Table of contents

We consider properties of the trajectory with the zero momentum inside a spherically symmetric black hole. We work mostly in the Painlevé -Gullstrand frame and use the concept of the "river model of black hole". This consept allows us to decompose (in a "cosmological manner") the geodesic motion of a test particle into a "flow" of the frame and a peculiar motion with respect to this frame. After this decomposition the application of standard formulae of special relativity for kinematic processes becomes possible. The present paper expands the notion of peculiar velocities to the region under the horzion and exploits it for the description of two physical processess—high energy collisions and redshift. Using this approach we (i) present a novel description of particle collisions occuring near black hole horizons inside the event horizon. In particular, we show that the trajectory under discussion is relevant for ultra-high energy collisions. (ii) In the framework of the river model, we derive a simple formula (both outside and inside the horizon) for the redshift in the case of radial motion. It represents the product of two factors. One of them is responsible for pure gravitational part whereas the other one gives the Doppler shift due to peculiar motion with respect to the "flow".

We calculate gravitational wave power spectra from first order early Universe phase transitions using the Sound Shell Model. The model predicts that the power spectrum depends on the mean bubble separation, the phase transition strength, the phase boundary speed, with the overall frequency scale set by the nucleation temperature. There is also a dependence on the time evolution of the bubble nucleation rate. The gravitational wave peak power and frequency are in good agreement with published numerical simulations, where bubbles are nucleated simultaneously. Agreement is particularly good for detonations, but the total power for deflagrations is predicted higher than numerical simulations show, indicating refinement of the model of the transfer of energy to the fluid is needed for accurate computations. We show how the time-dependence of the bubble nucleation rate affects the shape of the power spectrum: an exponentially rising nucleation rate produces higher amplitude gravitational waves at a longer wavelength than simultaneous nucleation. We present an improved fit for the predicted gravitational wave power spectrum in the form of a double broken power law, where the two breaks in the slope happen at wavenumber corresponding to the mean bubble separation and the thickness of the fluid shell surrounding the expanding bubbles, which in turn is related to the difference of the phase boundary speed from the speed of sound.

Despite mounting evidence that dark matter (DM) exists in the Universe, its fundamental nature remains unknown. We present sensitivity estimates to detect DM particles with a future very-high-energy (≳ TeV) wide field-of-view gamma-ray observatory in the Southern Hemisphere. This observatory would search for gamma rays from the annihilation or decay of DM particles in the Galactic halo. With a wide field of view, both the Galactic Center and a large fraction of the Galactic halo will be detectable with unprecedented sensitivity to DM in the mass range of ∼500 GeV to ∼2 PeV . These results, combined with those from other present and future gamma-ray observatories, will likely probe the thermal relic annihilation cross section of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles for all masses from ∼80 TeV down to the GeV range in most annihilation channels.

The maximum likelihood estimator for CMB map-making is optimal and unbiased as long as the data model is correct, but in practice it rarely is, with model errors including sub-pixel structure and instrumental problems like time-variable gain and pointing errors. In the presence of such errors, the solution is biased, with the local error in each pixel leaking outwards along the scanning pattern by a noise correlation length. The most important sources of such leakage are strong point sources, and for common scanning patterns the leakage manifests as an X around each such source. I discuss why this happens, and present several old and new methods for mitigating and/or eliminating this leakage, along with a small stand-alone TOD simulator and map-maker in Python that implements them.

Multi-field inflation with a curved scalar geometry has been found to support background trajectories that violate the slow-roll, slow-turn conditions and thus have the potential to evade the swampland constraints. In order to understand how generic this novel behaviour is and what conditions lead to it, we perform a classification of dynamical attractors of two-field inflation that are of the scaling type. Scaling solutions form a one-parameter generalization of De Sitter solutions with a constant value of the first Hubble flow parameter and, as we argue and demonstrate, form a natural starting point for the study of non-slow-roll slow-turn behaviour. All scaling solutions can be classified as critical points of a specific dynamical system. We recover known multi-field inflationary attractors as approximate scaling solutions and classify their stability using dynamical system techniques. In particular, we discover that dynamical bifurcations play an integral role in the transition between geodesic and non-geodesic motion and discuss the ability of scaling solutions to describe realistic multi-field models. We revisit the criteria for background stability and show cases where the usual criteria found in the literature do not capture the background evolution of the system.

We have considered the prospects for measuring the cross Warm Dark Matter (WDM) power spectrum of the redshifted HI 21-cm signal and the Lyman-α forest and thereby constraining WDM mass using observations with upcoming radio-interferometers—the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA) and SKA1-mid, and a spectroscopic survey of the quasars. We have considered a quasar survey with a mean observed quasar number density of _Q = 48 deg⁻² over a collecting area of 14455 deg², and a mean spectroscopic SNR = 5. Our analysis with OWFA shows that it is possible to measure the WDM power spectrum in several k-bins at k ⩽ 0.45 Mpc⁻¹ with SNR > 5 using observations of 200 hours each in 100 different fields-of-view for m_WDM = 0.25 keV . Considering the possibility of the joint measurement of the parameters, the warm dark matter density parameter Ω_WDM, and the dark energy density parameter Ω_Λ0, we find that the relative error on the 1−σ measurement of the parameter Ω_WDM is ∼ 0.8 for a fiducial m_WDM = 0.25 keV . However, we find that OWFA is not sensitive towards measuring the suppression of the WDM power spectrum, and therefore, cannot be used to constrain the WDM mass. Considering the analysis with SKA I mid, we find that for a fiducial m_WDM= 0.25 keV, the suppression in the cross power spectrum can be measured at ∼ 10 − σ around k ∼ 0.2 Mpc⁻¹ for a total observing time of 20000 hours distributed uniformly over 50 independent pointings where we have binned the available k-range as Δ k = k/5.

We study the clustering properties of dark matter haloes in real- and redshift-space in cosmologies with massless and massive neutrinos through a large set of state-of-the-art N-body simulations. We provide quick and easy-to-use prescriptions for the halo bias on linear and mildly non-linear scales, both in real and redshift-space, which are valid also for massive neutrinos cosmologies. Finally we present a halo bias emulator, BE-HaPPY, calibrated on the N-body simulations, which is fast enough to be used in the standard Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to cosmological inference. For a fiducial standard ΛCDM cosmology BE-HaPPY reproduces the simulation inputs with percent or sub-percent accuracy for the halo mass cuts it is calibrated on (M>{5×10¹¹, 10¹², 3× 10¹², 10¹³} h^-1 M_⊙) on the scales of interest (linear and well into the mildly non-linear regime). The approach presented here represents a well defined route to meeting the halo-bias accuracy requirements for the analysis of next-generation large-scale structure surveys. The software BE-HaPPY can run both in emulator mode and in calibration mode, on user-supplied simulations outputs, and is made publicly available.

Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) lying in the Galactic Centre 8 kpc from Earth, hosts the closest supermassive black hole known to us. It is now inactive, but there is evidence indicating that about six million years ago it underwent a powerful outburst where the luminosity could have approached the Eddington limit. Motivated by the fact that in extragalaxies the supermassive black holes with similar masses and near-Eddington luminosities are usually strong X-ray emitters, we calculate here the X-ray luminosity of SgrA*. For that, we assume that the outburst was due to accretion of gas or the tidal disruption of a star. We show that these cases could precipitate on Earth a hard X-ray (i.e. hν>2 keV) flux comparable to that from the current quiescent sun. The flux in harder energy band 20 keV<hν<100 keV, however, surpasses that from an X-class solar flare, and the irradiation timescale is also much longer, ranging from weeks to 10⁵ years depending on the outburst scenario. In the solar system gas giants will suffer the biggest impact in their atmospheres. Lower-mass planets such as Earth receive a level of radiation that might have played a role in the evolution of their primitive atmospheres, so that a detailed study of the consequences deserves further investigation. Planetary systems closer to SgrA* receive higher irradiance levels, making them more likely uninhabitable.

Cosmic voids offer an extraordinary opportunity to study the effects of massive neutrinos on cosmological scales. Because they are freely streaming, neutrinos can penetrate the interior of voids more easily than cold dark matter or baryons, which makes their relative contribution to the mass budget in voids much higher than elsewhere in the Universe. In simulations it has recently been shown how various characteristics of voids in the matter distribution are affected by neutrinos, such as their abundance, density profiles, dynamics, and clustering properties. However, the tracers used to identify voids in observations (e.g., galaxies or halos) are affected by neutrinos as well, and isolating the unique neutrino signatures inherent to voids becomes more difficult. In this paper we make use of the DEMNUni suite of simulations to investigate the clustering bias of voids in Fourier space as a function of their core density and compensation. We find a clear dependence on the sum of neutrino masses that remains significant even for void statistics extracted from halos. In particular, we observe that the amplitude of the linear void bias increases with neutrino mass for voids defined in dark matter, whereas this trend gets reversed and slightly attenuated when measuring the relative void-halo bias using voids identified in the halo distribution. Finally, we argue how the original behaviour can be restored when considering observations of the total matter distribution (e.g. via weak lensing), and comment on scale-dependent effects in the void bias that may provide additional information on neutrinos in the future.

We consider the structure formation in the nonlocal gravity model proposed recently by Deser and Woodard (DW-2019 model), which can not only reproduce the ΛCDM cosmology without fine-tuning puzzle but also may provide a screening mechanism for free. By using the direct numerical method of the reconstructing technique, the nonlocal distortion function f(Y) is fixed as f(Y)≃e^{2.153(Y−16.97)} which has a small deviation with the fitted function proposed by Deser and Woodard. Based on the numerical results, we plotted the curve of the growth rate fσ₈(z) under the DW-2019 model, which shows this model is not ruled out by the fσ₈ data from the Redshift-space distortions measurements. The evolving curve of the growth rate has a distinct plummet at z≃0.39, which is a great difference with the DW model. The possible reason is that the DW-2019 model provides the strong nonlocal effect, which behaves as the anisotropic effect to influence the matter perturbation in the low-redshift range. Finally the qualitative analysis of the screening mechanism is discussed by considering the spacial dependence of the nonlocal modification in the small-scale range.

Direct detection experiments aim at the detection of dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by searching for signals from elastic dark matter nucleus scattering. Additionally, inelastic scattering in which the nucleus is excited is expected from nuclear physics and provides an additional detectable signal. In the context of a low-energy effective field theory we investigate the experimental reach to these inelastic transitions for xenon-based detectors employing a dual-phase time projection chamber. We find that once a dark matter signal is established, inelastic transitions enhance the discovery reach and we show that they allow a better determination of the underlying particle physics.

The lack of power at large angular scales in the CMB temperature anisotropy pattern is a feature known to depend on the size of the Galactic mask. Not only the large scale anisotropy power in the CMB is lower than the best-fit ΛCDM model predicts, but most of the power seems to be localised close to the Galactic plane, making high-Galactic latitude regions more anomalous. We assess how likely the latter behaviour is in a ΛCDM model by extracting simulations from the Planck 2018 fiducial model. By comparing the former to Planck data in different Galactic masks, we reproduce the anomaly found in previous works, at a statistical significance of ∼ 3 σ. This result suggests the existence of a bizzarre correlation between the particular orientation of the Galaxy and the lack of power anomaly. To test this hypothesis, we perform random rotations of the Planck 2018 data and compare these to similarly rotated ΛCDM realisations. We find that, among all possible rotations, the lower-tail probability of the observed high-Galactic latitude data variance is still low at the level of 2.8 σ. Furthermore, the lowering trend of the variance when moving from low- to high-Galactic latitude is anomalous in the data at ∼ 3 σ when comparing to ΛCDM rotated realisations. This shows that the lack of power at high Galactic latitude is substantially stable against the "look elsewhere" effect induced by random rotations of the Galaxy orientation. Moreover, this analysis turns out to be substantially stable if we employ, in place of generic ΛCDM simulations, a specific set whose variance is constrained to reproduce the observed data variance.

If captured by the gravitational field of stars or other compact objects, dark matter can self-annihilate and produce a potentially detectable particle flux. In the case of superheavy dark matter ( m_X ≳ 10⁸ GeV), a large number of scattering events with nuclei inside stars are necessary to slow down the dark matter particles below the escape velocity of the stars, at which point the Dark Matter (DM) particle becomes trapped, or captured. Using the recently developed analytical formalism for multiscatter capture, combined with the latest results on the constraints of dark-matter-baryon scattering cross-section, we calculate upper bounds on the capture rates for superheavy dark matter particles by the first (Pop. III) stars. Assuming that a non-zero fraction of the products of captured superheavy dark matter (SHDM) annihilations can be trapped and thermalized inside the star, we find that this additional heat source could influence the evolutionary phase of Pop. III stars. Moreover, requiring that Pop. III stars shine with sub-Eddington luminosity, we find upper bounds on the masses of the Pop. III stars. This implies a DM dependent cutoff on the initial mass function (IMF) of Pop. III stars, thus opening up the intriguing possibility of constraining DM properties using the IMF of extremely metal-poor stars.

The distribution of cosmic rays in the Galaxy is still uncertain and this affects the expectations for the diffuse gamma-ray emission produced by hadronic interactions of cosmic rays with the interstellar gas. We evaluate the diffuse gamma-ray flux at TeV energies by considering different assumptions for the cosmic ray distribution, including the recently emerged possibility of a decreasing cosmic ray spectral index in the inner Galaxy. The diffuse emission from the galactic central region (i.e. in the longitude range | l | ≤ 60^o) changes in the different scenarios by a relatively large factor and can be probed by TeV scale gamma-ray observations. By comparing the total flux produced by diffuse emission and point-like and extended sources resolved by HESS with the gamma-ray flux observed by Argo-YBJ, HESS, HAWC and Milagro, we show that experimental data can already discriminate among different hyphoteses for cosmic ray distribution. The constraints can be strengthened if the contribution of sources not resolved by HESS is taken into account.

