Ryusuke Jinno, Masahiro Takimoto

We consider gravitational wave production by bubble collisions during a cosmological first-order phase transition. In the literature, such spectra have been estimated by simulating the bubble dynamics, under so-called thin-wall and envelope approximations in a flat background metric. However, we show that, within these assumptions, the gravitational wave spectrum can be estimated in an analytic way. Our estimation is based on the observation that the two-point correlator of the energy-momentum tensor $\langle T(x)T(y)\rangle$ can be expressed analytically under these assumptions. Though the final expressions for the spectrum contain a few integrations that cannot be calculated explicitly, we can easily estimate it numerically. As a result, it is found that the most of the contributions to the spectrum come from single-bubble contribution to the correlator, and in addition the fall-off of the spectrum at high frequencies is found to be proportional to $f^{-1}$. We also provide fitting formulae for the spectrum.

Anna Ijjas, Justin Ripley, Paul J. Steinhardt

In the context of Einstein gravity, if the null energy condition (NEC) is satisfied, the energy density in expanding space-times always decreases while in contracting space-times the energy density grows and the universe eventually collapses into a singularity. In particular, no non-singular bounce is possible. It is, though, an open question if this energy condition can be violated in a controlled way, i.e., without introducing pathologies, such as unstable negative-energy states or an imaginary speed of sound. In this paper, we will re-examine the claim that the recently proposed mimetic scenario can violate the NEC without pathologies. We show that mimetic cosmology is prone to gradient instabilities even in cases when the NEC is satisfied (except for trivial examples). Most interestingly, the source of the instability is always the Einstein-Hilbert term in the action. The matter stress-energy component does not contribute spatial gradient terms but instead makes the problematic curvature modes dynamical. We also show that mimetic cosmology can be understood as a singular limit of known, well-behaved theories involving higher-derivative kinetic terms and discuss ways of removing the instability.

Alvise Raccanelli, Ely D. Kovetz, Simeon Bird, Ilias Cholis, Julian B. Munoz, ((1) Johns Hopkins University)

We investigate a possible method for determining the progenitors of black hole (BH) mergers observed via their gravitational wave (GW) signal. We argue that measurements of the cross-correlation of the GW events with overlapping galaxy catalogs may provide an additional tool in determining if BH mergers trace the stellar mass of the Universe, as would be expected from mergers of the endpoints of stellar evolution. If on the other hand the BHs are of primordial origin, as has been recently suggested, their merging would be preferentially hosted by lower biased objects, and thus have a lower cross-correlation with luminous galaxies. Here we forecast the expected precision of the cross-correlation measurement for current and future GW detectors such as LIGO and the Einstein Telescope. We then predict how well these instruments can distinguish the model that identifies high-mass BH-BH mergers as the merger of primordial black holes that constitute the dark matter in the Universe from more traditional astrophysical sources.

Nazzareno Mandolesi, Diego Molinari, Alessandro Gruppuso, Carlo Burigana, Paolo Natoli

We present a brief review of the main results of the Planck 2015 release describing the new calibration of the data, showing the maps delivered in temperature and, for the first time, in polarization, the cosmological parameters and the lensing potential. In addition we present a forecast of the Galactic foregrounds in polarization. Future satellite experiments will have the challenge to remove the foregrounds with great accuracy to be able to measure a tensor-to-scalar ratio of less than 0.01.

Gia Dvali, Alexander Gußmann

We show that the existence of black holes with classical skyrmion hair invalidates standard proofs that global charges, such as the baryon number, cannot be conserved by a black hole. By carefully analyzing the standard arguments based on a Gedankenexperiment in which a black hole is seemingly-unable to return the baryon number that it swallowed, we identify inconsistencies in this reasoning, which does not take into the account neither the existence of skyrmion black holes nor the baryon/skyrmion correspondence. We then perform a refined Gedankenexperiment by incorporating the new knowledge and show that no contradiction with conservation of baryon number takes place at any stage of black hole evolution. Our analysis also indicates no conflict between semi-classical black holes and the existence of baryonic gauge interaction arbitrarily-weaker than gravity. Next, we study classical cross sections of a minimally-coupled massless probe scalar field scattered by a skyrmion black hole. We investigate how the skyrmion hair manifests itself by comparing this cross section with the analogous cross section caused by a Schwarzschild black hole which has the same ADM mass as the skyrmion black hole. Here we find an order-one difference in the positions of the characteristic peaks in the cross sections. The peaks are shifted to smaller scattering angles when the skyrmion hair is present. This comes from the fact that the skyrmion hair changes the near horizon geometry of the black hole when compared to a Schwarzschild black hole with same ADM mass. We keep the study of this second aspect general so that the qualitative results which we obtain can also be applied to black holes with classical hair of different kind.

Lehman H. Garrison, Daniel J. Eisenstein, Douglas Ferrer, Marc V. Metchnik, Philip A. Pinto

In cosmological $N$-body simulations, the representation of dark matter as discrete "macroparticles" suppresses the growth of structure. This effect occurs even on scales many times larger than the particle spacing; for example, modes above $k_{\rm Nyquist}/4$ inherit a 1 to 3% error in the matter power spectrum at $z=1$. Particle linear theory (PLT) (Marcos et al. 2006) analytically describes this effect for particle lattices and reveals that the continuum growing modes are not the proper lattice growing modes, which excites transient power. We develop initial conditions with the correct growing modes and additionally rescale these modes to account for growth suppression. We also introduce a scheme for computing second-order Lagrangian perturbation theory (2LPT) from direct force calculations without using Fourier transforms. We test rescaling and our 2LPT by comparing the $z=1$ haloes and power spectra with those of an oversampled reference simulation. The combination of rescaling and 2LPT achieves 1% accuracy in the power spectrum down to $k_{\rm Nyquist}$, versus $k_{\rm Nyquist}/4$ without rescaling or $k_{\rm Nyquist}/13$ without 2LPT. Rescaling also corrects a 5 to 10% deficit of haloes below 500 particles, just as 2LPT corrects an equal deficit above 1000 particles. Similarly, the combination of 2LPT and rescaling produces the most accurate (sub-percent) halo two-point correlation functions. We anticipate that our 2LPT will be useful for large simulations where FFTs are expensive and that rescaling will be useful for suites of medium-resolution simulations used, for example, in cosmic emulators and galaxy survey mock catalogs. Code to generate initial conditions is available at https://github.com/lgarrison/zeldovich-PLT.