Astrophysics

Neutron stars are a celestial gift to scientists. These incredibly dense collapsed stars act as very precise cosmic beacons that help shed light on some of the most challenging problems in modern physics.

In her Feb. 3 talk at Perimeter Institute, astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi will explore these strange objects, explain how astronomers are using them to study issues ranging from the origins of the universe to the very nature of matter, and even let the audience hear the cosmic symphony they create.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) has been pushing our measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background on small scales to high resolution and deeper sensitivity since 2008. While ACT stopped taking temperature-only measurements in 2010, ACTPol is now operating with polarisation-sensitive detectors. I will present some of the current ACTPol results in terms of the power spectrum constraints. In addition, I'll highlight some of our recent results using ACTPol data, including detections of both the thermal and the kinetic Sunyaev- Zel'dovich effects through cross-correlation with other probes. I'll discuss the lensing of the small-scale microwave sky as measured by ACT and discus how cross-correlating CMB lensing with other probes gives us a handle on galaxy properties like bias. Finally, I'll discuss the next stage in small-scale CMB cosmology: Advanced ACTPol, which will improve our understanding of the reionisation of the universe - arguably our least constrained epoch to date.

According to the standard model of cosmology 96% of the matter and energy in the universe is invisible. The dark matter particles comprising the invisible material have so far not been detected in laboratory and astrophysical experiments.  The dark energy responsible for the acceleration of the universe is still a controversial issue. A modified gravity theory is presented that can potentially fit current cosmological and astrophysical data. The black holes and their shadows predicted by MOG can differ from the predictions of Einstein gravity.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, broadband, non-repeating, millisecond flashes of unknown astronomical origin. The dispersion of these bursts by intervening plasma suggests that the sources of the 16 bursts reported to date= are at 0.2<z<1. I will discuss the possibility of using dispersion, instead of redshift, to study the large-scale structure of the Universe in three dimensions. Like redshift, which is distorted by peculiar velocities, dispersion is an imperfect proxy for distance as it is distorted by inhomogeneities in the electron density. These dispersion-space distortions are calculable and actually greatly enhance the signal. The clustering signal in dispersion space could be detected in a survey of 10 000 FRBs, as is expected to be produced by the CHIME telescope over three years.

The greatest uncertainty in whether this technique will be successful is the unknown nature of FRB sources. A new observation tells us more about the environment of a source than ever before through the polarization and scattering properties of a burst. More observations of this type, along with observations that identify host galaxies, will soon tell whether FRBs will provide a new probe of structure.

In this talk I derive the evolution equations for two scalar fields with non-canonical field space metric up to third order in perturbation theory, employing the covariant formalism. These equations can be used to calculate the local bi- and trispectra of the non-minimal ekpyrotic model. Remarkably, the nearly scale-invariant entropy perturbations have vanishing bi- and trispectra during the ekpyrotic phase. However, an efficient conversion process to curvature perturbations induces local non-Gaussianity parameters f_NL and g_NL at levels that should be detectable by near-future observations.
In the second part of the talk I construct a new kind of cosmological model – conflation. The universe undergoes accelerated expansion, but with crucial differences compared to ordinary inflation. In particular, the potential energy is negative, which is of interest for supergravity and string theory where both negative potentials and the required scalar-tensor couplings are rather natural. A distinguishing feature of the model is that it does not amplify adiabatic scalar and tensor fluctuations, and in particular does not lead to eternal inflation and the associated infinities.

I discuss a new proposal for nonperturbatively defining chiral gauge theories, something that has resisted previous attempts. The proposal is a well defined field theoretic framework that contains mirror fermions with very soft form factors, which allows them to decouple, as well as ordinary fermions with conventional couplings.  The construction makes use of an extra dimension, which localizes chiral zeromodes on the boundaries, and a four dimensional gauge field extended into the bulk via classical gradient flow.  After explaining how this setup works, I consider open questions concerning the flow of topological gauge configurations, as well as possible exotic phenomenology in the Standard Model lurking at the low energy frontier.