Cosmological observational analysis frequently assumes that the Universe is spatially flat. We aim to non-perturbatively check the conditions under which a flat or nearly flat expanding dust universe, including the Λ-cold-dark-matter (ΛCDM) model if interpreted as strictly flat, forbids the gravitational collapse of structure. We quantify spatial curvature at turnaround. We use the Hamiltonian constraint to determine the pointwise conditions required for an overdensity to reach its turnaround epoch in an exactly flat spatial domain. We illustrate this with a plane-symmetric, exact, cosmological solution of the Einstein equation, extending earlier work. More generally, for a standard initial power spectrum, we use the relativistic Zel'dovich approximation implemented in INHOMOG to numerically estimate how much positive spatial curvature is required to allow turnaround at typical epochs/length scales in almost-Einstein-de Sitter (EdS)/ΛCDM models with inhomogeneous curvature. We find that gravitational collapse in a spatially exactly flat, irrotational, expanding, dust universe is relativistically forbidden pointwise. In the spatially flat plane-symmetric model considered here, pancake collapse is excluded both pointwise and in averaged domains. In an almost-EdS/ΛCDM model, the per-domain average curvature in collapsing domains almost always becomes strongly positive prior to turnaround, with the expansion-normalised curvature functional reaching Ω∼−5. We show analytically that a special case gives Ω=−5 exactly (if normalised using the EdS expansion rate) at turnaround. An interpretation of ΛCDM as literally 3-Ricci flat would forbid structure formation. The difference between relativistic cosmology and a strictly flat ΛCDM model is fundamental in principle, but we find that the geometrical effect is weak.

We present a systematic study of galaxy bias in the presence of primordial non-Gaussianity in General Relativity (GR) at second order in perturbation theory. The non-linearity of the Poisson equation in GR and primordial non-Gaussianity are consistently included. We show that the inclusion of non-local primordial non-Gaussianity in addition to local non-Gaussianity is important to show the absence of the modulation of small scale clustering by the long-wavelength mode in the single field slow-roll inflation. We study the bispectrum of the relativistic galaxy density in several gauges and identify the effect of primordial non-Gaussianity and GR corrections.

We discuss how a laboratory detection of a sterile neutrino not only would constitute a fundamental discovery of a new particle, but could also provide an indication of the evolution of the Universe before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), a fundamental discovery in cosmology. These "visible" sterile neutrinos could be detected in experiments such as KATRIN/TRISTAN and HUNTER in the keV mass range and PTOLEMY, KATRIN and reactor neutrino experiments in the eV mass range. Standard assumptions are usually made to compute the relic abundance and momentum distribution of particles produced before the temperature of the Universe was 5 MeV, an epoch from which there are no observed remnants thus far. However, non-standard pre-BBN cosmologies based on other assumptions that are equally in agreement with all existing data can arise in some theoretical models. We revisit the production of 0.01 eV to 1 MeV sterile neutrinos via non-resonant active-sterile flavor oscillations in several pre-BBN cosmologies. We give general equations for models in which the expansion of the Universe is parametrized by its amplitude and temperature power and where entropy is conserved, which include kination and scalar tensor models as special cases.

Injection of high energy electromagnetic particles around the recombination epoch can modify the standard recombination history and therefore the CMB anisotropy power spectrum. Previous studies have put strong constraints on the amount of electromagnetic energy injection around the recombination era (redshifts z≲ 4500). However, energy injected in the form of energetic (> keV) visible standard model particles is not deposited instantaneously. The considerable delay between the time of energy injection and the time when all energy is deposited to background baryonic gas and CMB photons, together with the extraordinary precision with which the CMB anisotropies have been measured, means that CMB anisotropies are sensitive to energy that was injected much before the epoch of recombination. We show that the CMB anisotropy power spectrum is sensitive to energy injection even at z = 10000, giving stronger constraints compared to big bang nucleosynthesis and CMB spectral distortions. We derive, using Planck CMB data, the constraints on long-lived unstable particles decaying at redshifts z≲ 10000 (lifetime τ_X≳ 10¹¹s) by explicitly evolving the electromagnetic cascades in the expanding Universe, thus extending previous constraints to lower particle lifetimes. We also revisit the BBN constraints and show that the delayed injection of energy is important for BBN constraints. We find that the constraints can be weaker by a factor of few to almost an order of magnitude, depending on the energy, when we relax the quasi-static or on-the-spot assumptions.

We study the nonlinear stage of preheating in a model consisting of a single inflaton field ϕ nonminimally coupled to the spacetime curvature and considering a self-coupling quartic potential V(ϕ)=λ ϕ⁴/4. As the first motivation, we mention that this nonminimally coupled model agrees with the observational data. The second and the central issue of the present work is to exhibit aspects of wave turbulence associated with the mechanism of energy transfer from the inflaton field to the inhomogeneous fluctuations towards a state of thermalization. The imprints of the turbulence phase are mainly shown in the power spectra in time and wavenumber of relevant quantities such as the variance and the energy density of the inflaton field. We performed the simulations for several values of the nonminimally coupled models and taking into account the backreaction of the inflaton fluctuations in the dynamics of the Universe, and that allowed to determine the effective equation of state.

Taking advantage of a previously developed method, which allows to map solutions of General Relativity into a broad family of theories of gravity based on the Ricci tensor (Ricci-based gravities), we find new exact analytical scalar field solutions by mapping the free-field static, spherically symmetric solution of General Relativity (GR) into quadratic f(R) gravity and the Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity. The obtained solutions have some distinctive feature below the would-be Schwarzschild radius of a configuration with the same mass, though in this case no horizon is present. The compact objects found include wormholes, compact balls, shells of energy with no interior, and a new kind of object which acts as a kind of wormhole membrane. The latter object has Euclidean topology but connects antipodal points of its surface by transferring particles and null rays across its interior in virtually zero affine time. We point out the relevance of these results regarding the existence of compact scalar field objects beyond General Relativity that may effectively act as black hole mimickers.

Among the different strategies aiming to detect WIMP dark matter (DM), a neutrino signal coming from the Sun would be a smoking gun. This possibility relies on the DM capture by the Sun driven by the local DM distribution assumptions: the local mass density and the velocity distribution. In this context, we revisit those astrophysical hypotheses (also relevant for direct detection). We focus especially on the DM velocity distribution considering different possibilities beyond the popular Maxwellian distribution. Namely, some alternatives can be considered through analytical approaches and by looking into cosmological simulations of spiral galaxies. Most of the fitting formulas used to constrain the local velocity distribution function fail to describe the peak and the high velocity tail of the velocity distribution observed in simulations, the latter being improved when adding the local escape velocity of DM into the benchmark fitting models. In addition we test the predictions by the Eddington inversion method and also illustrate the importance of the galactic dynamical history. We estimate the resulting uncertainties on the DM capture rate by the Sun and conclude that different velocity distributions will affect the capture rate of DM by the Sun up to a 15–20%. On top of that, the calculation of the intrinsic variance of the capture rate leads to poorly controlled uncertainties especially for high WIMP masses (>30 GeV) raising concerns about the capture scenario.

Observations suggest that our universe is spatially flat on the largest observable scales. Exactly six different compact orientable three-dimensional manifolds admit flat metrics. These six manifolds are therefore the most natural choices for building cosmological models based on the present observations. This paper briefly describes these six manifolds and the harmonic basis functions previously developed for representing arbitrary scalar fields on them. The principal focus of this paper is the development of new harmonics for representing arbitrary vector and second-rank tensor fields on these manifolds. These new harmonics are designed to be useful tools for analyzing the dynamics of electromagnetic and gravitational fields on these spaces.

