119253050
Integrated Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis of primordial non-Gaussianity (fNL) in the recent CMB data
We have made a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis of primordial non-Gaussianity (fNL) using the WMAP bispectrum and power spectrum. In our analysis, we have simultaneously constrained fNL and cosmological parameters so that the uncertainties of cosmological parameters can properly propagate into the fNL estimation. Investigating the parameter likelihoods deduced from MCMC samples, we find slight deviation from Gaussian shape, which makes a Fisher matrix estimation less accurate. Therefore, we have estimated the confidence interval of fNL by exploring the parameter likelihood without using the Fisher matrix. We find that the best-fit values of our analysis make a good agreement with other results, but the confidence interval is slightly different.
13970812
Probing the last scattering surface through recent and future CMB observations
We have constrained the extended (delayed and accelerated) models of hydrogen recombination, by investigating associated changes of the position and the width of the last scattering surface. Using the recently obtained CMB and SDSS data, we find that the recently derived data constraints favor the accelerated recombination model, although the other models (standard, delayed recombination) are not ruled out at 1σ confidence level. If the accelerated recombination had actually occurred in our early Universe, it is likely that baryonic clustering on small scales would have been the cause of it. By comparing the ionization history of baryonic cloud models with that of the best-fit accelerated recombination model, we find that some portion of our early Universe has baryonic underdensity. We have made a forecast for the PLANCK data constraint, which shows that we will be able to rule out the standard or delayed recombination models if the recombination in our early Universe had proceeded with α~−0.01 or lower, and residual foregrounds and systematic effects are negligible.
119245195
CMB map derived from the WMAP data through harmonic internal linear combination
We are presenting an internal linear combination CMB map, in which the foreground is reduced through harmonic variance minimization. We have derived our method by converting a general form of pixel-space approach into spherical harmonic space, maintaining full correspondence. By working in spherical harmonic space, spatial variability of linear weights is incorporated in a self-contained manner and our linear weights are continuous functions of position over the entire sky. The full correspondence to pixel-space approach enables straightforward physical interpretation on our approach. In variance minimization of a linear combination map, the existence of a cross term between residual foregrounds and CMB makes the linear combination of minimum variance differ from that of minimum foreground. We have developed an iterative foreground reduction method, where perturbative correction is made for the cross term. Our CMB map derived from the WMAP data is in better agreement with the WMAP best-fit {lambda}CDM model than the WMAP team's internal linear combination map. We find that our method's capacity to clean foreground is limited by the availability of enough spherical harmonic coefficients of good signal-to-noise ratio.
118613110
How to make a clean separation between CMB E and B modes with proper foreground masking
We investigate the E/B decomposition of CMB polarization on a masked sky. In real space, operators of E and B mode decomposition involve only differentials of CMB polarization. We may, therefore in principle, perform a clean E/B decomposition from incomplete sky data. Since it is impractical to apply second derivatives to observation data, we usually rely on spherical harmonic transformation and inverse transformation, instead of using real-space operators. In spherical harmonic representation, jump discontinuities in a cut sky produces Gibbs phenomenon, unless a spherical harmonic expansion is made up to an infinitely high multipole. By smoothing a foreground mask, we may suppress the Gibbs phenomenon effectively in a similar manner to apodization of a foreground mask discussed in other works. However, we incur foreground contamination by smoothing a foreground mask, because zero-value pixels in the original mask may be rendered non-zero by the smoothing process. In this work, we investigate an optimal foreground mask, which ensures proper foreground masking and suppresses Gibbs phenomenon. We apply our method to a simulated map of the pixel resolution comparable to the Planck satellite. The simulation shows that the leakage power is lower than unlensed CMB B mode power spectrum of tensor-to-scalar ratio r ∼ 1 × 10 −7 . We compare the result with that of the original mask. We find that the leakage power is reduced by a factor of 10 6 ∼ 10 9 at the cost of a sky fraction 0.07, and that that the enhancement is highest at lowest multipoles. We confirm that all the zero-value pixels in the original mask remain zero in our mask. The application of this method to the Planck data will improve the detectability of primordial tensor perturbation.
119074604
Removing the ISW-lensing bias from the local-form primordial non-Gaussianity estimation
The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect produces a secondary temperature aniso\-tropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as CMB photons travel through time-varying potentials along the line-of-sight. The main contribution comes from redshifts z2, where dark energy leads to a decay of potentials. As the same photons are gravitationally lensed by these decaying potentials, there exists a high degree of correlation between the ISW effect and CMB lensing, leading to a non-zero three-point correlation (bispectrum) of the observed temperature anisotropy. This ISW-lensing bispectrum, whose shape resembles that of the so-called ``local-form'' primordial bispectrum parametrized by fNL, is known to be the largest contamination of fNL. In order to avoid a spurious detection of primordial non-Gaussianity, we need to remove the ISW-lensing bias. In this work, we investigate three debiasing methods: (I) subtraction of an expected, ensemble average of the ISW-lensing bispectrum; (II) subtraction of a measured ISW-lensing bispectrum; and (III) direct subtraction of an estimated ISW signal from an observed temperature map. One may use an estimation of the ISW map from external non-CMB data or that from the CMB data themselves. As the methods II and III are based on fewer assumptions about the nature of dark energy, they are preferred over the method I. While the methods I and II yield unbiased estimates of fNL with comparable error bars, the method III yields a biased result when the underlying primordial fNL is non-zero and the ISW map is estimated from a lensing potential reconstructed from the observed temperature map. One of the sources of the bias is a lensing reconstruction noise bias which is independent of fNL and can be calculated precisely, but other fNL-dependent terms are difficult to compute reliably. We thus conclude that the method II is the best, model-independent way to remove the ISW-lensing bias of fNL, enabling us to test the physics of inflation with smaller systematic errors.
