiate between dark sectors.

In this talk, I will discuss my exploration of the gravothermal collapse of isolated self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) halos, driven deep into the core-collapsed regime where interactions are frequent. We investigate how elastic collisions influence the central region of SIDM halos as they undergo core collapse. In our numerical findings, we discover a remarkable universality in the behavior of halos, allowing us to predict their evolution deep in the core-collapsed regime. We develop a semi-analytic method to characterize the core properties of the halo in the latest stages of evolution, which is crucial for making predictions of the mass of potential black holes forming at the heart of these dark matter halos.

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When additional degrees of freedom are considered during inflation, a crucial aspect of early universe physics emerges: the generation of isocurvature quantum fluctuations. In this talk, we will present generation and detection forecast for axionic blue-tilted isocurvature power spectra. The large blue-tilt readily evades current CMB bounds. Following a brief review, we will discuss a SUSY-embedded axion model which generates a strongly blue tilted (nI~4) isocurvature spectrum during inflation when the quantum modes are starting to be underdamped ( m/H > 3/2 ). Interestingly, there exist parametric regions with strong resonant spectral behavior that lead to rich isocurvature spectral shapes and large amplitude enhancements. These can be particularly interesting with observational consequences, in relation to the generation of PBH and GWs. The isocurvature spectral tilt is directly linked to the axion mass during inflation. Detecting blue-tilted isocurvatures can offer indirect evidence of a weakly interacting dark matter-like spectator field beyond conventional thermal-relic scenarios. Lastly, we will examine and forecast constraints for experiments such as Euclid (upcoming) and MegaMapper (proposed) using EFTofLSS based perturbative techniques. In the process we will comment upon the consistent renormalization requirements for mixed adiabatic and blue isocurvature primordial spectra.

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