The polarisation of sunlight after scattering off the atmosphere was first described by Chandrasekhar using a geometrical description of Rayleigh interactions. Kosowsky later extended Chandrasekhar's formalism by using Quantum Field Theory (QFT) to describe the polarisation of the Cosmological Microwave Background radiation. Here we focus on a case that is rarely discussed in the literature, namely the polarisation of high energy radiation after scattering off particles. After demonstrating why the geometrical and low energy QFT approaches fail in this case, we establish the transport formalism that allows to describe the change of polarisation of high energy photons when they propagate through space or the atmosphere. We primarily focus on Compton interactions but our approach is general enough to describe e.g. the scattering of high energy photons off new particles or through new interactions. Finally we determine the conditions for a circularly polarised γ-ray signal to keep the same level of circular polarisation as it propagates through its environment.

We test a theoretical description of the void size distribution function against direct estimates from halo catalogues of the DEMNUni suite of large cosmological simulations. Besides standard ΛCDM, we consider deviations of the dark energy equation of state from w=−1, corresponding to four combinations in the popular Chevallier-Polarski-Linder parametrisation: w₀=−0.9; −1.1, w_a=−0.3; 0.3. The theoretical void size function model, relying on the Sheth & van de Weygaert double barrier excursion set formalism, provides an accurate description of the simulation measurements for the different dark energy models considered, within the statistical errors. The model remains accurate for any value of the threshold for void formation δ_v. Its robust consistency with simulations demonstrates that the theoretical void size function can be applied to real data as a sensitive tool to constrain dark energy.

We derive transition rules for Kasner exponents in bouncing Bianchi I models with generic perfect fluid matter fields for a broad class of modified gravity theories where cosmological singularities are resolved and replaced by a non-singular bounce. This is a generalization of results obtained previously in limiting curvature mimetic gravity and loop quantum cosmology. A geometric interpretation is provided for the transition rule as a linear map in the Kasner plane. We show that the general evolution of anisotropies in a Bianchi I universe—including during the bounce phase—is equivalent to the motion of a point particle on a sphere, where the sphere is the one-point compactification of the Kasner plane. In addition, we study the evolution of anisotropies in a large family of bouncing Bianchi I space-times. We also present a novel explicit solution to the Einstein equations for a Bianchi I universe with ekpyrotic matter with a constant equation of state ω=3.

The Universe is not perfectly homogeneous, the large scale structure forms overdense regions and voids. In this paper, we consider the possibility that we occupy a special position in our Universe, close to the center of a local underdense region that we model as an LTB void embedded in a homogeneous and isotropic Universe. The CMB sky measured by an off-center observer in this void is not statistically isotropic. In addition to the non-stochastic CMB anisotropies due to the geometry of the model, we also observe a lensing-like distortion of the CMB anisotropies. In this article, we propose a framework to forecast the precision with which we can measure the amplitude of the lensing-like deformation of the CMB temperature anisotropies. For illustrative purposes, we apply this method to a couple of large-scale void models differing over the matter density profile and we show that the CMB temperature data from the Planck satellite is potentially capable to detect the effect for the large voids chosen here. A companion paper will be dedicated to a systematic exploration of different realistic void models.

We discuss mimetic gravity theories with direct couplings between the curvature and higher derivatives of the scalar field, up to the quintic order, which were proposed to solve the instability problem for linear perturbations around the FLRW background for this kind of models. Restricting to homogeneous scalar field configurations in the action, we derive degeneracy conditions to obtain an effective field theory with three degrees of freedom. However, performing the Hamiltonian analysis for a generic scalar field we show that there are in general four or more degrees of freedom. The discrepancy is resolved because, for a homogeneous scalar field profile, ∂_iφ≈ 0, the Dirac matrix becomes singular, resulting in further constraints, which reduces the number of degrees of freedom to three. Similarly, in linear perturbation theory the additional scalar degree of freedom can only be seen by considering a non-homogeneous background profile of the scalar field. Therefore, restricting to homogeneous scalar fields these kinds of models provide viable explicitly Lorentz violating effective field theories of mimetic gravity.

Inflation can be supported in very steep potentials if it is generated by rapidly turning fields, which can be natural in negatively curved field spaces. The curvature perturbation, ζ, of these models undergoes an exponential, transient amplification around the time of horizon crossing, but can still be compatible with observations at the level of the power spectrum. However, a recent analysis (based on a proposed single-field effective theory with an imaginary speed of sound) found that the trispectrum and other higher-order, non-Gaussian correlators also undergo similar exponential enhancements. This arguably leads to 'hyper-large' non-Gaussianities in stark conflict with observations, and even to the loss of perturbative control of the calculations. In this paper, we provide the first analytic solution of the growth of the perturbations in two-field rapid-turn models, and find it in good agreement with previous numerical and single-field EFT estimates. We also show that the nested structure of commutators of the in-in formalism has subtle and crucial consequences: accounting for these commutators, we show analytically that the naively leading-order piece (which indeed is exponentially large) cancels exactly in all relevant correlators. The remaining non-Gaussianities of these models are modest, and there is no problem with perturbative control from the exponential enhancement of ζ. Thus, rapid-turn inflation with negatively curved field spaces remains a viable and interesting class of candidate theories of the early universe.

We explore the implications of a rapid appearance of dark energy between the redshifts (z) of one and two on the expansion rate and growth of perturbations. Using both Gaussian process regression and a parametric model, we show that this is the preferred solution to the current set of low-redshift (z<3) distance measurements if H₀=73 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹ to within 1% and the high-redshift expansion history is unchanged from the ΛCDM inference by the Planck satellite. Dark energy was effectively non-existent around z=2, but its density is close to the ΛCDM model value today, with an equation of state greater than −1 at z<0.5. If sources of clustering other than matter are negligible, we show that this expansion history leads to slower growth of perturbations at z<1, compared to ΛCDM, that is measurable by upcoming surveys and can alleviate the σ₈ tension between the Planck CMB temperature and low-redshift probes of the large-scale structure.

In this short paper we determine the effects of structure on the cosmological consistency relation which is valid in a perfect Friedmann Universe. We show that within ΛCDM the consistency relation is violated by about 1.5% for redshifts z≃ 2 and this violation raises up to 2% at z≃ 5 and 3% at z≃ 10 after which it settles at about 2.7% for z>10. This effect of cosmic structure on the distance redshift relation is also very sensitive to the determination of the dark energy equation of state via cosmic distances. It actually leads to an apparent unphysical behavior of w(z) which even diverges at z∼ 2.5 and which we also discuss here.

We carry out the Hamiltonian analysis of the local vacuum energy sequestering model —a manifestly local and diffeomorphism invariant extension of general relativity which has been shown to remove the radiatively unstable contribution to the vacuum energy generated by matter loops. We find that the degravitation of this UV sensitive quantity is enforced via global relations that are a consequence of the model's peculiar constraint structure. We also show that the model propagates the proper number of degrees of freedom and thus locally reduces to general relativity on-shell.

