jtd55

Nature news article about:

An absorption profile centred at 78 megahertz in the sky-averaged spectrum [Nature Link] [PDF]

Possible interaction between baryons and dark-matter particles revealed by the first stars [Nature Link] [PDF]

jtd55

[Nature Link] [PDF]

Authors: Judd D. Bowman, Alan E. E. Rogers, Raul A. Monsalve, Thomas J. Mozdzen & Nivedita Mahesh

Abstract:

After stars formed in the early Universe, their ultraviolet light is expected, eventually, to have penetrated the primordial hydrogen gas and altered the excitation state of its 21-centimetre hyperfine line. This alteration would cause the gas to absorb photons from the cosmic microwave background, producing a spectral distortion that should be observable today at radio frequencies of less than 200 megahertz. Here we report the detection of a flattened absorption profile in the sky-averaged radio spectrum, which is centred at a frequency of 78 megahertz and has a best-fitting fullwidth at half-maximum of 19 megahertz and an amplitude of 0.5 kelvin. The profile is largely consistent with expectations for the 21-centimetre signal induced by early stars; however, the best-fitting amplitude of the profile is more than a factor of two greater than the largest predictions. This discrepancy suggests that either the primordial gas was much colder than expected or the background radiation temperature was hotter than expected. Astrophysical phenomena (such as radiation from stars and stellar remnants) are unlikely to account for this discrepancy; of the proposed extensions to the standard model of cosmology and particle physics, only cooling of the gas as a result of interactions between dark matter and baryons seems to explain the observed amplitude. The lowfrequency edge of the observed profile indicates that stars existed and had produced a background of Lyman-α photons by 180million years after the Big Bang. The high-frequency edge indicates that the gas was heated to above the radiation temperature less than 100million years later.

jtd55

[Nature Link] [PDF]

Author: Rennan Barkana

Abstract:

The cosmic radio-frequency spectrum is expected to show a strong absorption signal corresponding to the 21-centimetre-wavelength transition of atomic hydrogen around redshift, which arises from Lyman-α radiation from some of the earliest stars. By observing this 21-centimetre signal—either its sky-averaged spectrum or maps of its fluctuations, obtained using radio interferometers —we can obtain information about cosmic dawn, the era when the first astrophysical sources of light were formed. The recent detection of the global 21-centimetre spectrum reveals a stronger absorption than the maximum predicted by existing models, at a confidence level of 3.8 standard deviations. Here we report that this absorption can be explained by the combination of radiation from the first stars and excess cooling of the cosmic gas induced by its interaction with dark matter. Our analysis indicates that the spatial fluctuations of the 21-centimetre signal at cosmic dawn could be an order of magnitude larger than previously expected and that the dark-matter particle is no heavier than several proton masses, well below the commonly predicted mass of weakly interacting massive particles. Our analysis also confirms that dark matter is highly non-relativistic and at least moderately cold, and primordial velocities predicted by models of warm dark matter are potentially detectable. These results indicate that 21-centimetre cosmology can be used as a dark-matter probe.

Sownak Bose, Alis J. Deason, Durham), Carlos S. Frenk, Durham)

The (re)ionisation of hydrogen in the early universe has a profound effect on the formation of the first galaxies: by raising the gas temperature and pressure, it prevents gas from cooling into small haloes thus affecting the abundance of present-day small galaxies. Using the Galform semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, we show that two key aspects of the reionisation process -- when reionisation takes place and the characteristic scale below which it suppresses galaxy formation -- are imprinted in the luminosity function of dwarf galaxies. We focus on the luminosity function of satellites of galaxies like the Milky Way and the LMC, which is easier to measure than the luminosity function of the dwarf population as a whole. Our results show that the details of these two characteristic properties of reionisation determine the shape of the luminosity distribution of satellites in a unique way, and is largely independent of the other details of the galaxy formation model. Our models generically predict a bimodality in the distribution of satellites as a function of luminosity: a population of faint satellites and population of bright satellites separated by a 'valley' forged by reionisation. We show that this bimodal distribution is present at high statistical significance in the combined satellite luminosity function of the Milky Way and M31. We make predictions for the expected number of satellites around LMC-mass dwarfs where the bimodality may also be measurable in future observational programmes. Our preferred model predicts a total of $26 \pm 10$ (68 per cent confidence) satellites brighter than ${\rm M}_V=0$ in LMC-mass systems.

