Search results for "Background"
showing 10 items of 556 documents
On the estimation and detection of the Rees Sciama effect
2017
Maps of the Rees–Sciama (RS) effect are simulated using the parallel N-body code, hydra, and a run-time ray-tracing procedure. A method designed for the analysis of small, square cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps is applied to our RS maps. Each of these techniques has been tested and successfully applied in previous papers. Within a range of angular scales, our estimate of the RS angular power spectrum due to variations in the peculiar gravitational potential on scales smaller than 42/h megaparsecs is shown to be robust. An exhaustive study of the redshifts and spatial scales relevant for the production of RS anisotropy is developed for the first time. Results from this study demonstra…
Background independent quantum field theory and gravitating vacuum fluctuations
2019
The scale dependent effective average action for quantum gravity complies with the fundamental principle of Background Independence. Ultimately the background metric it formally depends on is selected self-consistently by means of a suitable generalization of Einstein's equation. Self-consistent backround spacetimes are scale dependent, and therefore "going on-shell" at the points along a given renormalization group (RG) trajectory requires understanding two types of scale dependencies: the (familiar) direct one carried by the off-shell action functional, and an indirect one related to the self-consistent background geometry. This paper is devoted to a careful delineation and analysis of ce…
Dark Photon Oscillations in Our Inhomogeneous Universe
2020
A dark photon may kinetically mix with the ordinary photon, inducing oscillations with observable imprints on cosmology. Oscillations are resonantly enhanced if the dark photon mass equals the ordinary photon plasma mass, which tracks the free electron number density. Previous studies have assumed a homogeneous Universe; in this Letter, we introduce for the first time an analytic formalism for treating resonant oscillations in the presence of inhomogeneities of the photon plasma mass. We apply our formalism to determine constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background photons oscillating into dark photons, and from heating of the primordial plasma due to dark photon dark matter converting into …
Interpreting deviations between AR-VTG and GR
2019
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies predicted by two cosmological models are compared, one of them is the standard model of general relativity with cold dark matter and cosmological constant, whereas the second model is based on a consistent vector-tensor theory of gravitation explaining solar system and cosmological observations. It is proved that the resulting differences — between the anisotropies of both models — are due to the so-called late integrated Sachs–Wolfe effect and, consequently, cross-correlations between maps of CMB temperatures and tracers of the dark matter distribution could be used in future to select one of the above models. The role of reionization is …
Lens Effect and CMB Anisotropies: Deviations from Gaussianity
2003
The CMB sky can be seen as the superimposition of two components, one of them is the temperature distribution in the absence of lensing and the other one is the correction caused by lensing. In the model under consideration, the first of these components is Gaussian, but the second is not. Numerical methods to calculate angular correlations in the lens component are designed and tested. Some of these correlations are estimated. Deviations from Gaussianity are confirmed.
Cosmic microwave background anisotropy: deviations from Gaussianity caused by non-linear gravity
2002
Non-linear evolution of cosmological energy density fluctuations triggers deviations from Gaussianity in the temperature distribution of the cosmic microwave background. A method to estimate these deviations is proposed. N-body simulations - in aCDM cosmology - are used to simulate the strongly non-linear evolution of cosmological structures. It is proved that these simulations can be combined with the potential approximation to calculate the statistical moments of the CMB anisotropies produced by non-linear gravity. Some of these moments are computed and the resulting values are different from those corresponding to Gaussianity.
Cosmological data analysis of f(R) gravity models
2009
A class of well-behaved modified gravity models with long enough matter domination epoch and a late-time accelerated expansion is confronted with SNIa, CMB, SDSS, BAO and H(z) galaxy ages data, as well as current measurements of the linear growth of structure. We show that the combination of geometrical probes and growth data exploited here allows to rule out f(R) gravity models, in particular, the logarithmic of curvature model. We also apply solar system tests to the models in agreement with the cosmological data. We find that the exponential of the inverse of the curvature model satisfies all the observational tests considered and we derive the allowed range of parameters. Current data s…
Bimetric Renormalization Group Flows in Quantum Einstein Gravity
2011
The formulation of an exact functional renormalization group equation for Quantum Einstein Gravity necessitates that the underlying effective average action depends on two metrics, a dynamical metric giving the vacuum expectation value of the quantum field, and a background metric supplying the coarse graining scale. The central requirement of "background independence" is met by leaving the background metric completely arbitrary. This bimetric structure entails that the effective average action may contain three classes of interactions: those built from the dynamical metric only, terms which are purely background, and those involving a mixture of both metrics. This work initiates the first …
Inflation with mixed helicities and its observational imprint on CMB
2018
In the framework of effective field theories with prominent helicity-0 and helicity-1 fields coupled to each other via a dimension-3 operator, we study the dynamics of inflation driven by the helicity-0 mode, with a given potential energy, as well as the evolution of cosmological perturbations, influenced by the presence of a mixing term between both helicities. In this scenario, the temporal component of the helicity-1 mode is an auxiliary field and can be integrated out in terms of the time derivative of the helicity-0 mode, so that the background dynamics effectively reduces to that in single-field inflation modulated by a parameter $\beta$ associated to the coupling between helicity-0 a…
En route to Background Independence: Broken split-symmetry, and how to restore it with bi-metric average actions
2014
The most momentous requirement a quantum theory of gravity must satisfy is Background Independence, necessitating in particular an ab initio derivation of the arena all non-gravitational physics takes place in, namely spacetime. Using the background field technique, this requirement translates into the condition of an unbroken split-symmetry connecting the (quantized) metric fluctuations to the (classical) background metric. If the regularization scheme used violates split-symmetry during the quantization process it is mandatory to restore it in the end at the level of observable physics. In this paper we present a detailed investigation of split-symmetry breaking and restoration within the…