We provide a general framework for studying the evolution of background and cosmological perturbations in the presence of a vector field A_μ coupled to cold dark matter (CDM) . We consider an interacting Lagrangian of the form Q f(X) T_c, where Q is a coupling constant, f is an arbitrary function of X=−A_μA^μ/2, and T_c is a trace of the CDM energy-momentum tensor. The matter coupling affects the no-ghost condition and sound speed of linear scalar perturbations deep inside the sound horizon, while those of tensor and vector perturbations are not subject to modifications. The existence of interactions also modifies the no-ghost condition of CDM density perturbations. We propose a concrete model of coupled vector dark energy with the tensor propagation speed equivalent to that of light. In comparison to the Q=0 case, we show that the decay of CDM to the vector field leads to the phantom dark energy equation of state w_DE closer to −1. This alleviates the problem of observational incompatibility of uncoupled models in which w_DE significantly deviates from −1. The maximum values of w_DE reached during the matter era are bounded from the CDM no-ghost condition of future de Sitter solutions.

Primordial black holes and secondary gravitational waves can be used to probe the small scale physics at very early time. For secondary gravitational waves produced after the horizon reentry, we derive an analytical formula for the time integral of the source and analytical behavior of the time dependence of the energy density of induced gravitational waves is obtained. By proposing a piecewise power-law parametrization for the power spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations, and fitting it to observational constraints on primordial black hole dark matter, we obtain an upper bound on the power spectrum and discuss the detection of induced gravitational waves by future space based gravitational wave antenna.

The standard model of cosmology is based on two unknown dark components that are uncoupled from each other. In this paper we investigate whether there is evidence for an interaction between these components of cold dark matter (CDM) and dark energy (DE). In particular, we focus on a minimal extension and reconstruct the interaction history at low-redshifts non-parametrically using a variation of the commonly used principal component analysis. Although we focus on the interaction in the dark sector, any significant deviation from the standard model that changes the expansion history of the Universe, should leave imprints detectable by our analysis. Thus, detecting signatures of interaction could also be indicative of other non-standard phenomena even if they are not the results of the interaction. It is thus interesting to note that the results presented in this paper do not provide support for the interaction in the dark sector, although the uncertainty is still quite large. In so far as interaction is present but undetectable using current data, we show from a Fisher forecast that forthcoming LSST and DESI surveys will be able to constrain a DM-DE coupling at 20% precision—enough to falsify the non-interacting scenario, assuming the presence of a modest amount of interaction.

Primordial black holes could have been formed in the early universe from sufficiently large cosmological perturbations re-entering the horizon when the Universe is still radiation dominated. These originate from the spectrum of curvature perturbations generated during inflation at small-scales. Because of the non-linear relation between the curvature perturbation ζ and the overdensity δρ, the formation of the primordial black holes is affected by intrinsic non-Gaussianity even if the curvature perturbation is Gaussian. We investigate the impact of this non-Gaussianity on the critical threshold δ_c which measures the excess of mass of the perturbation, finding a relative change with respect to the value obtained using a linear relation between ζ and δρ, of a few percent suggesting that the value of the critical threshold is rather robust against non-linearities. The same holds also when local primordial non-Gaussianity, with f_NL≳−3/2, are added to the curvature perturbation.

The large-scale structure growth index γ provides a consistency test of the standard cosmology and is a potential indicator of modified gravity. We investigate the constraints on γ from next-generation spectroscopic surveys, using the power spectrum that is observed in redshift space, i.e., the angular power spectrum. The angular power spectrum avoids the need for an Alcock-Packzynski correction. It also naturally incorporates cosmic evolution and wide-angle effects, without any approximation. We include the cross-correlations between redshift bins, using a hybrid approximation when the total number of bins is computationally unfeasible. We show that the signal-to-noise on γ increases as the redshift bin-width is decreased. Shot noise per bin also increases—but this is compensated by the increased number of auto- and cross-spectra. In our forecasts, we marginalise over the amplitude of primordial fluctuations and other standard cosmological parameters, including the dark energy equation of state parameter, as well as the clustering bias. Neglecting cross-bin correlations increases the errors by ∼40–150%. Using only linear scales, we find that a DESI-like BGS survey and an HI intensity mapping survey with the SKA1 precursor MeerKAT deliver similar errors of ∼4–6%, while a Euclid-like survey and an SKA1 intensity mapping survey give ∼3% errors.

Left-right symmetry at high energy scales is a well-motivated extension of the Standard Model. In this paper we consider a typical minimal scenario in which it gets spontaneously broken by scalar triplets. Such a realization has been scrutinized over the past few decades chiefly in the context of collider studies. In this work we take a complementary approach and investigate whether the model can be probed via the search for a stochastic gravitational wave background induced by the phase transition in which SU(3)_C × SU(2)_L × SU(2)_R × U(1)_B−L is broken down to the Standard Model gauge symmetry group. A prerequisite for gravitational wave production in this context is a first-order phase transition, the occurrence of which we find in a significant portion of the parameter space. Although the produced gravitational waves are typically too weak for a discovery at any current or future detector, upon investigating correlations between all relevant terms in the scalar potential, we have identified values of parameters leading to observable signals. This indicates that, given a certain moderate fine-tuning, the minimal left-right symmetric model with scalar triplets features another powerful probe which can lead to either novel constraints or remarkable discoveries in the near future. Let us note that some of our results, such as the full set of thermal masses, have to the best of our knowledge not been presented before and might be useful for future studies, in particular in the context of electroweak baryogenesis.

We revisit the two-field mimetic gravity model with shift symmetries recently proposed in the literature, especially the problems of degrees of freedom and stabilities. We first study the model at the linear cosmological perturbation level by quadratic Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations. We show that there are actually two (instead of one) scalar degrees of freedom in this model in addition to two tensor modes. We then push on the study to the full non-linear level in terms of the Hamiltonian analysis, and confirm our result from the linear perturbation theory. We also consider the case where the kinetic terms of the two mimetic scalar fields have opposite signs in the constraint equation. We point out that in this case the model always suffers from the ghost instability problem.

We investigate the running vacuum model (RVM) in the framework of scalar field theory. This dynamical vacuum model provides an elegant global explanation of the cosmic history, namely the universe starts from a non-singular initial de Sitter vacuum stage, it passes smoothly from an early inflationary era to a radiation epoch ("graceful exit") and finally it enters the dark matter and dark energy (DE) dominated epochs, where it can explain the large entropy problem and predicts a mild dynamical evolution of the DE. Within this phenomenologically appealing context, we formulate an effective classical scalar field description of the RVM through a field ϕ, called the vacuumon, which turns out to be very helpful for an understanding and practical implementation of the physical mechanisms of the running vacuum during both the early universe and the late time cosmic acceleration. In the early universe the potential for the vacuumon may be mapped to a potential that behaves similarly to that of the scalaron field of Starobinsky-type inflation at the classical level, whilst in the late universe it provides an effective scalar field description of DE. The two representations, however, are not physically equivalent since the mechanisms of inflation are entirely different. Moreover, unlike the scalaron, vacuumon is treated as a classical background field, and not a fully fledged quantum field, hence cosmological perturbations will be different between the two pictures of inflation.

