Astrophysics

The 4D rotating black hole described by the Kerr geometry possesses many of what was called by Chandrasekhar "miraculous" properties. Most of them are related to the existence of a fundamental hidden symmetry of a principal conformal Killing-Yano (PCKY) tensor. In my talk I shall demonstrate that hidden symmetry of the PCKY tensor plays exceptional role also in higher dimensions. Namely, I shall present the most general spacetime admitting the PCKY tensor and show that is possesses the following properties: 1) It is of the algebraic type D and admits the Kerr-Schild form 2) It allows a separation of variables for the Hamilton-Jacobi, Klein-Gordon, Dirac, and stationary string equations. 3) When the Einstein equations with the cosmological constant are imposed the metric describes the most general known (spherical) Kerr-NUT-AdS black hole spacetime. I will also discuss the generalization of Killing-Yano symmetries for spacetimes with natural "torsion 3-form", such as the black hole of D=5 minimal supergravity, or the Kerr-Sen solution of heterotic string theory, and comment on connection to special Riemannian manifolds admiting Killing spinors.

We show that, in a model of modified gravity based on the spectral action functional, there is a nontrivial coupling between cosmic topology and inflation, in the sense that the shape of the possible slow-roll inflation potentials obtained in the model from the nonperturbative form of the spectral action are sensitive not only to the geometry (flat or positively curved) of the universe, but also to the different possible non-simply connected topologies. We show this by explicitly computing the nonperturbative spectral action for some candidate cosmic topologies, spherical space forms and flat ones given by Bieberbach manifolds and showing that the resulting inflation potential differs from that of the sphere or flat torus by a multiplicative factor. We then show that, while the slow-roll parameters differ between the spherical and flat manifolds but do not distinguish different topologies within each class, the power spectra detect the different scalings of the slow-roll potential and therefore distinguish between the various topologies, both in the spherical and in the flat case. (Based on joint work with Elena Pierpaoli and Kevin Teh)

For nearly the past century, the nature of dark matter in the Universe has puzzled astronomers and physicists. During the next decade, experiments will determine if a substantial amount of the dark matter is in the form of non-baryonic, Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). In this talk I will discuss and interpret modern limits on WIMP dark matter from a variety of complementary methods. I will show that we are just now obtaining sensitivity to probe the parameter space of cosmologically-predicted WIMPs created during the earliest epoch in the Universe. I will discuss the science to extract from a positive signal in different experiments, and the prospects for an era of dark matter astrophysics.

The availability of high precision observational data in cosmology means that it is possible to go beyond simple descriptions of cosmic inflation in which the expansion is driven by a single scalar field. One set of models of particular interest involve the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action, arising in string cosmology, in which the dynamics of the field are affected by a speed limit in a manner akin to special relativity. In this talk, I will introduce a scalar-tensor theory in which the matter component is a field with a DBI action. Transforming to the Einstein frame, I will explore the effect of the resulting coupling on the background dynamics of the fields and the first-order perturbations. The coupling forces the scalar field into the minimum of its effective potential, so the dynamics are determined by the DBI field, which has the interesting effect of increasing the number of efolds of inflation and decreasing the boost factor of the DBI field. Focusing on this case, I will show that the power spectrum of the primordial perturbations is determined by the behaviour of the perturbations of the modified DBI field and calculate the effect of varying the model parameters on the inflationary observables.

Primodial magnetic fields are a potentially interesting origin for cosmic magnetism. Such fields can leave an interesting signal not only in the CMB temperature and polarization, but in structure at low redshift, contributing to the matter power spectrum and SZ effect at small scales. I will talk about the reasons for considering primordial fields, their origin and evolution, and how their observational consequences constrain their nature.

Over the coming decade, tiny fluctuations in temperature and polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) will be mapped with unprecedented resolution. The Planck Surveyor, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) are already making great advances. In a few years, high resolution polarization experiments, such as PolarBear, ACTPol, and SPTPol will be in full swing. While these new arc-minute resolution observations will continue to help constrain the physics of the early universe, they will also be unique in a new way - they will allow us to measure the gravitational lensing of the CMB, i.e., the deflection of CMB photons by intervening large scale structure. CMB lensing will probe the growth of structure over cosmic time, helping constrain the total mass of neutrinos and the behavior of dark energy. In the first part of the talk, I will review the recent progress made with ACT, a powerful tool with new capabilities. In the second part, I will discuss the scientific potential of the CMB lensing signal, and its various applications in cross-correlation with other datasets. Finally, I will discuss the upcoming polarized counterpart of ACT --- the ACTPol project, which will have sixteen times better mapping speed than ACT, and will be a premier CMB lensing experiment. I will describe our plans to extract different flavors of science from the ACTPol data, including the cross-correlations with optical lensing and galaxy surveys, such as SDSS, BOSS, DES and LSST.

In terms of their energetics, cosmic ray protons are an insignificant by-product of star formation and super-massive black hole growth. However, due to their small mean free path, their coupling with the interstellar medium is absolute. In fact, they are most likely, the dominant source of momentum, and therefore kinetic force on galactic scales. By defining an Eddington Limit in Cosmic Rays, we show that the maximum photon luminosity of bright galaxies and quasars are capped by the production and subsequent expulsion of cosmic ray protons. Such simple arguments may explain why bright galaxies are faint in comparison to quasars and why super-massive black holes are relatively mass-less in comparison to galaxies.