Felix Kahlhoefer, Florian Reindl, Karoline Schäffner, Kai Schmidt-Hoberg, Sebastian Wild

The relative sensitivity of different direct detection experiments depends sensitively on the astrophysical distribution and particle physics nature of dark matter, prohibiting a model-independent comparison. The situation changes fundamentally if two experiments employ the same target material. We show that in this case one can compare measurements of an annual modulation and exclusion bounds on the total rate while making no assumptions on astrophysics and no (or only very general) assumptions on particle physics. In particular, we show that the dark matter interpretation of the DAMA/LIBRA signal can be conclusively tested with COSINUS, a future experiment employing the same target material. We find that if COSINUS excludes a dark matter scattering rate of about $0.01\,\text{kg}^{-1}\,\text{days}^{-1}$ with an energy threshold of $1.8\,$keV and resolution of $0.2\,$keV, it will rule out all explanations of DAMA/LIBRA in terms of dark matter scattering off sodium and/or iodine.

LIGO Scientific Collaboration, 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, 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, et al. (1038 additional authors not shown)

The detection of gravitational waves with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo has enabled novel tests of general relativity, including direct study of the polarization of gravitational waves. While general relativity allows for only two tensor gravitational-wave polarizations, general metric theories can additionally predict two vector and two scalar polarizations. The polarization of gravitational waves is encoded in the spectral shape of the stochastic gravitational-wave background, formed by the superposition of cosmological and individually-unresolved astrophysical sources. Using data recorded by Advanced LIGO during its first observing run, we search for a stochastic background of generically-polarized gravitational waves. We find no evidence for a background of any polarization, and place the first direct bounds on the contributions of vector and scalar polarizations to the stochastic background. Under log-uniform priors for the energy in each polarization, we limit the energy-densities of tensor, vector, and scalar modes at 95% credibility to $\Omega^T_0 < 5.6 \times 10^{-8}$, $\Omega^V_0 < 6.4\times 10^{-8}$, and $\Omega^S_0 < 1.1\times 10^{-7}$ at a reference frequency $f_0 = 25$ Hz.

Banibrata Mukhopadhyay, Soumya Kanti Ganguly

We show Zeeman-like splitting in the energy of spinors propagating in the background gravitational field, analogous to the spinors in electromagnetic field, otherwise termed as Gravitational Zeeman Effect. These spinors are also found to acquire a geometric phase, in a similar way as they do in the presence of magnetic fields. Based on this result, we investigate geometric phases acquired by neutrinos propagating in a strong gravitational field. We also explore entanglement of neutrino states due to gravity which could induce neutrino-antineutrino oscillation in the first place. We show that entangled states also acquire geometric phases which are determined by the relative strength between gravitational field and neutrino masses.

Dylan P. Tweed, Gary A. Mamon, Trinh X. Thuan, Andrea Cattaneo, Avishai Dekel, Nicola Menci, Francesco Calura, Jospeh Silk

In the local Universe, the existence of very young galaxies (VYGs), having formed at least half their stellar mass in the last 1 Gyr, is debated. We predict the present-day fraction of VYGs among central galaxies as a function of galaxy stellar mass. For this, we apply to high mass resolution Monte-Carlo halo merger trees (MCHMTs) three (one) analytical models of galaxy formation, where the ratio of stellar to halo mass (mass growth rate) is a function of halo mass and redshift. Galaxy merging is delayed until orbital decay by dynamical friction. With starbursts associated with halo mergers, our models predict typically one percent of VYGs up to galaxy masses of $10^{10}$ M$_\odot$, falling rapidly at higher masses, and VYGs are usually associated with recent major mergers of their haloes. Without these starbursts, two of the models have VYG fractions reduced by 1 or 2 dex at low or intermediate stellar masses, and VYGs are rarely associated with major halo mergers. In comparison, the state-of-the-art semi-analytical model (SAM) of Henriques et al. produces only 0.01% of VYGs at intermediate masses. Finally, the Menci et al. SAM run on MCMHTs with Warm Dark Matter cosmology generates 10 times more VYGs at masses below $10^8$ M$_\odot$ than when run with Cold Dark Matter. The wide range in these VYG fractions illustrates the usefulness of VYGs to constrain both galaxy formation and cosmological models.