The emergence of cosmic space as cosmic time progresses is an exciting idea advanced by Padmanabhan to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe. The generalization of Padmanabhan's conjecture to the non-flat universe has resulted in scepticism about the choice of volume such that the law of emergence can not be appropriately formulated if one uses proper invariant volume. The deep connection between the first law of thermodynamics and the law of emergence [1], motivate us to explore the status of the first law in a non-flat universe when one uses proper invariant volume. We have shown that the first law of thermodynamics, dE = TdS +WdV cannot be formulated properly for a non-flat universe using proper invariant volume. We have also investigated the status of the first law of the form  −dĚ = ŤdS in a non-flat universe. We have shown that the energy change dĚ_v within the horizon and the outward energy flux are not equivalent to each other in a non-flat universe when we use the proper invariant volume. We further point out that the consistency between the above two forms of the first law claimed in ref. [2] will hold only with the use of the areal volume of the horizon. The failure in formulating the first law of thermodynamics with the use of invariant volume shows that the invariant volume will be a poor choice to describe any thermodynamic process in cosmology.

We study observational signatures of non-gravitational interactions between the dark components of the cosmic fluid, which can be either due to creation of dark particles from the expanding vacuum or an effect of the clustering of a dynamical dark energy. In particular, we analyse a class of interacting models (Λ(t)CDM), characterised by the parameter α, that behaves at background level like cold matter at early times and tends to a cosmological constant in the asymptotic future. Our analysis improves previous works, where only the position of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) first peak and supernova and LSS data where used, considering for the first time both background and primordial perturbations evolutions of the model. We use full spectra of the CMB Planck data together with late time observations, such as the Joint Light-curve Analysis (JLA) supernovae data, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurement of the local value of the Hubble-Lemaȋtre parameter, and primordial deuterium abundance from Lyα systems to test the observational viability of the model and some of its extensions, adapting an Einstein-Boltzmann solver code for our purpose. We found that there is no preference for values of α different from zero (characterising interaction), even if there are some indications for positive values when the minimal Λ(t)CDM model is analysed. When extra degrees of freedom in the relativistic component of the cosmic fluid are considered, the data favour negative values of α, which means an energy flux from dark energy to dark matter.

Understanding large-angular-scale galactic foregrounds is crucial for future CMB experiments aiming to detect B-mode polarization from primordial gravitational waves. Traditionally, the dust component has been separated using its different frequency dependence. However, using non-CMB observations has potential to increase fidelity and decrease the reconstruction noise. In this exploratory paper we investigate the capability of galactic 21 cm observations to predict the dust foreground in intensity. We train a neural network to predict the dust foreground as measured by the Planck Satellite from the full velocity data-cube of galactic 21 cm emission as measured by the HI4PI survey. We demonstrate that information in the velocity structure clearly improves the predictive power over both a simple integrated emission model and a simple linear model. The improvement is significant at arc-minute scales but more modest at degree scales. This proof of principle on temperature data indicates that it might also be possible to improve foreground polarization templates from the same input data.

Teleparallel gravity is a formulation of general relativity that is physically equivalent to metric gravity if the gravitational action has the Einstein-Hilbert form and matter is minimally coupled. However, scalar fields generally couple directly to the connection, breaking the equivalence. In particular, this happens for the Standard Model Higgs. We show that a teleparallel theory with a non-minimally coupled scalar field has no linear scalar perturbations, and therefore cannot give successful inflation, unless the non-minimal coupling functions satisfy a particular relation. If the relation is satisfied, Higgs inflation can give an arbitrarily large tensor-to-scalar ratio r. Our results also apply to f(T) theories, as they are scalar-tensor theories written in different field coordinates. We discuss generalisation to more complicated actions.

Quasinormal modes describe the return to equilibrium of a perturbed system, in particular the ringdown phase of a black hole merger. But as globally-defined quantities, the quasinormal spectrum can be highly sensitive to global structure, including distant small perturbations to the potential. In what sense are quasinormal modes a property of the resulting black hole? We explore this question for the linearized perturbation equation with two potentials having disjoint bounded support. We give a composition law for the Wronskian that determines the quasinormal frequencies of the combined system. We show that over short time scales the evolution is governed by the quasinormal frequencies of the individual potentials, while the sensitivity to global structure can be understood in terms of echoes. We introduce an echo expansion of the Green's function and show that, as expected on general grounds, at any finite time causality limits the number of echoes that can contribute. We illustrate our results with the soluble example of a pair of δ-function potentials. We explicate the causal structure of the Green's function, demonstrating under what conditions two very different quasinormal spectra give rise to very similar ringdown waveforms.

The mixing of active neutrinos with their sterile counterparts with keV mass is known to have a potentially major impact on the energy loss from the supernova core. By relying on a set of three static hydrodynamical backgrounds mimicking the early accretion phase and the Kelvin-Helmoltz cooling phase of a supernova, we develop the first self-consistent, radial- and time-dependent treatment of ν_s-ν_τ mixing in the dense stellar core. We follow the flavor evolution by including ordinary matter effects, collisional production of sterile neutrinos, as well as reconversions of sterile states into active ones. The dynamical feedback of the sterile neutrino production on the matter background leads to the development of a ν_τ-_τ asymmetry (Y_ντ) that grows in time until it reaches a value larger than 0.15. Our results hint towards significant implications for the supernova physics, and call for a self-consistent modeling of the sterile neutrino transport in the supernova core to constrain the mixing parameters of sterile neutrinos.

We study the dynamics of inflation driven by an adiabatic self-gravitating medium, extending the previous works on fluid and solid inflation. Such a class of media comprises perfect fluids, zero and finite temperature solids. By using an effective field theory description, we compute the power spectrum for the scalar curvature perturbation of constant energy density hypersurface ζ and the comoving scalar curvature perturbation in the case of slow-roll, super slow-roll and w-media inflation, an inflationary phase with w constant in the range −1 <w <−1/3. A similar computation is done for the tensor modes. Adiabatic media are characterized by intrinsic entropy perturbations that can give a significant contribution to the power spectrum and can be used to generate the required seed for primordial black holes. For such a media, the Weinberg theorem is typically violated and on super horizon scale neither ζ nor are conserved and moreover ζ ≠ . Reheating becomes crucial to predict the spectrum of the imprinted primordial perturbations. We study how the difference between ζ and during inflation gives rise to relative entropic perturbations in ΛCDM.

The ANITA experiment has registered two anomalous events that can be interpreted as ν_τ or _τ with a very high energy of (0.6) EeV emerging from deep inside the Earth. At such high energies, the Earth is opaque to neutrinos so the emergence of these neutrinos at such large zenith angles is a mystery. In our paper, we present a model that explains the two anomalous events through a L_e −L_τ gauge interaction involving two new Weyl fermions charged under the new gauge symmetry. We find that, as a bonus of the model, the lighter Weyl fermion can be a dark matter component. We discuss how the ANITA observation can be reconciled with the IceCube and Auger upper bounds. We also demonstrate how this model can be tested in future by collider experiments.

The cosmological propagation of tensor perturbations is studied in the context of parity-violating extensions of the symmetric teleparallel equivalent of General Relativity theory. This non-Riemannian formulation allows for a wider variety of consistent extensions than the metric formulation of gravity theory. It is found that while many of the possible quadratic terms do not influence the propagation of the gravitational waves, a generic modification predicts a signature that distinguishes the left- and right-handed circular polarizations. The parameters of such modifications can be constrained stringently because the propagation speed of the gravitational waves is scale-dependent and differs from the speed of light.

