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Capozzi, F., Ferreira, R. Z., Lopez-Honorez, L., & Mena, O. (2023). CMB and Lyman-alpha constraints on dark matter decays to photons. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 06(6), 060–23pp.
Abstract: Dark matter energy injection in the early universe modifies both the ionization history and the temperature of the intergalactic medium. In this work, we improve the CMB bounds on sub-keV dark matter and extend previous bounds from Lyman-& alpha; observations to the same mass range, resulting in new and competitive constraints on axion-like particles (ALPs) decaying into two photons. The limits depend on the underlying reionization history, here accounted self-consistently by our modified version of the publicly available DarkHistory and CLASS codes. Future measurements such as the ones from the CMB-S4 experiment may play a crucial, leading role in the search for this type of light dark matter candidates.
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Bombacigno, F., Moretti, F., Boudet, S., & Olmo, G. J. (2023). Landau damping for gravitational waves in parity-violating theories. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 02(2), 009–29pp.
Abstract: We discuss how tensor polarizations of gravitational waves can suffer Landau damping in the presence of velocity birefringence, when parity symmetry is explicitly broken. In particular, we analyze the role of the Nieh-Yan and Chern-Simons terms in modified theories of gravity, showing how the gravitational perturbation in collisionless media can be characterized by a subluminal phase velocity, circumventing the well-known results of General Relativity and allowing for the appearance of the kinematic damping. We investigate in detail the connection between the thermodynamic properties of the medium, such as temperature and mass of the particles interacting with the gravitational wave, and the parameters ruling the parity violating terms of the models. In this respect, we outline how the dispersion relations can give rise in each model to different regions of the wavenumber space, where the phase velocity is subluminal, superluminal or does not exist. Quantitative estimates on the considered models indicate that the phenomenon of Landau damping is not detectable given the sensitivity of present-day instruments.
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Cosme, C., Figueroa, D. G., & Loayza, N. (2023). Gravitational wave production from preheating with trilinear interactions. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 023–30pp.
Abstract: We investigate the production of gravitational waves (GWs) during preheating with monomial/polynomial inflationary potentials, considering a trilinear coupling & phi;x2 between a singlet inflaton & phi; and a daughter scalar field x. For sufficiently large couplings, the trilinear interaction leads to an exponential production of x particles and, as a result, a large stochastic GW background (SGWB) is generated throughout the process. We study the linear and non-linear dynamics of preheating with lattice simulations, following the production of GWs through all relevant stages. We find that large couplings lead to SGWBs with amplitudes today that can reach up to h2 �(0) GW <^> 5 & BULL; 10-9. These backgrounds are however peaked at high frequencies fp > 5 & BULL; 106 Hz, which makes them undetectable by current/planned GW observatories. As the amount of GWs produced is in any case remarkable, we discuss the prospects for probing the SGWB indirectly by using constraints on the effective number of relativistic species in the universe Neff.
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Zhai, Y. J., Giare, W., van de Bruck, C., Di Valentino, E., Mena, O., & Nunes, R. C. (2023). A consistent view of interacting dark energy from multiple CMB probes. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 07(7), 032–16pp.
Abstract: We analyze a cosmological model featuring an interaction between dark energy and dark matter in light of the measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background released by three independent experiments: the most recent data by the Planck satellite and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, and WMAP (9-year data). We show that different combinations of the datasets provide similar results, always favoring an interacting dark sector with a 95% C.L. significance in the majority of the cases. Remarkably, such a preference remains consistent when cross-checked through independent probes, while always yielding a value of the expansion rate H0 consistent with the local distance ladder measurements. We investigate the source of this preference by scrutinizing the angular power spectra of temperature and polarization anisotropies as measured by different experiments.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Alves, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2023). Review of the online analyses of multi-messenger alerts and electromagnetic transient events with the ANTARES neutrino telescope. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 08(8), 072–23pp.
Abstract: By constantly monitoring a very large portion of the sky, neutrino telescopes are well-designed to detect neutrinos emitted by transient astrophysical events. Real-time searches with the ANTARES telescope have been performed to look for neutrino candidates coincident with gamma-ray bursts detected by the Swift and Fermi satellites, high-energy neutrino events registered by IceCube, transient events from blazars monitored by HAWC, photon-neutrino coincidences by AMON notices and gravitational wave candidates observed by LIGO/Virgo. By requiring temporal coincidence, this approach increases the sensitivity and the significance of a potential discovery. This paper summarises the results of the followup performed of the ANTARES telescope between January 2014 and February 2022, which corresponds to the end of the data-taking period.
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Amerio, A., Cuoco, A., & Fornengo, N. (2023). Extracting the gamma-ray source-count distribution below the Fermi-LAT detection limit with deep learning. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 09(9), 029–39pp.
