Qirong Zhu, Eugene Vasiliev, Yuexing Li, Yipeng Jing

The ground-breaking detections of gravitational waves from black hole mergers by LIGO have rekindled interest in primordial black holes (PBHs) and the possibility of dark matter being composed of PBHs. It has been suggested that PBHs of tens of solar masses could serve as dark matter candidates. Recent analytical studies demonstrated that compact ultra-faint dwarf galaxies can serve as a sensitive test for the PBH dark matter hypothesis, since stars in such a halo-dominated system would be heated by the more massive PBHs, their present-day distribution can provide strong constraints on PBH mass. In this study, we further explore this scenario with more detailed calculations, using a combination of dynamical simulations and Bayesian inference methods. The joint evolution of stars and PBH dark matter is followed with a Fokker-Planck code PhaseFlow. We run a large suite of such simulations for different dark matter parameters, then use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to constrain the PBH properties with observations of ultra-faint galaxies. We find that two-body relaxation between the stars and PBH drives up the stellar core size, and increases the central stellar velocity dispersion. Using the observed half-light radius and velocity dispersion of stars in the compact ultra-faint dwarf galaxies as joint constraints, we infer that these dwarfs may have a cored dark matter halo with the central density in the range of 1-2 $\rm{M_{\odot}/pc^3}$, and that the PBHs may have a mass range of 2-14 $\rm{M_{\odot}}$ if they constitute all or a substantial fraction of the dark matter.

Rafael C. Nunes, Alexander Bonilla

We investigate the observational constraints on the cosmic neutrino background (CNB) given by the extended $\Lambda$CDM scenario ($\Lambda$CDM $+ N_{\rm eff} + \sum m_{\nu} + c^2_{\rm eff} + c^2_{\rm vis} + \xi_{\nu}$) using the latest observational data from Planck CMB (temperature power spectrum, low-polarisation and lensing reconstruction), baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), the new recent local value of the Hubble constant from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and information of the abundance of galaxy clusters (GC). We study the constraints on the CNB background using CMB + BAO + HST data with and without the GC data. We find $\Delta N_{\rm eff} = 0.614 \pm 0.26$ at 68\% CL when the GC data are added in the analysis. We do not find significant deviation for sound speed in the CNB rest frame. We also analyze the particular case $\Lambda$CDM $+ N_{\rm eff} + \sum m_{\nu} + \xi_{\nu}$ with the observational data. Within this scenario, we find $\Delta N_{\rm eff} = 0.60 \pm 0.28$ at 68\% CL. In both the scenarios, no mean deviations are found for the degeneracy parameter.

Takaaki Nomura, Hiroshi Okada

We propose a model with the left-handed and right-handed continuous Abelian gauge symmetry; $U(1)_L\times U(1)_R$. Then three right-handed neutrinos are naturally required to achieve $U(1)_R$ anomaly cancellations, while several mirror fermions are also needed to do $U(1)_L$ anomaly cancellations. Then we formulate the model, and discuss its testability of the new gauge interactions at collider physics such as the large hadron collider (LHC) and the international linear collider (ILC). In particular, we can investigate chiral structure of the interactions by the analysis of forward-backward asymmetry based on polarized beam at the ILC.

Brando Bellazzini, Francesco Riva, Javi Serra, Francesco Sgarlata

We constrain effective field theories by going beyond the familiar positivity bounds that follow from unitarity, analyticity, and crossing symmetry of the scattering amplitudes. As interesting examples, we discuss the implications of the bounds for the Galileon and ghost-free massive gravity. The latter is ruled out by our theoretical bounds when combined with the experimental constraints on the graviton mass and from fifth-force experiments, given the impossibility to consistently implement the Vainshtein mechanism. We also show that the Galileon theory must contain symmetry-breaking terms that are at most one-loop suppressed compared to the symmetry-preserving ones.

Chao-Qiang Geng, Hiroshi Okada

We propose a model with an $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge symmetry, in which small neutrino masses, dark matter and the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe can be simultaneously explained. In particular, the neutrino masses are generated radiatively, while the matter-antimatter asymmetry is led by the leptogenesis mechanism, at TeV scale. We also explore allowed regions of the model parameters and discuss some phenomenological effects including lepton flavor violating processes.

B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams, T. Adams, P. Addesso, R. X. Adhikari, V. B. Adya, C. Affeldt, M. Afrough, B. Agarwal, M. Agathos, K. Agatsuma, N. Aggarwal, O. D. Aguiar, L. Aiello, A. Ain, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, A. Allocca, P. A. Altin, A. Amato, A. Ananyeva, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, S. V. Angelova, S. Antier, S. Appert, K. Arai, M. C. Araya, J. S. Areeda, N. Arnaud, K. G. Arun, S. Ascenzi, G. Ashton, M. Ast, S. M. Aston, P. Astone, D. V. Atallah, P. Aufmuth, C. Aulbert, K. AultONeal, C. Austin, A. Avila-Alvarez, S. Babak, P. Bacon, M. K. M. Bader, S. Bae, P. T. Baker, F. Baldaccini, G. Ballardin, S. W. Ballmer, S. Banagiri, J. C. Barayoga, S. E. Barclay, B. C. Barish, D. Barker, K. Barkett, F. Barone, B. Barr, L. Barsotti, M. Barsuglia, et al. (1249 additional authors not shown)

