Kendrick M. Smith, Simone Ferraro

Upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments will measure temperature fluctuations on small angular scales with unprecedented precision. Small-scale CMB fluctuations are a mixture of late-time effects: gravitational lensing, Doppler shifting of CMB photons by moving electrons (the kSZ effect), and residual foregrounds. We propose a new statistic which separates the kSZ signal from the others, and also allows the kSZ signal to be decomposed in redshift bins. The decomposition extends to high redshift, and does not require external datasets such as galaxy surveys. In particular, the high-redshift signal from patchy reionization can be cleanly isolated, enabling future CMB experiments to make high-significance and qualitatively new measurements of the reionization era.

Pasquale Bosso, Saurya Das

Various models of quantum gravity suggest a modification of the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, to the so-called Generalized Uncertainty Principle, between position and momentum. In this work we show how this modification influences the theory of angular momentum in Quantum Mechanics. In particular, we compute Planck scale corrections to angular momentum eigenvalues, the Hydrogen atom spectrum, the Stern-Gerlach experiment and the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients. We also examine effects of the Generalized Uncertainty Principle on multi-particle systems.

Thomas Becher

I summarize the theory talks presented at the 50 year anniversary conference. The talks covered a wide range of topics, but common threads included next-to-next-to-leading order predictions for many 2 -> 2 processes, beyond QCD lattice simulations, work on the set of persistent flavor physics anomalies, and discussions of the significance and possible explanations of the diphoton excess at 750 GeV.

V. Bonvin, F. Courbin, S. H. Suyu, P. J. Marshall, C. E. Rusu, D. Sluse, M. Tewes, K. C. Wong, T. Collett, C. D. Fassnacht, T. Treu, M. W. Auger, S. Hilbert, L. V. E. Koopmans, G. Meylan, N. Rumbaugh, A. Sonnenfeld, C. Spiniello

We present a new measurement of the Hubble Constant H0 and other cosmological parameters based on the joint analysis of three multiply-imaged quasar systems with measured gravitational time delays. First, we measure the time delay of HE0435-1223 from 13-year light curves obtained as part of the COSMOGRAIL project. Companion papers detail the modeling of the main deflectors and line of sight effects, and how these data are combined to determine the time-delay distance of HE 0435-1223. Crucially, the measurements are carried out blindly with respect to cosmological parameters in order to avoid confirmation bias. We then combine the time-delay distance of HE0435-1223 with previous measurements from systems B1608+656 and RXJ1131-1231 to create a Time Delay Strong Lensing probe (TDSL). In flat $\Lambda$CDM with free matter and energy density, we find $H_0$ = 71.9 +2.4 -3.0 km/s/Mpc and $\Omega_{\Lambda}$ = 0.62 +0.24 -0.35 . This measurement is completely independent of, and in agreement with, the local distance ladder measurements of H0. We explore more general cosmological models combining TDSL with other probes, illustrating its power to break degeneracies inherent to other methods. The TDSL and Planck joint constraints are $H_0$ = 69.2 +1.4 -2.2 km/s/Mpc, $\Omega_{\Lambda}$ = 0.70 +0.01 -0.01 and $\Omega_k$ = 0.003 +0.004 -0.006 in open $\Lambda$CDM and $H_0$ = 79.0 +4.4 -4.2 km/s/Mpc, $\Omega_{de}$ = 0.77 +0.02 -0.03 and $w$ = -1.38 +0.14 -0.16 in flat $w$CDM. Combined with Planck and Baryon Acoustic Oscillation data, when relaxing the constraints on the numbers of relativistic species we find $N_{eff}$ = 3.34 +0.21 -0.21 and when relaxing the total mass of neutrinos we find 0.182 eV. In an open $w$CDM in combination with Planck and CMB lensing we find $H_0$ = 77.9 +5.0 -4.2 km/s/Mpc, $\Omega_{de}$ = 0.77 +0.03 -0.03, $\Omega_k$ = -0.003 +0.004 -0.004 and $w$ = -1.37 +0.18 -0.23.

Stefan Antusch, Francesco Cefala, Stefano Orani

We investigate the production of gravitational waves during preheating after inflation in the common case of field potentials that are asymmetric around the minimum. In particular, we study the impact of oscillons, comparatively long lived and spatially localized regions where a scalar field (e.g. the inflaton) oscillates with large amplitude. Contrary to a previous study, which considered a symmetric potential, we find that oscillons in asymmetric potentials associated with a phase transition can generate a pronounced peak in the spectrum of gravitational waves, that largely exceeds the linear preheating spectrum. We discuss the possible implications of this enhanced amplitude of gravitational waves. For instance, for low scale inflation models, the contribution from the oscillons can strongly enhance the observation prospects at current and future gravitational wave detectors.