Abstract: We reconstruct the extra-galactic gamma-ray source-count distribution, or dN/dS, of resolved and unresolved sources by adopting machine learning techniques. Specifically, we train a convolutional neural network on synthetic 2-dimensional sky-maps, which are built by varying parameters of underlying source-counts models and incorporate the FermiLAT instrumental response functions. The trained neural network is then applied to the Fermi-LAT data, from which we estimate the source count distribution down to flux levels a factor of 50 below the Fermi-LAT threshold. We perform our analysis using 14 years of data collected in the (1, 10) GeV energy range. The results we obtain show a source count distribution which, in the resolved regime, is in excellent agreement with the one derived from cataloged sources, and then extends as dN/dS " S-2 in the unresolved regime, down to fluxes of 5 center dot 10-12 cm-2 s-1. The neural network architecture and the devised methodology have the flexibility to enable future analyses to study the energy dependence of the source-count distribution.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Alves, S., Calvo, D., Carretero, V., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2023). Limits on the nuclearite flux using the ANTARES neutrino telescope. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 012–19pp.
Abstract: In this work, a search for nuclearites of strange quark matter by using nine years of ANTARES data taken in the period 2009-2017 is presented. The passage through matter of these particles is simulated taking into account a detailed description of the detector response to nuclearites and of the data acquisition conditions. A down-going flux of cosmic nuclearites with Galactic velocities (beta = 10(-3)) was considered for this study. The mass threshold for detecting these particles at the detector level is 4 x 10(13) GeV/c(2). Upper limits on the nuclearite flux for masses up to 10(17) GeV/c(2) at the level of similar to 5 x 10(-17) cm(-2) s(-1) sr(-1) are obtained. These are the first upper limits on nuclearites established with a neutrino telescope and the most stringent ever set for Galactic velocities.
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Boudet, S., Bombacigno, F., Moretti, F., & Olmo, G. J. (2023). Torsional birefringence in metric-affine Chern-Simons gravity: gravitational waves in late-time cosmology. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 026–28pp.
Abstract: In the context of the metric-affine Chern-Simons gravity endowed with projective invariance, we derive analytical solutions for torsion and nonmetricity in the homogeneous and isotropic cosmological case, described by a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric. We discuss in some details the general properties of the cosmological solutions in the presence of a perfect fluid, such as the dynamical stability and the emergence of big bounce points, and we examine the structure of some specific solutions reproducing de Sitter and power law behaviours for the scale factor. Then, we focus on first-order perturbations in the de Sitter scenario, and we study the propagation of gravitational waves in the adiabatic limit, looking at tensor and scalar polarizations. In particular, we find that metric tensor modes couple to torsion tensor components, leading to the appearance, as in the metric version of Chern-Simons gravity, of birefringence, characterized by different dispersion relations for the left and right circularized polarization states. As a result, the purely tensor part of torsion propagates like a wave, while nonmetricity decouples and behaves like a harmonic oscillator. Finally, we discuss scalar modes, outlining as they decay exponentially in time and do not propagate.
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Alencar, G., Estrada, M., Muniz, C. R., & Olmo, G. J. (2023). Dymnikova GUP-corrected black holes. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 11(11), 100–23pp.
Abstract: We consider the impact of Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP) effects on the Dymnikova regular black hole. The minimum length scale introduced by the GUP modifies the energy density associated with the gravitational source, referred to as the Dymnikova vacuum, based on its analogy with the gravitational counterpart of the Schwinger effect. We present an approximated analytical solution (together with exact numerical results for comparison) that encompasses a wide range of black hole sizes, whose properties crucially depend on the ratio between the de Sitter core radius and the GUP scale. The emergence of a wormhole inside the de Sitter core in the innermost region of the object is one of the most relevant features of this family of solutions. Our findings demonstrate that these solutions remain singularity free, confirming the robustness of the Dymnikova regular black hole under GUP corrections. Regarding energy conditions, we find that the violation of the strong, weak, and null energy conditions which is characteristic of the pure Dymnikova case does not occur at Planckian scales in the GUP corrected solution. This contrast suggests a departure from conventional expectations and highlights the influence of quantum corrections and the GUP in modifying the energy conditions near the Planck scale.
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Chakraborty, S., Gupta, A., & Vanvlasselaer, M. (2023). Anomaly induced cooling of neutron stars: a Standard Model contribution. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 10(10), 030–23pp.
Abstract: Young neutron stars cool via the emission of neutrinos from their core. A precise understanding of all the different processes producing neutrinos in the hot and degenerate matter is essential for assessing the cooling rate of such stars. The main Standard Model processes contributing to this effect are nu bremsstrahlung, mURCA among others. In this paper, we investigate another Standard Model process initiated by the Wess-Zumino-Witten term, leading to the emission of neutrino pairs via N gamma -> N nu nu over bar . We find that for proto-neutron stars, such processes with degenerate neutrons can be comparable and even dominate over the typical and well-known cooling mechanisms.
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