We propose a novel mechanism for enhancing the primordial gravitational waves without significantly affecting the curvature perturbations produced during inflation. This is achieved due to non-linear sourcing of resonantly amplified scalar field fluc
tuations. Our result is an explicit scale-dependent counter-example of the famous Lyth bound, which opens up a promising perspective of producing detectable inflationary tensor modes with low-scale inflation and a sub-Planckian field excursion. We explicitly demonstrate the testability of our mechanism with upcoming Cosmic Microwave Background B-mode observations.
We put forward a novel class of exotic celestial objects that can be produced through phase transitions occurred in the primordial Universe. These objects appear as bubbles of stellar sizes and can be dominated by primordial black holes (PBHs). We re
port that, due to the processes of Hawking radiation and binary evolution of PBHs inside these stellar bubbles, both electromagnetic and gravitational radiations can be emitted that are featured on the gamma-ray spectra and stochastic gravitational waves (GWs). Our results reveal that, depending on the mass distribution, the exotic stellar bubbles consisting of PBHs provide not only a decent fit for the ultrahigh-energy gamma-ray spectrum reported by the recent LHAASO experiment, but also predict GW signals that are expected to be tested by the forthcoming GW surveys.
We use a combination of observational data in order to reconstruct the free function of f(T) gravity in a model-independent manner. Starting from the data-driven determined dark-energy equation-of-state parameter we are able to reconstruct the f(T) f
orm. The obtained function is consistent with the standard {Lambda}CDM cosmology within 1{sigma} confidence level, however the best-fit value experiences oscillatory features. We parametrise it with a sinusoidal function with only one extra parameter comparing to {Lambda}CDM paradigm, which is a small oscillatory deviation from it, close to the best-fit curve, and inside the 1{sigma} reconstructed region. Similar oscillatory dark-energy scenarios are known to be in good agreement with observational data, nevertheless this is the first time that such a behavior is proposed for f(T) gravity. Finally, since the reconstruction procedure is completely model-independent, the obtained data-driven reconstructed f(T) form could release the tensions between {Lambda}CDM estimations and local measurements, such as the H0 and {sigma}8 ones.
Einstein equivalence principle (EEP), as one of the foundations of general relativity, is a fundamental test of gravity theories. In this paper, we propose a new method to test the EEP of electromagnetic interactions through observations of black hol
e photon rings, which naturally extends the scale of Newtonian and post-Newtoian gravity where the EEP violation through a variable fine structure constant has been well constrained to that of stronger gravity. We start from a general form of Lagrangian that violates EEP, where a specific EEP violation model could be regarded as one of the cases of this Lagrangian. Within the geometrical optical approximation, we find that the dispersion relation of photons is modified: for photons moving in circular orbit, the dispersion relation simplifies, and behaves such that photons with different linear polarizations perceive different gravitational potentials. This makes the size of black hole photon ring depend on polarization. Further assuming that the EEP violation is small, we derive an approximate analytic expression for spherical black holes showing that the change in size of the photon ring is proportional to the violation parameters. We also discuss several cases of this analytic expression for specific models. Finally, we explore the effects of black hole rotation and derive a modified proportionality relation between the change in size of photon ring and the violation parameters. The numerical and analytic results show that the influence of black hole rotation on the constraints of EEP violation is relatively weak for small magnitude of EEP violation and small rotation speed of black holes.
We present a new realization of the resonant production of primordial black holes as well as gravitational waves in a two-stage inflation model consisting of a scalar field phi with an axion-monodromy-like periodic structure in the potential that gov
erns the first stage and another field chi with a hilltop-like potential that dominates the second stage. The parametric resonance seeded by the periodic structure at the first stage amplifies the perturbations of both fields inside the Hubble radius. While the evolution of the background trajectory experiences a turn as the oscillatory barrier height increases, the amplified perturbations of chi remain as they are and contribute to the final curvature perturbation. It turns out that the primordial power spectrum displays a significant resonant peak on small scales, which can lead to an abundant production of primordial black holes. Furthermore, gravitational waves are also generated from the resonantly enhanced field perturbations during inflation, the amplitude of which may be constrained by future gravitational wave interferometers.