The detection of GW170817 in both gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves heralds the age of gravitational-wave multi-messenger astronomy. On 17 August 2017 the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors observed GW170817, a strong signal from the merger of a binary neutron-star system. Less than 2 seconds after the merger, a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) was detected within a region of the sky consistent with the LIGO-Virgo-derived location of the gravitational-wave source. This sky region was subsequently observed by optical astronomy facilities, resulting in the identification of an optical transient signal within $\sim 10$ arcsec of the galaxy NGC 4993. These multi-messenger observations allow us to use GW170817 as a standard siren, the gravitational-wave analog of an astronomical standard candle, to measure the Hubble constant. This quantity, which represents the local expansion rate of the Universe, sets the overall scale of the Universe and is of fundamental importance to cosmology. Our measurement combines the distance to the source inferred purely from the gravitational-wave signal with the recession velocity inferred from measurements of the redshift using electromagnetic data. This approach does not require any form of cosmic "distance ladder;" the gravitational wave analysis can be used to estimate the luminosity distance out to cosmological scales directly, without the use of intermediate astronomical distance measurements. We determine the Hubble constant to be $70.0^{+12.0}_{-8.0} \, \mathrm{km} \, \mathrm{s}^{-1} \, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ (maximum a posteriori and 68% credible interval). This is consistent with existing measurements, while being completely independent of them. Additional standard-siren measurements from future gravitational-wave sources will provide precision constraints of this important cosmological parameter.

Xavier Bekaert, Jihad Mourad, Mojtaba Najafizadeh

Action principles for the single and double valued continuous-spin representations of the Poincare group have been recently proposed in a Segal-like formulation. We address three related issues: First, we explain how to obtain these actions directly from the Fronsdal-like and Fang-Fronsdal-like equations by solving the traceless constraints in Fourier space. Second, we introduce a current, similar to the one of Berends, Burgers and Van Dam, which is bilinear in a pair of scalar matter fields, to which the bosonic continuous-spin field can couple minimally. Third, we investigate the current exchange mediated by a continuous-spin particle obtained from this action principle and investigate whether it propagates the right degrees of freedom, and whether it reproduces the known result for massless higher-spin fields in the helicity limit.

Jeremy Sakstein, Bhuvnesh Jain

The LIGO/VIRGO collaboration has recently announced the detection of gravitational waves from a neutron star-neutron star merger (GW170817) and the simultaneous measurement of an optical counterpart (the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A). The close arrival time of the gravitational and electromagnetic waves limits the difference in speed of photons and gravitons to be less than about one part in $10^{15}$. This has three important implications for cosmological scalar-tensor gravity theories that are often touted as dark energy candidates and alternatives to $\Lambda$CDM. First, for the most general scalar-tensor theories---beyond Horndeski models---three of the five parameters appearing in the effective theory of dark energy can now be severely constrained on astrophysical scales; we present the results of combining the new gravity wave results with galaxy cluster observations. Second, the combination with the lack of strong equivalence principle violations exhibited by the supermassive black hole in M87, constrains the quartic galileon model to be cosmologically irrelevant. Finally, we derive a new bound on the disformal coupling to photons that implies that such couplings are irrelevant for the cosmic evolution of the field.

Claudia de Rham, Scott Melville, Andrew J. Tolley

Theories such as massive Galileons and massive gravity can satisfy the presently known improved positivity bounds provided they are weakly coupled. We discuss the form of the EFT Lagrangian for a weakly coupled UV completion of massive gravity which closely parallels the massive Galileon, and perform the power counting of corrections to the scattering amplitude and the positivity bounds. The Vainshtein mechanism which is central to the phenomenological viability of massive gravity is entirely consistent with weak coupling since it is classical in nature. We highlight that the only implication of the improved positivity constraints is that EFT cutoff is lower than previous assumed, and discuss the observable implications, emphasizing that these bounds are not capable of ruling out the model contrary to previous statements in the literature.

Sibel Boran, Shantanu Desai, Emre Kahya, Richard Woodard

On August 17, 2017 the LIGO interferometers detected the gravitational wave (GW) signal (GW170817) from the coalescence of binary neutron stars. This signal was also simultaneously seen throughout the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum from radio waves to gamma-rays. We point out that this simultaneous detection of GW and EM signals rules out a class of modified gravity theories, which dispense with the need for dark matter. This simultaneous observation also provides the first ever test of Einstein's Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) between gravitons and photons. We calculate the Shapiro time delay due to the gravitational potential of the total dark matter distribution along the line of sight (complementary to the calculation in arXiv:1710.05834) to be about 1000 days. Using this estimate for the Shapiro delay and from the time difference of 1.7 seconds between the GW signal and gamma-rays, we can constrain violations of WEP using the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameter $\gamma$, and is given by $|\gamma_{\rm {GW}}-\gamma_{\rm{EM}}|<3.9 \times 10^{-8}$.