118530966
How accurately can we measure the hydrogen 2S->1S transition rate from the cosmological data?
Recent progress in observational cosmology, and especially the forthcoming PLANCK mission data, open new directions in so-called precision cosmology. In this paper we illustrate this statement considering the accuracy of cosmological determination of the two-quanta decay rate of 2s hydrogen atom state. We show that the PLANCK data will allow us to measure this decay rate significantly better than in the laboratory experiments.
14458517
Rapidity Gap Events in Squark Pair Production at the LHC
The exchange of electroweak gauginos in the t− or u−channel allows squark pair production at hadron colliders without color exchange between the squarks. This can give rise to events where little or no energy is deposited in the detector between the squark decay products. We discuss the potential for detection of such rapidity gap events at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Our numerical analysis is divided into two parts. First, we evaluate in a simplified framework the rapidity gap signal at the parton level. The second part covers an analysis with full event simulation using PYTHIA as well as Herwig++, but without detector simulation. We analyze the transverse energy deposited between the jets from squark decay, as well as the probability of finding a third jet in between the two hardest jets. For the mSUGRA benchmark point SPS1a we find statistically significant evidence for a color singlet exchange contribution. The systematical differences between current versions of PYTHIA and HERWIG++ are larger than the physical effect from color singlet exchange; however, these systematic differences could be reduced by tuning both Monte Carlo generators on normal QCD di–jet data.
6224548
Model-dependent axion as quintessence with almost massless hidden sector quarks
A pseudo-Goldstone boson for quintessence is known to require the decay constant Fq ~ MP and the height of the potential (0.003 eV)4, and hence the pseudo-Goldstone boson mass of order 10−33 eV. The model-dependent axion in some superstring models is suggested as a good candidate for the quintessence. We realize this idea with a hidden-sector gauge group SU(3)H × U(1)H. The hidden-sector instanton contribution to the quintessence potential is suppressed by the almost massless hidden-sector quarks. The model-independent axion is the QCD axion required for the strong CP solution.
118704767
First LHC Constraints on Neutralinos
Abstract The ATLAS and CMS Collaborations have recently reported tantalizing hints of the existence of a 125 GeV Higgs-like particle, whose couplings appear to match well the Standard Model (SM) expectations. In this work, we study implications of this observation for the neutralino sector of supersymmetric models, assuming that the Higgs signal gets confirmed. In general, the Higgs decay into neutralinos can be one of its dominant decay channels. Since a large invisible Higgs decay branching ratio would be in conflict with the data, this possibility is now constrained. In particular, we find that most of the region μ 170 GeV , M 1 70 GeV at tan β ∼ 10 and μ 120 GeV , M 1 70 GeV at tan β ∼ 40 is disfavored.
117771437
Cosmological Constant and Supergravity Soft Terms
In supergravity models, the quantum correction to the vacuum energy can be of order $M_I^4$, if the cutoff is of order the Planck mass $M^2_{P}$ and $Str\ {\cal M}^2\ne 0$. Therefore, the tree level cosmological constant must be nonzero (probably negative). Since the current practice of calculating soft parameters in supergravity models assumes the vanishing tree level cosmological constant, the supergravity calculation must be accordingly modified. This implies that the soft parameters in supergravity has an additional contribution depending on the nonvanishing tree level cosmological constant. A simple quantum mechanical model mimicking this situation is also presented.
119287184
Axions and the Strong CP Problem
Current upper bounds on the neutron electric dipole moment constrain the physically observable quantum chromodynamic (QCD) vacuum angle $|\overline{\ensuremath{\theta}}|\ensuremath{\lesssim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}11}$. Since QCD explains a great deal of experimental data from the $100\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{MeV}$ to the TeV scale, it is desirable to explain this smallness of $|\overline{\ensuremath{\theta}}|$ in the QCD framework; this is the strong $CP$ problem. There now exist two plausible solutions to this problem, one of which leads to the existence of a very light axion. The axion decay constant window, ${10}^{9}\ensuremath{\lesssim}{F}_{a}\ensuremath{\lesssim}{10}^{12}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ for an $O(1)$ initial misalignment angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{1}$, has been obtained from astrophysical and cosmological data. For ${F}_{a}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{10}^{12}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ with ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{1}lO(1)$, axions may constitute a significant fraction of the dark matter of the universe. The supersymmetrized axion solution of the strong $CP$ problem introduces its superpartner the axino, which might have affected the evolution of the Universe significantly. The very light axion (theory, supersymmetrization, and models) using recent particle, astrophysical, and cosmological data, and present prospects for its discovery is reviewed here.