Hemispherical power asymmetry has emerged as a new challenge to cosmology in early universe. While the cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements indicated the asymmetry amplitude $A simeq 0.07$ at the CMB scale $k_{rm CMB}simeq 0.0045,{rm Mpc}^{
-1}$, the high-redshift quasar observations found no significant deviation from statistical isotropy. This conflict can be reconciled in some scale-dependent asymmetry models. We put forward a new parameterization of scale-dependent asymmetric power spectrum, inspired by a multi-speed inflation model. The 21-cm power spectrum from the epoch of reionization can be used to constrain the scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry. We demonstrate that an optimum, multi-frequency observation by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Phase 2 can impose a constraint on the amplitude of the power asymmetry anomaly at the level of $Delta A simeq 0.2$ at $0.056 lesssim k_{rm 21cm} lesssim 0.15 ,{rm Mpc}^{-1}$. This limit may be further improved by an order of magnitude as $Delta A simeq 0.01$ with a cosmic variance limited experiment such as the Omniscope.
As potential candidates of dark matter, primordial black holes (PBHs) are within the core scopes of various astronomical observations. In light of the explosive development of gravitational wave (GW) and radio astronomy, we thoroughly analyze a stoch
astic background of cosmological GWs, induced by over large primordial density perturbations, with several spikes that was inspired by the sound speed resonance effect and can predict a particular pattern on the mass spectrum of PBHs. With a specific mechanicsm for PBHs formation, we for the first time perform the study of such induced GWs that originate from both the inflationary era and the radiation-dominated phase. We report that, besides the traditional process of generating GWs during the radiation-dominated phase, the contribution of the induced GWs in the sub-Hubble regime during inflation can become significant at critical frequency band because of a narrow resonance effect. All contributions sum together to yield a specific profile of the energy spectrum of GWs that can be of observable interest in forthcoming astronomical experiments. Our study shed light on the possible joint probe of PBHs via various observational windows of multi-messenger astronomy, including the search for electromagnetic effects with astronomical telescopes and the stochastic background of relic GWs with GW instruments.
We report on a novel phenomenon of the resonance effect of primordial density perturbations arisen from a sound speed parameter with an oscillatory behavior, which can generically lead to the formation of primordial black holes in the early Universe.
For a general inflaton field, it can seed primordial density fluctuations and their propagation is governed by a parameter of sound speed square. Once if this parameter achieves an oscillatory feature for a while during inflation, a significant non-perturbative resonance effect on the inflaton field fluctuations takes place around a critical length scale, which results in significant peaks in the primordial power spectrum. By virtue of this robust mechanism, primordial black holes with specific mass function can be produced with a sufficient abundance for dark matter in sizable parameter ranges.
The combined observation of GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterpart GRB170817A reveals that gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light in high precision. We apply the effective field theory approach to investigate the experimental conse
quences for the theory of $f(T)$ gravity. We find that the speed of gravitational waves within $f(T)$ gravity is exactly equal to the light speed, and hence the constraints from GW170817 and GRB170817A are trivially satisfied. The results are verified through the standard analysis of cosmological perturbations. Nevertheless, by examining the dispersion relation and the frequency of cosmological gravitational waves, we observe a deviation from the results of General Relativity, quantified by a new parameter. Although its value is relatively small in viable $f(T)$ models, its possible future measurement in advancing gravitational-wave astronomy would be the smoking gun of testing this type of modified gravity.
Non-attractor inflation is known as the only single field inflationary scenario that can violate non-Gaussianity consistency relation with the Bunch-Davies vacuum state and generate large local non-Gaussianity. However, it is also known that the non-
attractor inflation by itself is incomplete and should be followed by a phase of slow-roll attractor. Moreover, there is a transition process between these two phases. In the past literature, this transition was approximated as instant and the evolution of non-Gaussianity in this phase was not fully studied. In this paper, we follow the detailed evolution of the non-Gaussianity through the transition phase into the slow-roll attractor phase, considering different types of transition. We find that the transition process has important effect on the size of the local non-Gaussianity. We first compute the net contribution of the non-Gaussianities at the end of inflation in canonical non-attractor models. If the curvature perturbations keep evolving during the transition - such as in the case of smooth transition or some sharp transition scenarios - the $mathcal{O}(1)$ local non-Gaussianity generated in the non-attractor phase can be completely erased by the subsequent evolution, although the consistency relation remains violated. In extremal cases of sharp transition where the super-horizon modes freeze immediately right after the end of the non-attractor phase, the original non-attractor result can be recovered. We also study models with non-canonical kinetic terms, and find that the transition can typically contribute a suppression factor in the squeezed bispectrum, but the final local non-Gaussianity can still be made parametrically large.
