Astrophysics

A remarkable feature of the Standard Model is that it predicts that, in the absence of new physics, the Higgs field should become unstable at large energies. Though the electroweak vacuum should currently be metastable on timescales that are long compared to the age of the Universe, during an inflationary period, quantum fluctuations could have driven the development of regions of true vacuum at negative energy densities. I will discuss the evolution and spacetime dynamics of unstable Higgs fluctuations, illustrating how they can halt inflation in the regions they develop, and give rise to crunching regions and black holes with unusual properties. By combining this picture from general relativity with a detailed treatment of the stochastic development of such unstable Higgs fluctuations, bounds can be placed on the inflationary energy scale based on the existence of our current Universe.

The gravitational-wave observation GW150914 by Advanced LIGO provides the first opportunity to learn about theoretical physics mechanisms that may be present in the extreme gravity environment of coalescing binary black holes. The LIGO collaboration verified that this observation is consistent with Einstein's theory of General Relativity, constraining the presence of parametric anomalies in the signal. In this talk, I will discuss the plethora of additional inferences about gravity that can be drawn from the absence of such anomalies in the LIGO observation. I will focus and classify these inferences into those that inform us about the generation of gravitational waves (e.g. the activation of scalar fields, black hole graviton leakage into extra dimensions, the variability of Newton's constant, the breakage of Lorentz invariance and parity invariance), and the propagation of gravitational waves (e.g. the speed of gravity and the existence of large extra dimensions). I will conclude with a discussion of how these inferences may inform us about the models of modified gravity in cosmology.

In this talk I will discuss some of the consequences for our understanding of strong-field gravity that can be gleaned from the recent detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration. The event heard, GW150914, is consistent with the emission of gravitational waves from the late inspiral, merger and ringdown of two heavy stellar mass black holes. This has given us the first quantifiable pieces of evidence that the dynamics and properties of colliding black holes are governed by general relativity. At present certain exotic compact object alternatives to black holes within general relativity, such as boson stars or gravastars, cannot yet be ruled out due to lack of concrete predictions of the merger regime in such scenarios. However, I will argue that even if the progenitors of GW150914 where composed of such exotic matter, the gravitational wave data strongly suggests collision lead to the prompt formation of a Kerr black hole.

The first detection of gravitational waves came with an unexpected windfall: a clear signal from the merger of two black holes into a final, spinning black hole. General Relativity predicts that following merger, the final black hole relaxes by emitting radiation in a characteristic spectrum of decaying modes. I will discuss these ``quasinormal modes'' and what can be learned from them, as well as the black hole ringdown observed in GW150914. I will also explore the exotic side of ringdown, including the modes of nearly extremal black holes, and a tool for understanding the ringdown of black holes which differ from the standard Kerr solution.

Dynamics in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes with reflecting boundary conditions are characterized by reduced dissipation as compared to asymptotically flat spacetimes. Such spacetimes, thus, represent opportunities to study nonlinear gravitational interactions that would otherwise be quickly damped away. I will discuss two background spacetimes---large AdS black branes in d=4, and pure AdS---where small perturbations display turbulent behavior and energy cascades driven by nonlinear interactions. In each case, the presence of an unexpected conserved quantity---a gravitational "enstrophy" around the AdS black brane, and a "particle number" for pure AdS perturbations---significantly affects the energy flow direction throughout the cascade, and drives energy to longer distance scales. I will comment on implications for fundamental general relativity questions such as cosmic censorship, and potential for turbulence beyond AdS.

I will present a novel method for probing extremely weak large-scale magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium prior to the epoch of reionization. This method relies on the effect of spin alignment of hydrogen atoms in a cosmological setting, and on the effect of magnetic precession of the atoms on the statistics of the 21–cm brightness–temperature fluctuations. It is intrinsically sensitive to magnetic fields weaker than 10^{-19} Gauss in physical units, and thus has a potential to reach many orders of magnitude below the current constraints on primordial magnetic fields. I will discuss the physical mechanism, lay out the estimator formalism that enables searches with future 21-cm tomographic surveys, and present forecasts for detecting magnetic fields in the high-redshift universe using this method.

In homogeneous and isotropic Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology, the topology of the universe determines its ultimate fate. If the Weak Energy Condition is satisfied, open and flat universes must expand forever, while closed cosmologies can recollapse to a Big Crunch. A similar statement holds for homogeneous but anisotropic (Bianchi) universes. Here, we prove that arbitrarily inhomogeneous and anisotropic cosmologies with ``flat'' (including toroidal) and ``open'' (including compact hyperbolic) spatial topology that are initially expanding must continue to expand forever at least in some region at a rate bounded from below by a positive number, despite the presence of arbitrarily large density fluctuations and/or the formation of black holes. Because the set of 3-manifold topologies is countable, a single integer determines the ultimate fate of the universe, and, in a specific sense, most 3-manifolds are ``flat'' or ``open''. Our result has important implications for inflation: if there is a positive cosmological constant (or suitable inflationary potential) and initial conditions for the inflaton, cosmologies with ``flat'' or ``open'' topology must expand forever in some region at least as fast as de Sitter space, and are therefore very likely to begin inflationary expansion eventually, regardless of the scale of the inflationary energy or the spectrum and amplitude of initial inhomogeneities and gravitational waves. Our result is also significant for numerical general relativity, which often makes use of periodic (toroidal) boundary conditions.

Why was the early universe classical? Along with the big bang singularity problem and the flatness, horizon and inhomogeneity puzzles, this is one of the big unexplained features of the hot big bang scenario. In this talk I will discuss how inflation and ekpyrosis, which have mainly been considered as models that can address some of the other puzzles, can both drive the early universe towards classicality. The remarkable aspect is that classicality is achieved via the intrinsic dynamics of inflation and ekpyrosis, without invoking decoherence.

The nature of dark matter remains one of the most nagging problems in cosmology. In this talk I will discuss several existing or potential probes of dark matter. I will start with a well known hot dark matter, massive neutrinos, and discuss their effect on large-scale structure in the non-linear regime. I will then talk about the effect of dark matter interactions with standard model particles on the spectrum of the CMB and on 21cm fluctuations. I will conclude by discussing whether LIGO could have detected primordial-black-hole dark matter.