Abstract: Cosmic censorship protects the outside world from black hole singularities and paves the way for assigning entropy to gravity at the event horizons. We point out a tension between cosmic censorship and the quantum backreacted geometry of Schwarzschild black holes, induced by vacuum polarization and driven by the conformal anomaly. A similar tension appears for the Weyl curvature hypothesis at the Big Bang singularity. We argue that the requirement of exact conformal symmetry resolves both conflicts and has major implications for constraining the set of fundamental constituents of the Standard Model.

Abstract: Cosmic string networks offer one of the best prospects for detection of cosmological gravitational waves (GWs). The combined incoherent GW emission of a large number of string loops leads to a stochastic GW background (SGWB), which encodes the properties of the string network. In this paper we analyze the ability of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to measure this background, considering leading models of the string networks. We find that LISA will be able to probe cosmic strings with tensions G μgreater than or similar to O(10(-17)), improving by about 6 orders of magnitude current pulsar timing arrays (PTA) constraints, and potentially 3 orders of magnitude with respect to expected constraints from next generation PTA observatories. We include in our analysis possible modifications of the SGWB spectrum due to different hypotheses regarding cosmic history and the underlying physics of the string network. These include possible modifications in the SGWB spectrum due to changes in the number of relativistic degrees of freedom in the early Universe, the presence of a non-standard equation of state before the onset of radiation domination, or changes to the network dynamics due to a string inter-commutation probability less than unity. In the event of a detection, LISA's frequency band is well-positioned to probe such cosmic events. Our results constitute a thorough exploration of the cosmic string science that will be accessible to LISA.

Abstract: Cosmological phase transitions in the early Universe may produce relics in the form of a network of cosmic defects. Independently of the order of a phase transition, topology of the defects, and their global or gauge nature, the defects are expected to emit gravitational waves (GWs) as the network energy-momentum tensor adapts itself to maintaining scaling. We show that the evolution of any defect network (and for that matter any scaling source) emits a GW background with spectrum Omega(GW) proportional to f(3) for f << f(0), Omega(GW) proportional to 1/f(2) for f(0) less than or similar to f less than or similar to feq, and Omega(GW) proportional to const (i.e., exactly scale invariant) for f >> f(eq), where f(0) and f(eq) denote respectively the frequencies corresponding to the present and matter-radiation equality horizons. This background represents an irreducible emission of GWs from any scaling network of cosmic defects, with its amplitude characterized only by the symmetry-breaking scale and the nature of the defects. Using classical lattice simulations we calculate the GW signal emitted by defects created after the breaking of a global symmetry O(N) -> O(N – 1). We obtain the GW spectrum for N between 2 and 20 with two different techniques: integrating over unequal-time correlators of the energy-momentum tensor, updating our previous work on smaller lattices, and for the first time, comparing the result with the real-time evolution of the tensor perturbations sourced by the same defects. Our results validate the equivalence of the two techniques. Using cosmic microwave background upper bounds on the defects' energy scale, we discuss the difficulty of detecting this GW background in the case of global defects.

Abstract: Coupled dark matter-dark energy scenarios arc modeled via a dimensionless parameter xi, which controls the strength of their interaction. While this coupling is commonly assumed to be constant, there is no underlying physical law or symmetry that forbids a time-dependent xi parameter. The most general and complete interacting scenarios between the two dark sectors should therefore allow for such a possibility, and it is the main purpose of this study to constrain two possible and well-motivated coupled cosmologies by means of the most recent and accurate early- and late-time universe observations. We find that CMB data alone prefer xi(z) > 0 and therefore a smaller amount of dark matter, alleviating some crucial and well-known cosmological data tensions. An objective assessment of the Bayesian evidence for the coupled models explored here shows no particular preference for the presence of a dynamical dark sector coupling.

Abstract: Cross-section measurements of top-quark pair production where the hadronically decaying top quark has transverse momentum greater than 355 GeV and the other top quark decays into l nu b are presented using 139 fb(-1) of data collected by the ATLAS experiment during proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The fiducial cross-section at root s = 13 TeV is measured to be sigma = 1.267 +/- 0.005 +/- 0.053 pb, where the uncertainties reflect the limited number of data events and the systematic uncertainties, giving a total uncertainty of 4.2%. The cross-section is measured differentially as a function of variables characterising the t (t) over bar system and additional radiation in the events. The results are compared with various Monte Carlo generators, including comparisons where the generators are reweighted to match a parton-level calculation at next-to-next-to-leading order. The reweighting improves the agreement between data and theory. The measured distribution of the top-quark transverse momentum is used to search for new physics in the context of the effective field theory framework. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed and limits are set on the Wilson coefficients of the dimension-six operators O-tG and O-tq((8)), where the limits on the latter are the most stringent to date.