Vassilios Mewes, Yosef Zlochower, Manuela Campanelli, Ian Ruchlin, Zachariah B. Etienne, Thomas W. Baumgarte

Numerical relativity codes that do not make assumptions on spatial symmetries most commonly adopt Cartesian coordinates. While these coordinates have many attractive features, spherical coordinates are much better suited to take advantage of approximate symmetries in a number of astrophysical objects, including single stars, black holes and accretion disks. While the appearance of coordinate singularities often spoils numerical relativity simulations in spherical coordinates, especially in the absence of any symmetry assumptions, it has recently been demonstrated that these problems can be avoided if the coordinate singularities are handled analytically. This is possible with the help of a reference-metric version of the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura formulation together with a proper rescaling of tensorial quantities. In this paper we report on an implementation of this formalism in the Einstein Toolkit. We adapt the Einstein Toolkit infrastructure, originally designed for Cartesian coordinates, to handle spherical coordinates, by providing appropriate boundary conditions at both inner and outer boundaries. We perform numerical simulations for a disturbed Kerr black hole, extract the gravitational wave signal, and demonstrate that the noise in these signals is orders of magnitude smaller when computed on spherical grids rather than Cartesian grids. With the public release of our new Einstein Toolkit thorns, our methods for numerical relativity in spherical coordinates will become available to the entire numerical relativity community.

J. A. Rueda, R. Ruffini, Y. Wang, U. Barres de Almeida, C. L. Bianco, Y. Chen, R. V. Lobato, C. Maia, D. Primorac, R. Moradi, J. F. Rodriguez

The LIGO-Virgo Collaboration has announced the detection GW170817 and associated it with GRB 1709817A observed by the Fermi satellite and with the kilonova AT 2017gfo. We compare and contrast in this article the gravitational-wave and the electromagnetic emission associated with the sources GW170817A-GRB 170817A-AT 2017gfo with the ones observed in neutron star-neutron star (NS-NS) mergers, leading to a massive NS (the short gamma-ray flashes -- S-GRFs), the ones leading to a black hole (the short gamma-ray bursts -- S-GRBs) and we also consider the case of NS-white dwarf mergers (NS-WD; the gamma-ray flashes -- GRFs). As a byproduct of our analysis, we evidence a possible kilonova signature in S-GRBs associated with GRB 090510A, after we recall the examples occurring in S-GRF and GRFs. We show that the gravitational-wave emission of GW170817A could be compatible with the ones expected from S-GRFs and GRFs, but their gamma- and X-ray emissions are incompatible. With respect to GRFs, neither the gravitational-wave emission nor the X and gamma-rays are compatible. The expected rate of the particular kilonova AT 2017gfo excludes its association with any of the above subclasses and points to the existence of a new subclass of less energetic, numerous systems with softer spectra, possibly leading to the formation of a single spinning NS.

Ismael Delgado Gaspar, Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Roberto A. Sussman, Israel Quiros

We examine the gravitational collapse and black hole formation of multiple non--spherical configurations constructed from Szekeres dust models with positive spatial curvature that smoothly match to a Schwarzschild exterior. These configurations are made of an almost spherical central core region surrounded by a network of "pancake-like" overdensities and voids with spatial positions prescribed through standard initial conditions. We show that a full collapse into a focusing singularity, without shell crossings appearing before the formation of an apparent horizon, is not possible unless the full configuration becomes exactly or almost spherical. Seeking for black hole formation, we demand that shell crossings are covered by the apparent horizon. This requires very special fine-tuned initial conditions that impose very strong and unrealistic constraints on the total black hole mass and full collapse time. As a consequence, non-spherical non-rotating dust sources cannot furnish even minimally realistic toy models of black hole formation at astrophysical scales: demanding realistic collapse time scales yields huge unrealistic black hole masses, while simulations of typical astrophysical black hole masses collapse in unrealistically small times. We note, however, that the resulting time--mass constraint is compatible with early Universe models of primordial black hole formation, suitable in early dust-like environments. Finally, we argue that the shell crossings appearing when non-spherical dust structures collapse are an indicator that such structures do not form galactic mass black holes but virialise into stable stationary objects.