Conveners
Early Universe
- Silvia Pascoli
Early Universe
- Silvia Pascoli
Although the CMB and galaxy surveys provide precise measurements of the primordial power spectrum at large scales, the small-scale power spectrum remains largely unconstrained. An enhancement in the small-scale primordial spectrum can lead to the formation of Ultra-Compact-Mini-Halos (UCMH) much earlier than standard halo can form. As a result, the DM annihilation signal receives a boost than...
We show that a minimal scenario, utilizing only the graviton as an intermediate messenger between the inflaton, the dark sector and the Standard Model (SM), is able to generate simultaneously the observed relic density of dark matter (DM), the baryon asymmetry through leptogenesis, as well as a sufficiently hot thermal bath after inflation. The possibility of reheating via minimal...
Correlation functions of primordial density fluctuations provide an exciting probe of the physics governing the earliest moments of our Universe. However, the standard approach to compute them is technically challenging. Theoretical predictions are therefore available only in restricted classes of theories, which can completely bias the interpretation of data.
In this talk, I will present...
In the Standard Model the electroweak phase transition is a crossover, but in many beyond the Standard Model theories the transition is of first order. Strong first order phase transitions could produce gravitational waves that might be detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Perturbation theory is commonly used to estimate the parameters that enter the calculation of...
Introducing an energy transfer between the inflaton field and a thermal bath modifies the primordial power spectrum $\mathcal{P}_\mathcal{R}$ due to the thermal fluctuations acting as a stochastic source for the curvature perturbations. We propose a fast and accurate method to compute $\mathcal{P}_\mathcal{R}$ in this context based on the Fokker-Planck equation, and verify its consistency...
As the nature of dark matter remains unresolved, existence of a whole dark sector is an intriguing possibility. It is also natural to assume that such dark sector couples to inflationary dynamics. As an example, we consider the case of warm axion inflation coupled to a non-Abelian dark sector, both in weakly and strongly coupled regime. We show that this simple setup provides rich...
