Cosmology and Gravitation

I first summarize how the recent avalanche of precision measurements involving the cosmic microwave background, galaxy clustering, the Lyman alpha forest, gravitational lensing, supernovae Ia and other tools probes has transformed our understanding of our universe. I then discuss key open problems such as the nature of dark matter, dark energy and the early universe.

Cosmology ultimately aims to explain the initial conditions at the beginning of time and the entire subsequent evolution of the universe. The "beginning of time" can be understood in the Wheeler-DeWitt approach to quantum gravity, where homogeneous universes are described by a Schroedinger equation with a potential barrier. Quantum tunneling through the barrier is interpreted as a spontaneous creation of a small (Planck-size) closed universe, which then enters the regime of cosmological inflation and reaches an extremely large size. After sufficient growth, the universe can be adequately described as a classical spacetime with quantum matter. The initial quantum state of matter in the created universe can be determined by solving the Schroedinger equation with appropriate boundary conditions. I show that the most likely initial state is close to the vacuum state. This is the initial condition for inflation favored both by observational data and theoretical considerations.

We consider N=2 supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics (SQED) with 2 flavors, the Fayet--Iliopoulos parameter, and a mass term $beta$ which breaks the extended supersymmetry down to N=1. The bulk theory has two vacua; at $beta=0$ the BPS-saturated domain wall interpolating between them has a moduli space parameterized by a U(1) phase $sigma$ which can be promoted to a scalar field in the effective low-energy theory on the wall world-volume. At small nonvanishing $beta$ this field gets a sine-Gordon potential. As a result, only two discrete degenerate BPS domain walls survive. We find an explicit solitonic solution for domain lines -- string-like objects living on the surface of the domain wall which separate wall I from wall II. The domain line is seen as a BPS kink in the world-volume effective theory. The domain line carries the magnetic flux which is exactly 1/2 of the flux carried by the flux tube living in the bulk on each side of the wall. Thus, the domain lines on the wall confine charges living on the wall, resembling Polyakov's three-dimensional confinement.

I begin with a brief description of the black strings in backgrounds with compact circle, the Gregory-Laflamme instability and the resulting phase transition, and the critical dimensions.Then I describe a Landau-Ginzburg thermodynamic perspective on the instability and on the order of the phase transition. Next, the approach is generalized from a circle compactification to an arbitrary torus compactification. It is shown that the transition order depends only on the number of extended dimensions. I end up with outlining several open questions and puzzles related to the outcome of the Gregory-Laflamme instability.

We discuss the properties of matter in the low temperature regime at density that may exist in the core of compact stars. Assuming that in these conditions quarks are deconfined the attractive color interaction determines the formation of Cooper pairs of quarks and the resulting quark matter has properties analogous to standard superconductors. We show that under reasonable conditions a state were Cooper pairs have non-zero total momentum is energetically favored and the resulting non-homogeneous condensate is characterized by a crystal symmetry. Studying the elastic properties of such a state we find that it behaves like a solid crystal with a very large shear modulus. Our results raise the possibility that (some) pulsar glitches may originate within the Crystalline Color Superconductor core of Neutron stars.

During multi-field Inflation, the curvature perturbation can evovlve on superhorizon scales and will develop non-gaussianity due to non-linear interactions. In this talk I will discuss the calculation of this effect for models of inflation with two scalar fields.

Modified gravity models seem to have classical instabilities, ghosts degrees of freedom and superluminal modes. Besides these constraints new dynamical bounds have found to be typical of these models. The cosmological nature of all these constraints is discussed.

Existence of dark energy and nonzero nu mass are two most exciting discoveries of recent years. More excitingly, the similarity between the energy scales of these two raise the question: "Are they related?" I will explore how such connection could be there in nature and its cosmological consequences mainly in structure formation.

It will be shown that eternal inflation of the random walk type is generically absent in the brane inflationary scenario. Eternal inflation will be analysed both in the context of KKLMMT and the DBI inflationary models. A Langevin analysis will be employed for a more careful treatment. The DBI action, and the relativistic nature of the brane motion in DBI inflationary model, leads to new subtleties in formulating a Langevin approach.

The initial conditions for structure formation, and hence the dark matter distribution on sub-galactic scales, depend on the microphysics of the dark matter in the early Universe. I will focus on WIMPs and explain how collisional damping and free-streaming erase perturbations on comoving scales k> ~1/pc. Consequently the first structures to form in the Universe are mini-halos with mass of order the Earth. I will then describe the status of calculations of the subsequent dynamical evolution of these mini-halos. Finally, if time permits, I'll briefly overview the microphysics of axions.