Previous work demonstrated effective laser frequency noise (LFN) suppression for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) data from raw phasemeter measurements using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm with fractional delay interpolation (FDI) techniques to estimate the spacecraft separation parameters required for time-delay interferometry (TDI) under the assumption of a rigidly rotating LISA configuration. Including TDI parameters in the LISA data model as part of a global fit analysis pipeline enables gravitational wave inferences to be marginalized over uncertainty in the spacecraft separations. Here we extend the algorithm’s capability to perform data-driven TDI on LISA in Keplerian orbits, which introduce a time-dependence in the arm-length parameters and at least $\mathcal{O}(M)$ times greater computational cost since the filter must be applied for every sample in the time series of sample size M. We find feasibility of arm-length estimation on $\sim \mathrm{day}\text{−}\mathrm{long}$ timescales by using a novel Taylor-expanded version of the fractional delay interpolation filter that allows half of the filter computation to be calculated and stored before MCMC iterations and requires shorter filter lengths than previously reported. We demonstrate LFN suppression for orbiting LISA using accurate arm-length estimates parameterized by Keplerian orbital parameters under the assumption of unperturbed analytical Keplerian orbits, and explore the potential extension of these methods to arbitrary numerical orbits.

This paper studies the quasinormal mode spectrum of the scalar perturbation on the background of the rotating accelerating black holes. The quasinormal frequency $\omega$ and the separation constant $\lambda$ are calculated using two methods: the continued fractions method and the direct integration method. The spectrum is found to include three families of modes: the photon sphere modes, the acceleration modes, and the near extreme modes. We investigate the effects of back hole parameters such as spin and acceleration. Empirical formulas are presented for the numerical results, specifically for the acceleration modes in the small black hole limit or the near extreme modes in the extreme black hole limit. An interesting phenomenon known as eigenvalue repulsion is observed when the acceleration modes intersect with the near extreme modes at certain parameter values. The strong cosmic censorship conjecture for spinning C-metric is respected.

We consider the recent datasets of quasiperiodic oscillations from eight different low mass x-ray binaries. We here interpret their physical features in the context of given regular black hole solutions and verify their applicability to neutron stars. We evaluate the numerical constraints over the free parameters of Bardeen, Hayward, and Dymnikova regular solutions by performing a set of Markov chain Monte Carlo analyses, based on the Metropolis algorithm. For each source, we evaluate the best-fit parameters, among which the mass and the regularization scale or parameter, compare and contrast them with the current literature. We also infer the corresponding innermost stable circular orbit radii and the radial extents of the accretion disks. Focusing on how to identify discrepancies among theoretical models and observations, our results show that, in most of the cases, regular black holes, in particular the Bardeen and Hayward spacetimes are slightly more suitable to describe neutron stars than the Schwarzschild geometry, whereas the Dymnikova metric is ruled out.

In this work, we study general features of a regime where gauge fields produced during inflation cause a strong backreaction on the background evolution and its impact on the spectrum and the correlation length of gauge fields. With this aim, the gradient-expansion formalism previously proposed for the description of inflationary magnetogenesis in purely kinetic or purely axial coupling models, is extended to the case when both types of coupling are present. As it is formulated in position space, this method allows us to self-consistently take into account the backreaction of generated gauge fields on the inflationary background because it captures the nonlinear evolution of all physically relevant gauge-field modes at once. Using this extended gradient-expansion formalism, suitable for a wide range of inflationary magnetogenesis models, we study the gauge-field production in a specific generalization of the Starobinsky $R^2$-model with a nonminimal coupling of gauge fields to gravity. In the Einstein frame, this model implies, in addition to an asymptotically flat inflaton potential, also a nontrivial form of kinetic and axial coupling functions which decrease in time and, thus, are potentially suitable for the generation of gauge fields with a scale-invariant or even red-tilted power spectrum. The numerical analysis shows, however, that backreaction, which unavoidably occurs in this model for the interesting range of parameters, strongly alters the behavior of the spectrum and does not allow us to obtain a sufficiently large correlation length for the magnetic field. The oscillatory behavior of the generated field, caused by the retarded response of the gauge field to changes of the inflaton velocity, was revealed.

