Search results for "Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics"
showing 10 items of 608 documents
Lattice Calculation of the Decay of Primordial Higgs Condensate
2015
We study the resonant decay of the primordial Standard Model Higgs condensate after inflation into $SU(2)$ gauge bosons on the lattice. We find that the non-Abelian interactions between the gauge bosons quickly extend the momentum distribution towards high values, efficiently destroying the condensate after the onset of backreaction. For the inflationary scale $H = 10^8$ GeV, we find that 90% of the Higgs condensate has decayed after $n \sim 10$ oscillation cycles. This differs significantly from the Abelian case where, given the same coupling strengths, most of the condensate would persist after the resonance.
Postinflationary vacuum instability and Higgs-inflaton couplings
2016
The Higgs-inflaton coupling plays an important role in the Higgs field dynamics in the early Universe. Even a tiny coupling generated at loop level can have a dramatic effect on the fate of the electroweak vacuum. Such Higgs-inflaton interaction is present both at the trilinear and quartic levels in realistic reheating models. In this work, we examine the Higgs dynamics during the preheating epoch, focusing on the effects of the parametric and tachyonic resonances. We use lattice simulations and other numerical tools in our studies. We find that the resonances can induce large fluctuations of the Higgs field which destabilize the electroweak vacuum. Our considerations thus provide an upper …
Baryogenesis and dark matter from B mesons
2019
We present a new mechanism of Baryogenesis and dark matter production in which both the dark matter relic abundance and the baryon asymmetry arise from neutral $B$ meson oscillations and subsequent decays. This set-up is testable at hadron colliders and $B$-factories. In the early Universe, decays of a long lived particle produce $B$ mesons and anti-mesons out of thermal equilibrium. These mesons/anti-mesons then undergo CP violating oscillations before quickly decaying into visible and dark sector particles. Dark matter will be charged under Baryon number so that the visible sector baryon asymmetry is produced without violating the total baryon number of the Universe. The produced baryon a…
Higgs-like spectator field as the origin of structure
2021
We show that the observed primordial perturbations can be entirely sourced by a light spectator scalar field with a quartic potential, akin to the Higgs boson, provided that the field is sufficiently displaced from vacuum during inflation. The framework relies on the indirect modulation of reheating, which is implemented without any direct coupling between the spectator field and the inflaton and does not require non-renormalisable interactions. The scenario gives rise to local non-Gaussianity with $f_{\rm NL}\simeq 5$ as the typical signal. As an example model where the indirect modulation mechanism is realised for the Higgs boson, we study the Standard Model extended with right-handed neu…
Flavor versus mass eigenstates in neutrino asymmetries: implications for cosmology
2017
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…
Toward (finally!) ruling out Z and Higgs mediated dark matter models
2016
In recent years, direct detection, indirect detection, and collider experiments have placed increasingly stringent constraints on particle dark matter, exploring much of the parameter space associated with the WIMP paradigm. In this paper, we focus on the subset of WIMP models in which the dark matter annihilates in the early universe through couplings to either the Standard Model $Z$ or the Standard Model Higgs boson. Considering fermionic, scalar, and vector dark matter candidates within a model-independent context, we find that the overwhelming majority of these dark matter candidates are already ruled out by existing experiments. In the case of $Z$ mediated dark matter, the only scenari…
Early Universe Higgs dynamics in the presence of the Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity couplings
2017
Apparent metastability of the electroweak vacuum poses a number of cosmological questions. These concern evolution of the Higgs field to the current vacuum, and its stability during and after inflation. Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity interactions can make a crucial impact on these considerations potentially solving the problems. In this work, we allow for these couplings to be present simultaneously and study their interplay. We find that different combinations of the Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity couplings induce effective Higgs mass during and after inflation. This crucially affects the Higgs stability considerations during preheating. In particular, a wide ra…
Limits on a muon flux from neutralino annihilations in the sun with the IceCube 22-string detector.
2009
A search for muon neutrinos from neutralino annihilations in the Sun has been performed with the IceCube 22-string neutrino detector using data collected in 104.3 days of live-time in 2007. No excess over the expected atmospheric background has been observed. Upper limits have been obtained on the annihilation rate of captured neutralinos in the Sun and converted to limits on the WIMP-proton cross-sections for WIMP masses in the range 250 - 5000 GeV. These results are the most stringent limits to date on neutralino annihilation in the Sun.
New cosmological bounds on hot relics: Axions $\&$ Neutrinos
2020
Axions, if realized in nature, can be copiously produced in the early universe via thermal processes, contributing to the mass-energy density of thermal hot relics. In light of the most recent cosmological observations, we analyze two different thermal processes within a realistic mixed hot-dark-matter scenario which includes also massive neutrinos. Considering the axion-gluon thermalization channel we derive our most constraining bounds on the hot relic masses $m_a < 7.46$ eV and $\sum m_��< 0.114$ eV both at 95 per cent CL; while studying the axion-pion scattering, without assuming any specific model for the axion-pion interactions and remaining in the range of validity of the chira…
Reheating the Standard Model from a hidden sector
2016
We consider a scenario where the inflaton decays to a hidden sector thermally decoupled from the visible Standard Model sector. A tiny portal coupling between the hidden and the visible sectors later heats the visible sector so that the Standard Model degrees of freedom come to dominate the energy density of the Universe before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We find that this scenario is viable, although obtaining the correct dark matter abundance and retaining successful Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is not obvious. We also show that the isocurvature perturbations constituted by a primordial Higgs condensate are not problematic for the viability of the scenario.