We develop a theoretical framework to describe the cosmological observables on the past light cone such as the luminosity distance, weak lensing, galaxy clustering, and the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We consider that all the cosmological observables include not only the background quantity, but also the perturbation quantity, and they are subject to cosmic variance, which sets the fundamental limits on the cosmological information that can be derived from such observables, even in an idealized survey with an infinite number of observations. To quantify the maximum cosmological information content, we apply the Fisher information matrix formalism and spherical harmonic analysis to cosmological observations, in which the angular and the radial positions of the observables on the light cone carry different information. We discuss the maximum cosmological information that can be derived from five different observables: (1) type Ia supernovae, (2) cosmic microwave background anisotropies, (3) weak gravitational lensing, (4) local baryon density, and (5) galaxy clustering. We compare our results with the cosmic variance obtained in the standard approaches, which treat the light cone volume as a cubic box of simultaneity. We discuss implications of our formalism and ways to overcome the fundamental limit.

A striking feature of our universe is its near criticality. The cosmological constant and weak hierarchy problems, as well as the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, can all be understood as problems of criticality. This suggests a statistical physics approach, based on the landscape of string theory. In this paper we present a dynamical selection mechanism for hospitable vacua based on search optimization. Instead of focusing on late-time, stationary probability distributions for the different vacua, we are interested in the approach to equilibrium. This is particularly relevant if cosmological evolution on the multiverse has occurred for a finite time much shorter than the exponentially-long mixing time for the landscape. We argue this imposes a strong selection pressure among hospitable vacua, favoring those that lie in regions where the search algorithm is efficient. Specifically, we show that the mean first passage time is minimized for hospitable vacua lying at the bottom of funnel-like regions, akin to the smooth folding funnels of naturally-occurring proteins and the convex loss functions of well-trained deep neural networks. The optimality criterion is time-reparametrization invariant and defined by two competing requirements: search efficiency, which requires minimizing the mean first passage time, and sweeping exploration, which requires that random walks are recurrent. Optimal landscape regions reach a compromise by lying at the critical boundary between recurrence and transience, thereby achieving dynamical criticality. Remarkably, this implies that the optimal lifetime of vacua coincides with the de Sitter Page time, τ_crit ∼ M_Pl²/H³. Our mechanism makes concrete phenomenological predictions: 1. The expected lifetime of our universe is 10¹³⁰ years, which is ≳ 2σ from the Standard Model metastability estimate; 2. The supersymmetry breaking scale should be high, ≳ 10¹⁰ GeV. The present framework suggests a correspondence between the near-criticality of our universe and non-equilibrium critical phenomena on the landscape.

Dark matter substructure can contribute significantly to local dark matter searches and may provide a large uncertainty in the interpretation of those experiments. For direct detection experiments, sub-halos give rise to an additional dark matter component on top of the smooth dark matter distribution of the host halo. In the case of dark matter capture in the Sun, sub-halo encounters temporarily increase the number of captured particles. Even if the encounter happened in the past, the number of dark matter particles captured by the Sun can still be enhanced today compared to expectations from the host halo as those enhancements decay over time. Using results from an analytical model of the sub-halo population of a Milky Way-like galaxy, valid for sub-halo masses between 10⁻⁵ M_⊙ and 10¹¹ M_⊙, we assess the impact of sub-halos on direct dark matter searches in a probabilistic way. We find that the impact on direct detection can be sizable, with a probability of ∼ 10⁻³ to find an (1) enhancement of the recoil rate. In the case of the capture rate in the Sun, we find that (1) enhancements are very unlikely, with probability ≲ 10⁻⁵, and are even impossible for some dark matter masses.

From a theoretical point of view, there is a strong motivation to consider an MeV-scale reheating temperature induced by long-lived massive particles with masses around the weak scale, decaying only through gravitational interaction. In this study, we investigate lower limits on the reheating temperature imposed by big-bang nucleosynthesis assuming both radiative and hadronic decays of such massive particles. For the first time, effects of neutrino self-interactions and oscillations are taken into account in the neutrino thermalization calculations. By requiring consistency between theoretical and observational values of light element abundances, we find that the reheating temperature should conservatively be T_RH ≳ 1.8 MeV in the case of the 100% radiative decay, and T_RH ≳ 4–5 MeV in the case of the 100% hadronic decays for particle masses in the range of 10 GeV to 100 TeV.

We introduce k-evolution, a relativistic N-body code based on gevolution, which includes clustering dark energy among its cosmological components. To describe dark energy, we use the effective field theory approach. In particular, we focus on k-essence with a speed of sound much smaller than unity but we lay down the basis to extend the code to other dark energy and modified gravity models. We develop the formalism including dark energy non-linearities but, as a first step, we implement the equations in the code after dropping non-linear self-coupling in the k-essence field. In this simplified setup, we compare k-evolution simulations with those of CLASS and gevolution 1.2, showing the effect of dark matter and gravitational non-linearities on the power spectrum of dark matter, of dark energy and of the gravitational potential. Moreover, we compare k-evolution to Newtonian N-body simulations with back-scaled initial conditions and study how dark energy clustering affects massive halos.

We present results from N-body simulations of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) subhalos, which could host ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies, inside a Milky-Way-like main halo. We find that high-concentration subhalos are driven to gravothermal core collapse, while low-concentration subhalos develop large (kpc-sized) low-density cores, with both effects depending sensitively on the satellite's orbit and the self-interaction cross section over mass σ/m. The overall effect for σ/m ≳ 3 cm²/g is to increase the range of inner densities, potentially explaining the observed diversity of Milky Way satellites, which include compact systems like Draco and Segue 1 that are dense in dark matter, and less dense, diffuse systems like Sextans and Crater II . We discuss possible ways of distinguishing SIDM models from collisionless dark matter models using the inferred dark matter densities and stellar sizes of the dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

We show for the first time that the loop-driven kinetic mixing between visible and dark Abelian gauge bosons can facilitate dark matter production in the early Universe by creating a 'dynamic' portal, which depends on the energy of the process. The required smallness of the strength of the portal interaction, suited for freeze-in, is justified by a suppression arising from the mass of a heavy vector-like fermion. The strong temperature sensitivity associated with the interaction is responsible for most of the dark matter production during the early stages of reheating.

The cosmographic approach is gaining considerable interest as a model-independent technique able to describe the late expansion of the universe. Indeed, given only the observational assumption of the cosmological principle, it allows to study the today observed accelerated evolution of the Hubble flow without assuming specific cosmological models. In general, cosmography is used to reconstruct the Hubble parameter as a function of the redshift, assuming an arbitrary fiducial value for the current matter density, Ω_m, and analysing low redshift cosmological data. Here we propose a different strategy, linking together the parametric cosmographic behavior of the late universe expansion with the small scale universe. In this way, we do not need to assume any "a priori" values for the cosmological parameters, since these are constrained at early epochs using both the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) and Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) data. In other words, we want to develop a cosmographic approach without assuming any background model but considering a f(z)CDM model where the function f(z) is given by a suitable combination of polynomials capable of tracking the cosmic luminosity distance, replacing the cosmological constant Λ. In order to test this strategy, we describe the late expansion of the universe using the Pad&apos;e polynomials. Specifically, we adopt a P(2,2) series, that is a promising rational series which guarantees a good convergence also at high redshift. This approach is discussed in the light of the recent H(z) values indicators, combined with Supernovae Pantheon sample, galaxy clustering and early universe data, as CMBR and BAO. We found an interesting dependence of the current matter density value with cosmographic parameters, proving the inaccuracy of setting the value of Ω_m in cosmographic analyses. Furthermore, a non-negligible effect of the cosmographic parameters on the CMBR temperature anisotropy power spectrum is shown, and constraints by selected joint datasets are reported. Finally, we found that the cosmographic series, truncated at third order, shows a better χ² best fit value then the vanilla ΛCDM model. This can be interpreted as the requirement that higher order corrections have to be considered to correctly describe low redshift data and remove the degeneration of the models.

