Yu Sang, Hai-Nan Lin, Zhe Chang

Einstein's equivalence principle (EEP) can be tested by the time delay between photons with different energies passing through a gravitational field. As one of the most energetic explosions in the Universe, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) provide an effective tool to test the accuracy of EEP. In this paper, we use the continuous spectra of 20 short GRBs detected by the Swift/BAT to test the validity of EEP. Taking the duration of GRBs as the upper limit of the time delay induced by EEP violation (assuming that the high energy photons arrive later than the low energy photons), the difference of the parameterized post-Newtonian parameter is constrained with high accuracy. The strictest constraint, $|\gamma(150~{\rm keV})-\gamma(15~{\rm keV})|<5.59\times 10^{-10}$ from GRB 150101B, is about $1\sim 2$ orders of magnitude tighter than previous constraints. Moreover, our result is more statistically significant than previous results because we use the continuous spectra instead of isolated photons.

Nikita Blinov, Anson Hook

Many theories require augmenting the Standard Model with additional scalar fields with large order one couplings. We present a new solution to the hierarchy problem for these scalar fields. We explore parity- and $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetric theories where the Standard Model Higgs potential has two vacua. The parity or $\mathbb{Z}_2$ copy of the Higgs lives in the minimum far from the origin while our Higgs occupies the minimum near the origin of the potential. This approach results in a theory with multiple light scalar fields but with only a single hierarchy problem, since the bare mass is tied to the Higgs mass by a discrete symmetry. The new scalar does not have a new hierarchy problem associated with it because its expectation value and mass are generated by dimensional transmutation of the scalar quartic coupling. The location of the second Higgs minimum is not a free parameter, but is rather a function of the matter content of the theory. As a result, these theories are extremely predictive. We develop this idea in the context of a solution to the strong CP problem. We show this mechanism postdicts the top Yukawa to be within $1 \sigma$ of the currently measured value and predicts scalar color octets with masses in the range 9-200 TeV.

Rampei Kimura, Takahiro Tanaka, Kazuhiro Yamamoto, Yasuho Yamashita

We investigate gravitational Cherenkov radiation in a healthy branch of background solutions in the ghost-free bigravity model. In this model, because of the modification of dispersion relations, each polarization mode can possess subluminal phase velocities, and the gravitational Cherenkov radiation could be potentially emitted from a relativistic particle. In the present paper, we derive conditions for the process of the gravitational Cherenkov radiation to occur and estimate the energy emission rate for each polarization mode. We found that the gravitational Cherenkov radiation emitted even from an ultrahigh energy cosmic ray is sufficiently suppressed for the graviton's effective mass less than $100\,{\rm eV}$, and the bigravity model with dark matter coupled to the hidden metric is therefore consistent with observations of high energy cosmic rays.

R. Adam, N. Aghanim, M. Ashdown, J. Aumont, C. Baccigalupi, M. Ballardini, A. J. Banday, R. B. Barreiro, N. Bartolo, S. Basak, R. Battye, K. Benabed, J.-P. Bernard, M. Bersanelli, P. Bielewicz, J. J. Bock, A. Bonaldi, L. Bonavera, J. R. Bond, J. Borrill, F. R. Bouchet, M. Bucher, C. Burigana, E. Calabrese, J.-F. Cardoso, J. Carron, H. C. Chiang, L. P. L. Colombo, C. Combet, B. Comis, A. Coulais, B. P. Crill, A. Curto, F. Cuttaia, R. J. Davis, P. de Bernardis, A. de Rosa, G. de Zotti, J. Delabrouille, E. Di Valentino, C. Dickinson, J. M. Diego, O. Doré, M. Douspis, A. Ducout, X. Dupac, F. Elsner, T. A. Enßlin, H. K. Eriksen, E. Falgarone, Y. Fantaye, F. Finelli, F. Forastieri, M. Frailis, A. A. Fraisse, E. Franceschi, A. Frolov, S. Galeotta, S. Galli, K. Ganga, et al. (105 additional authors not shown)