Phenomenological models are widely used in cosmology in relation to constraining different cosmological models, with two common examples being cosmographic expansions and modeling the equation-of-state parameter of dark energy. This work presents a study of how using different phenomenological expressions for observables and physical quantities versus using physically motivated, derived expressions affects cosmological parameter constraints. The study includes the redshift-distance relation and Hubble parameter as observables, and the dark energy equation-of-state parameter as a physical quantity, and focuses on constraining the cosmological parameter ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{\Lambda }}$. The observables and equation-of-state parameter are all modeled both using the physical, derived expressions and a variety of phenomenological models with different levels of accuracy and complexity. The results suggest that the complexity of phenomenological expressions only has minor impact on the parameter constraints unless the complexity is very high. The results also indicate that statistically significantly different results can be expected from parameter constraints using different phenomenological models if the models do not have very similar accuracy. This suggests that a good practice is to use multiple phenomenological models when possible, in order to assess the model dependence of results. Straightforward examples of this is that results obtained using cosmographic expansions should always be checked against similar results obtained with expansions of other order, and when using phenomenological models such as for the equation-of-state parameters, robustness of results could be assessed using fitted models from symbolic regression, similar to what is done in this study.

This paper investigates the effects of nonvanishing spatial curvature on the propagation of primordial gravitational waves produced during inflation. In particular, we consider tensor perturbations over a homogeneous and isotropic background and describe the propagation of gravitational waves in the de Sitter phase with spatially curved geometries. We thus derive the expression of the primordial power spectrum at the horizon crossing in the case of open and closed universes. Then, we analyze how tensor modes propagate in the postinflationary era, showing the evolution of transfer functions in the radiation and matter epochs, as well as the matching conditions in the intermediate regime. To account for the intrinsic nature of different relativistic species, we also explore the corrections to the standard behavior of the radiation energy density. For this purpose, we introduce the effective number of degrees of freedom of relativistic particles contributing to the primordial energy and entropy densities. Under the subhorizon approximation, we obtain the spectral energy density of relic gravitational waves in terms of the curvature density parameter. Finally, we discuss the capability of present and future experiments to detect the primordial gravitational wave signal at different frequency regimes.

The two-point summary statistics is one of the most commonly used tools in the study of cosmological structure. Starting from the theoretical power spectrum defined in the 3D volume and obtained via the process of ensemble averaging, we establish the construction of the “observed 3D power spectrum,” folding the unequal-time information around the average position into the wave modes along the line of sight. We show how these unequal-time cross-correlation effects give rise to scale-dependent corrections in the observable 3D power spectrum. We also introduce a new dimensionless observable, the “frequency-angular power spectrum,” which is a function of dimensionless and directly observable quantities corresponding to Fourier counterparts of angles and redshifts. While inheriting many useful characteristics of the canonical observed power spectrum, this newly introduced statistic does not depend on physical distances and is hence free of so-called Alcock-Paczyński effects. Such observable thus presents a clear advantage and simplification over the traditional power spectrum. Moreover, relying on linear theory calculations, we estimate that unequal-time corrections, while generally small, can amount to a few percent on large scales and high redshifts. Interestingly, such corrections depend on the bias of the tracers and the growth rate, but also their time derivatives, opening up the possibility of new tests of cosmological models. These radial mode effects also introduce anisotropies in the observed power spectrum, in addition to the ones arising from redshift-space distortions, generating nonvanishing odd multiples and imaginary contributions. Finally, we investigate the effects of unequal-time corrections in resumming long displacements (IR resummation) of the observed power spectrum.

In this work, we study the previously unexplored resonant region of neutrino self-interactions. Current disagreement on late and early time observations of the Universe expansion could be solved with new physics acting before the recombination era. Nonstandard neutrino self-interactions are among the most appealing candidates to solve this issue since they could be testable in the near (or midterm) future. We use linear cosmological datasets to test neutrino self-interactions for a sample of fixed scalar mediator masses in the range ${10}^{-2}\mathrm{eV}\le m_{\phi }\le {10}^2\mathrm{eV}$. The resonant behavior produces observable effects at lower couplings than those reported in the literature for heavy and light mediators. We observe that in the best case scenario, using the $\mathrm{Planck}+\text{BAO}$ dataset, the tension with local measurements of $H_0$ eases from $4.9\sigma$ (for $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$) down to $2.8\sigma$. Albeit, this is driven mainly by the addition of extra radiation, with $\mathrm{\Delta }{N}_{\mathrm{eff}}\sim 0.5$. The joint dataset which includes Planck, BAO, and $H_0$ prefers a nonzero interaction from $2.3\sigma$ to $3.9\sigma$ significance in the range $0.5\mathrm{eV}\le m_{\phi }\le 10\mathrm{eV}$. Although, this last result is obtained with data that are still in tension. These results add the last piece in the parameter space of neutrino self-interactions at the linear perturbation regime.