The spectral hardenings of cosmic ray nuclei above ∼ 200 GV followed by softenings around 10 TV, the knee of the all-particle spectrum around PeV energies, as well as the pattern change of the amplitude and phase of the large-scale anisotropies around 100 TeV indicate the complexities of the origin and transportation of Galactic cosmic rays. It has been shown that nearby source(s) are most likely to be the cause of such spectral features of both the spectra and the anisotropies. In this work, we study the anisotropy features of different mass composition (or mass groups) of cosmic rays in this nearby source model. We show that even if the spectral features from the nearby source component is less distinctive compared with the background component from e.g., the population of distant sources, the anisotropy features are more remarkable to be identified. Measurements of the anisotropies of each mass composition (group) of cosmic rays by the space experiments such as DAMPE and HERD and the ground-based experiments such as LHAASO in the near future are expected to be able to critically test this scenario.

We compute the quasi-bound state spectra of ultralight scalar and vector fields around rotating black holes. These spectra are determined by the gravitational fine structure constant α, which is the ratio of the size of the black hole to the Compton wavelength of the field. When α is small, the energy eigenvalues and instability rates can be computed analytically. Since the solutions vary rapidly near the black hole horizon, ordinary perturbative approximations fail and we must use matched asymptotic expansions to determine the spectra. Our analytical treatment relies on the separability of the equations of motion, and is therefore only applicable to the scalar field and the electric modes of the vector field. However, for slowly-rotating black holes, the equations for the magnetic modes can be written in a separable form, which we exploit to derive their energy eigenvalues and conjecture an analytic form for their instability rates. To check our conjecture, and to extend all results to large values of α, we solve for the spectra numerically. We explain how to accurately and efficiently compute these spectra, without relying on separability. This allows us to obtain reliable results for any α ≳ 0.001 and black holes of arbitrary spin. Our results provide an essential input to the phenomenology of boson clouds around black holes, especially when these are part of binary systems.

The existence of a regular non-trivial scalar field in the background of an asymptotically flat static reflecting star is discussed. The scalar field is assumed to be conformally coupled to the outside matter. The induced scalar charge is determined and the required conditions to have regular field are obtained. The results are compared with the case of a black hole. Conditions to have regular non-trivial scalar field out of the black hole horizon are investigated. We show that in the presence of a scalar source, in contrast to the black holes, the reflecting star becomes polarized.

In this paper we study two newly discovered classes of radio sources: the highly energetic, short-lived events, known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), and a new category of compact sources known as Fanaroff-Riley type 0 radio galaxies (FR0s). Due to a possible catastrophic event origin for the FRBs and a previous correlation found with an FR0 in the γ-ray spectrum, it is possible that these radio sources could also emit high energy photons in the Fermi-LAT satellite energy range (20 MeV–300 GeV). Here we present an exhaustive time-dependent and spatial search of all up-to-date observed FRBs and FR0s, respectively. We perform a likelihood analysis of the radio sources by modeling the excess flux of gamma rays with a varying index power law function using data from Fermi-LAT and the 4FGL catalog. Sources with test statistic greater than 16 (corresponding to about 4σ) were further analyzed including 2 FRBs and 7 FR0s. No correlations with more than 5σ were found after taking into account nearby sources. Therefore, upper limits for all sources were calculated.

We study the interaction of an electrically charged component of the dark matter with a magnetized galactic interstellar medium (ISM) of (rotating) spiral galaxies. For the observed ordered component of the field, B∼ μG, we find that the accumulated Lorentz interactions between the charged particles and the ISM will extract an order unity fraction of the disk angular momentum over the few Gyr Galactic lifetime unless q/e ≲ 10^−13±1 m c²/ GeV if all the dark matter is charged. The bound is weakened by factor f_qdm^−1/2 if only a mass fraction f_qdm≳ 0.13 of the dark matter is charged. Here q and m are the dark matter particle mass and charge. If f_qdm≈1 this bound excludes charged dark matter produced via the freeze-in mechanism for m ≲ TeV/c². This bound on q/m, obtained from Milky Way parameters, is rough and not based on any precise empirical test. However this bound is extremely strong and should motivate further work to better model the interaction of charged dark matter with ordered and disordered magnetic fields in galaxies and clusters of galaxies; to develop precise tests for the presence of charged dark matter based on better estimates of angular momentum exchange; and also to better understand how charged dark matter might modify the growth of magnetic fields, and the formation and interaction histories of galaxies, galaxy groups, and clusters.

We consider the ensemble of very-high-energy gamma-ray sources observed at distances and energies where a significant absorption of gamma rays is expected due to pair production on the extragalactic background light (EBL). Previous studies indicated that spectra of these sources, upon correction for the absorption, exhibit unusual spectral hardenings which happen precisely at the energies where the correction becomes significant. Here, we address this subject with the most recent clean sample of distant gamma-ray blazars, making use of published results of imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes and of the Fermi-LAT Pass 8 data, supplemented by the newest absorption models and individual measurements of sources' redshifts. We perform a search for spectral breaks at energies corresponding to unit optical depth with respect to the absorption on EBL. These energies are different for distant and nearby objects, and consequently, such features may not be related to intrinsic properties of the sources. While in some spectra such breaks are not seen, hardenings at distance-dependent energies are present in many of them, though the overall statistical significance of the effect is lower than reported in previous studies. The dependence of the break strength on the redshift found earlier is not confirmed in the new analysis.

We use analytic estimates and numerical simulations to explore the stochastic approach to vacuum decay. According to this approach, the time derivative of a scalar field, which is in a local vacuum state, develops a large fluctuation and the field "flies over" a potential barrier to another vacuum. The probability distribution for the initial fluctuation is found quantum mechanically, while the subsequent nonlinear evolution is determined by classical dynamics. We find in a variety of cases that the rate of such flyover transitions has the same parametric form as that of tunneling transitions calculated using the instanton method, differing only by a numerical factor O(1) in the exponent. An important exception is an "upward" transition from a de Sitter vacuum to a higher-energy de Sitter vacuum state. The rate of flyover transitions in this case is parametrically different and can be many orders of magnitude higher than tunneling. This result is in conflict with the conventional picture of quantum de Sitter space as a thermal state. Our numerical simulations indicate that the dynamics of bubble nucleation in flyover transitions is rather different from the standard picture. The difference is especially strong for thin-wall bubbles in flat space, where the transition region oscillates between true and false vacuum until a true vacuum shell is formed which expands both inwards and outwards, and for upward de Sitter transitions, where the inflating new vacuum region is contained inside of a black hole.