We investigate constraints on cosmic reionization extracted from the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We combine the Planck CMB anisotropy data in temperature with the low-multipole polarization data to fit {\Lambda}CDM models with various parameterizations of the reionization history. We obtain a Thomson optical depth {\tau}=0.058 +/- 0.012 for the commonly adopted instantaneous reionization model. This confirms, with only data from CMB anisotropies, the low value suggested by combining Planck 2015 results with other data sets and also reduces the uncertainties. We reconstruct the history of the ionization fraction using either a symmetric or an asymmetric model for the transition between the neutral and ionized phases. To determine better constraints on the duration of the reionization process, we also make use of measurements of the amplitude of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect using additional information from the high resolution Atacama Cosmology Telescope and South Pole Telescope experiments. The average redshift at which reionization occurs is found to lie between z=7.8 and 8.8, depending on the model of reionization adopted. Using kSZ constraints and a redshift-symmetric reionization model, we find an upper limit to the width of the reionization period of {\Delta}z < 2.8. In all cases, we find that the Universe is ionized at less than the 10% level at redshifts above z~10. This suggests that an early onset of reionization is strongly disfavoured by the Planck data. We show that this result also reduces the tension between CMB-based analyses and constraints from other astrophysical sources.

N. Aghanim, M. Ashdown, J. Aumont, C. Baccigalupi, M. Ballardini, A. J. Banday, R. B. Barreiro, N. Bartolo, S. Basak, R. Battye, K. Benabed, J.-P. Bernard, M. Bersanelli, P. Bielewicz, J. J. Bock, A. Bonaldi, L. Bonavera, J. R. Bond, J. Borrill, F. R. Bouchet, F. Boulanger, M. Bucher, C. Burigana, R. C. Butler, E. Calabrese, J.-F. Cardoso, J. Carron, A. Challinor, H. C. Chiang, L. P. L. Colombo, C. Combet, B. Comis, A. Coulais, B. P. Crill, A. Curto, F. Cuttaia, R. J. Davis, P. de Bernardis, A. de Rosa, G. de Zotti, J. Delabrouille, J.-M. Delouis, E. Di Valentino, C. Dickinson, J. M. Diego, O. Doré, M. Douspis, A. Ducout, X. Dupac, G. Efstathiou, F. Elsner, T. A. Enßlin, H. K. Eriksen, E. Falgarone, Y. Fantaye, F. Finelli, F. Forastieri, M. Frailis, A. A. Fraisse, et al. (113 additional authors not shown)

This paper describes the identification, modelling, and removal of previously unexplained systematic effects in the polarization data of the Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) on large angular scales, including new mapmaking and calibration procedures, new and more complete end-to-end simulations, and a set of robust internal consistency checks on the resulting maps. These maps, at 100, 143, 217, and 353 GHz, are early versions of those that will be released in final form later in 2016. The improvements allow us to determine the cosmic reionization optical depth $\tau$ using, for the first time, the low-multipole $EE$ data from HFI, reducing significantly the central value and uncertainty, and hence the upper limit. Two different likelihood procedures are used to constrain $\tau$ from two estimators of the CMB $E$- and $B$-mode angular power spectra at 100 and 143 GHz, after debiasing the spectra from a small remaining systematic contamination. These all give fully consistent results. A further consistency test is performed using cross-correlations derived from the Low Frequency Instrument maps of the Planck 2015 data release and the new HFI data. For this purpose, end-to-end analyses of systematic effects from the two instruments are used to demonstrate the near independence of their dominant systematic error residuals. The tightest result comes from the HFI-based $\tau$ posterior distribution using the maximum likelihood power spectrum estimator, giving a value $0.055\pm 0.009$. In a companion paper these results are discussed in the context of the best-fit Planck $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model and recent models of reionization.

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.