Using wave kinetics, we estimate the emergence timescale of gravitating Bose-Einstein condensates/Bose stars in the kinetic regime for a general multicomponent Schrödinger-Poisson (SP) system. We identify some effects of the diffusion and friction pieces in the wave-kinetic Boltzmann equation (at leading order in perturbation theory) and provide estimates for the kinetic nucleation rate of condensates. We test our analysis using full ($3+1$)-dimensional simulations of a multicomponent SP system. With an eye toward applications to multicomponent dark matter, we investigate two general cases in detail. First is a massive spin-$s$ field with $N=2s+1$ components (scalar $s=0$, vector $s=1$, and tensor $s=2$). We find that for a democratic population of different components, the condensation timescale is ${\tau }_{(s)}\approx {\tau }_0\times N$, where ${\tau }_0$ is the condensation timescale for the scalar case. Second is the case of two scalars with different boson masses. In this case, we map out how the condensation time depends on the ratios of their average mass densities and boson masses, revealing competition and assistance between components, and a guide toward which component condenses first. For instance, with $m_1<m_2$ and not too disparate mass densities, we verify that the timescale of condensation of the first species quickly becomes independent of $m_2/m_1$, whereas for equal average number densities, the emergence timescale decreases with increasing $m_2/m_1$.

We study a semiclassical model of the mixmaster universe. We first derive the quantum model and then introduce its semiclassical approximation. We employ a general integral quantization method that respects the symmetries of the model given by the affine and the Weyl-Heisenberg groups, and can produce a wide class of quantum models. The semiclassical approximation is based on the coherent states. The semiclassical dynamics is complex and cannot be solved by analytical methods. We focus on a key qualitative feature of the dynamics, namely, we investigate whether the primordial anisotropic universe can undergo a spontaneous inflationary phase driven by the anisotropic energy combined with semiclassical corrections. The answer to this question provides a useful perspective on the inflationary paradigm as well as on alternative bouncing models.

We discuss the production of primordial black holes in an early matter dominated era, which typically takes place in string inspired early universe cosmological models. In particular, we consider a pre-big-bang scenario (extending previous results regarding formation in the radiation dominated era), where the enhancement of curvature perturbations is induced by a variation of the sound-speed parameter $c_s$ during the string phase of high-curvature inflation. After imposing all relevant observational constraints, we find that the considered class of models is compatible with the production of a large amount of primordial black holes, in the mass range relevant to dark matter, only for a small range of the parameter space. On the other hand, we find that a huge production of light primordial black holes may occur both in such matter dominated era and in the radiation dominated one.

We study the one-loop corrections in the power spectrum of long gravitational waves induced from small scale modes in the models of single field inflation undergoing a phase of ultra-slow-roll (USR). We show that the spectrum of long tensor perturbations are largely unaffected by the loop corrections from the short scalar modes. In particular, the spectrum of long tensor perturbations is insensitive to the sharpness of the transition from the USR phase to the final slow-roll phase. This is in contrast to the case of scalar power spectrum in which the loop corrections can be large for a sharp transition while it is slow-roll suppressed in a mild transition. We study the tensor-scalar-scalar bispectrum in the squeezed limit and demonstrate that the Maldacena consistency condition does hold.

We calculate the post-recombination contribution to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral distortion due to general exotic energy injections, including dark matter (DM) decaying or annihilating to Standard Model particles. Upon subtracting the background distortion that would be present even without such energy injections, we find residual distortions that are still potentially large enough to be detectable by future experiments such as PIXIE. The distortions also have a high-energy spectral feature that is a unique signature of the injection of high-energy particles. We present a calculation of the global ionization history in the presence of decaying dark matter with sub-keV masses, and also show that previous calculations of the global ionization history in the presence of energy injection are not significantly modified by these additional spectral distortions. Our improved treatment of low-energy electrons allows us to extend calculations of the CMB anisotropy constraints for decaying DM down to arbitrarily low masses. We also recast these bounds as constraints on the coupling of axionlike particles to photons.

