0000000000615878
AUTHOR
William H. Kinney
Eternal hilltop inflation
We consider eternal inflation in hilltop-type inflation models, favored by current data, in which the scalar field in inflation rolls off of a local maximum of the potential. Unlike chaotic or plateau-type inflation models, in hilltop inflation the region of field space which supports eternal inflation is finite, and the expansion rate $H_{EI}$ during eternal inflation is almost exactly the same as the expansion rate $H_*$ during slow roll inflation. Therefore, in any given Hubble volume, there is a finite and calculable expectation value for the lifetime of the "eternal" inflation phase, during which quantum flucutations dominate over classical field evolution. We show that despite this, i…
Resurrection of large lepton number asymmetries from neutrino flavor oscillations
We numerically solve the evolution equations of neutrino three-flavor density matrices, and show that, even if neutrino oscillations mix neutrino flavors, large lepton number asymmetries are still allowed in certain limits by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN).
Slow roll in simple non-canonical inflation
17 pages, 4 figures.-- ISI Article Identifier: 000245945000008.-- ArXiv pre-print available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0701343
Flavor versus mass eigenstates in neutrino asymmetries: implications for cosmology
We show that, if they exist, lepton number asymmetries ($L_\alpha$) of neutrino flavors should be distinguished from the ones ($L_i$) of mass eigenstates, since Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) bounds on the flavor eigenstates cannot be directly applied to the mass eigenstates. Similarly, Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) constraints on mass eigenstates do not directly constrain flavor asymmetries. Due to the difference of mass and flavor eigenstates, the cosmological constraint on the asymmetries of neutrino flavors can be much stronger than conventional expectation, but not uniquely determined unless at least the asymmetry of the heaviest neutrino is well constrained. Cosmological constrain…
Phantom Dirac-Born-Infeld dark energy
Motivated by the apparent discrepancy between Cosmic Microwave Background measurements of the Hubble constant and measurements from Type-Ia supernovae, we construct a model for Dark Energy with equation of state $w = p / ��< -1$, violating the Null Energy Condition. Naive canonical models of so-called "Phantom" Dark Energy require a negative scalar kinetic term, resulting in a Hamiltonian unbounded from below and associated vacuum instability. We construct a scalar field model for Dark Energy with $w < -1$, which nonetheless has a Hamiltonian bounded from below in the comoving reference frame, {\it i.e.} in the rest frame of the fluid. We demonstrate that the solution is a cosmologica…