In light of the upcoming Generation 2 (G2) direct-detection experiments attempting to record dark matter scattering with nuclei in underground detectors, it is timely to inquire about their ability to single out the correct theory of dark-matter-baryon interactions, in case a signal is observed. I will present a recent study in which we perform statistical analysis of a large set of direct-detection simulations, covering a wide variety of operators that describe scattering of fermionic dark matter with nuclei. I will show that a strong signal on G2 xenon and germanium targets has enough discrimination power to reconstruct the momentum dependence of the interaction, ruling out entire classes of models. However, zeroing in on a correct UV completion will critically depend on the availability of measurements from a wide variety of nuclear targets (including iodine and fluorine) and on the availability of low energy thresholds. This study quantifies complementarity amongst different experimental designs and targets, and provides a roadmap for future data analyses. It also highlights the critical need for bringing in information from all available probes in dark matter studies.

With the completion of the Planck satellite, in order to continue collecting cosmological information it is
important to gain a precise understanding of the formation of Large Scale Structures (LSS) of the universe.
The Effective Field Theory of LSS (EFTofLSS) offers a consistent theoretical framework that aims to develop
an analytic understanding of LSS at long distances, where inhomogeneities are small. We present the recent
developments in the field covering topics of biased tracers in the EFTofLSS including the effects of baryonic
physics and primordial non-Gaussianities, finding that new bias coefficients are required. We discuss the EFT
framework for dark matter clustering in Lagrangian formalism and present its consequences on baryon acoustic
oscillations (BAO). We present analytic results and compare them with the output of N-body simulations.

We argue that theories with multiple axions generically contain a large
number of vacua that can account for the smallness of the cosmological
constant. In a theory with N axions, the dominant instantons with charges Q
determine the discrete symmetry of vacua. Subleading instantons break the
leading periodicity and lift the vacuum degeneracy. For generic integer charges
the number of distinct vacua is given by |det(Q)|~exp(N). Our construction
motivates the existence of a landscape with a vast number of vacua in
four-dimensional effective theories.

The next hope to constrain cosmological parameters observationally is in surveys of the large scale structure (LSS) of the universe. LSS has the potential to rival the CMB in cosmological constraints because the number of modes scales like the volume, but the nonlinear clustering due to gravity makes it more difficult to extract primordial parameters. In order to take full advantage of the constraining power of LSS, we must understand it in the quasi-nonlinear regime. The effective field theory (EFT) of LSS provides a consistent way to perturbatively predict the clustering of matter at large distances. In this talk, I will discuss the status of the EFT of LSS and present recent work describing the inclusion of baryons in the EFT approach, including comparisons to N-body simulations.

Cosmic neutrinos carry a wealth of information about both cosmology and particle physics, but they are notoriously difficult to observe.  Rapid advancement in measurements of the cosmic microwave background, however, have allowed us to indirectly constrain some properties of the cosmic neutrino background.  I will discuss the current status and future prospects for improving constraints on cosmic neutrinos, focusing in part of the phase shift of acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background which results from neutrino fluctuations.  I will also discuss how improved measurements from CMB-Stage IV will naturally constrain a wealth of beyond the standard model physics.

Magnetars are exceptional neutron stars with the highest magnetic
fields ( 10^15 gauss) in the universe, an unusual quasi steady X
radiation (10^35 ergs/sec) and also produce flares which are some of
the brightest events (10^46 ergs in one fifth of a second) to be
recorded. There is no satisfactory model of magnetars.
The talk will cover neutron stars and a new model for the origin of
the magnetic fields in which magnetars arise from a high baryon
density ( phase transition) magnetized core which forms when they are
born. The core magnetic field is initially shielded by the ambient
high conductivity plasma. With time the shielding currents dissipate
transporting the core field out, first to the crust and then breaking
through the crust to the surface of the star. Recent observations
provide support for this model which accounts for several properties
of magnetars and also enables us to identify new magnetars.