Decaying or annihilating dark matter and other exotic energy injections can modify the spectrum of the universe’s photon bath, resulting in e.g., new contributions to spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background blackbody spectrum and modifications to the temperature and ionization history of the universe. Here, we present an improved version of the darkhistory code, which is now capable of consistently calculating the spectrum of low-energy photons by properly treating the interactions of these photons with the levels of hydrogen atoms. Other changes to the code include a more detailed treatment of energy deposition by low-energy electrons, and spectral distortions from heating of the intergalactic medium.

We develop a method to perform an untargeted Bayesian search for anisotropic gravitational-wave backgrounds that can efficiently and accurately reconstruct the background intensity map. Our method employs an analytic marginalization of the posterior of the spherical-harmonic components of the intensity map, without assuming the background possesses any specific angular structure. The key idea is that the likelihood function of the spherical-harmonic components is a multivariate Gaussian when the intensity map is expressed as a linear combination of the spherical-harmonic components and the noise is stationary and Gaussian. If a uniform and wide prior of these spherical-harmonic components is prescribed, the marginalized posterior and the Bayes factor can be well approximated by a high-dimensional Gaussian integral. The analytical marginalization allows us to regard the spherical-harmonic components of the intensity map of the background as free parameters and to construct their individual marginalized posterior distribution in a reasonable time, even though many spherical-harmonic components are required. The marginalized posteriors can, in turn, be used to accurately construct the intensity map of the background. By applying our method to mock data, we show that we can recover precisely the angular structures of various simulated anisotropic backgrounds, without assuming prior knowledge of the relation between the spherical-harmonic components predicted by a given model. Our method allows us to bypass the time-consuming numerical sampling of a high-dimensional posterior, leading to a more model-independent and untargeted Bayesian measurement of the angular structures of the gravitational-wave background.

We exploit the great potential offered by Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) to directly decipher the internal composition of neutron stars (NSs) based on their macroscopic properties. By analyzing a set of simulated observations, namely NS radius and tidal deformability, we leverage BNNs as effective tools for inferring the proton fraction and sound speed within NS interiors. To achieve this, several BNNs models were developed upon a dataset of $\sim 25\mathrm{K}$ nuclear equation of state within a relativistic mean-field framework, obtained through Bayesian inference that adheres to minimal low-density constraints. Unlike conventional neural networks, BNNs possess an exceptional quality: they provide a prediction uncertainty measure. To simulate the inherent imperfections present in real-world observations, we have generated four distinct training and testing datasets that replicate specific observational uncertainties. Our initial results demonstrate that BNNs successfully recover the composition with reasonable levels of uncertainty. Furthermore, using mock data prepared with the DD2, a different class of relativistic mean-field model utilized during training, the BNN model effectively retrieves the proton fraction and speed of sound for neutron star matter.

Many particle physics datasets like those generated at colliders are described by continuous coordinates (in contrast to grid points like in an image), respect a number of symmetries (like permutation invariance), and have a stochastic dimensionality. For this reason, standard deep generative models that produce images or at least a fixed set of features are limiting. We introduce a new neural network simulation based on a diffusion model that addresses these limitations named fast point cloud diffusion. We show that our approach can reproduce the complex properties of hadronic jets from proton-proton collisions with competitive precision to other recently proposed models. Additionally, we use a procedure called progressive distillation to accelerate the generation time of our method, which is typically a significant challenge for diffusion models despite their state-of-the-art precision.

We present a new method for numerically computing generic multi-loop Feynman integrals. The method relies on an iterative application of Feynman’s trick for combining two propagators. Each application of Feynman’s trick introduces a simplified Feynman integral topology which depends on a Feynman parameter that should be integrated over. For each integral family, we set up a system of differential equations which we solve in terms of a piecewise collection of generalized series expansions in the Feynman parameter. These generalized series expansions can be efficiently integrated term by term, and segment by segment. This approach leads to a fully algorithmic method for computing Feynman integrals from differential equations, which does not require the manual determination of boundary conditions. Furthermore, the most complicated topology that appears in the method often has less master integrals than the original one. We illustrate the strength of our method with a five-point two-loop integral family.