Browsing by Author "Long, Andrew J"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Cosmological and astrophysical probes of axionlike particles
    (2024-12-06) Hagimoto, Ray Mitchell; Long, Andrew J; Amin, Mustafa A
    Axionlike particles (ALPs), pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons arising from the spontaneous breaking of global U(1) symmetries, appear in solutions to open issues in fundamental physics and are ubiquitous in string theory compactifications. Furthermore, ALPs have a rich phenomenology that provides numerous ways to search for evidence of their existence. This work explores two potential discovery channels for ALPs. The first considers the possibility that hyperlight ALPs, with masses less than 10^(-28) eV and a Chern-Simons coupling to electromagnetism, formed a cosmic string network in the early Universe that survives beyond recombination. In this scenario, cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons passing through string loops in the network experience a rotation in their plane of polarization, an effect known as CMB birefringence that may be within reach of future CMB probes. I use existing CMB birefringence power spectrum data to constrain axion string network parameters, then discuss non-Gaussian features of axion string-induced CMB birefringence maps, and finally explore how a neural network could estimate axion string network parameters from these maps. The second potential discovery channel examines how ALPs with lepton flavor-violating couplings and masses less than 1 MeV affect the cooling rates of neutron stars. Through these studies, I develop tools that would assist in identifying signatures of ALPs in cosmological and astrophysical observations.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Cosmological gravitational particle production of dark matter during inflation and beyond
    (2024-08-05) Ling, Siyang; Long, Andrew J
    Cosmological gravitational particle production (CGPP) is a viable production mechanism for dark matter. Spin-0, spin-1/2, spin-3/2, spin-2 fields can be produced via CGPP during inflation and reheating, and the relics can be dark matter candidates. Chapter 1 of this thesis contains the framework of CGPP, which is based on quantum field theory in curved spacetime and inflationary cosmology. Chapter 2 contains a study of CGPP in the context of alpha-attractor inflationary models. Chapter 3 contains a method for analytically evaluating CGPP of fermions, namely the Exact WKB (EWKB) method, which is based on Stokes phenomenon. Chapter 4 contains a study of CGPP of massive spin-2 fields. Chapter 5 contains a study of phenomenology of ultralight vector dark matter with nonminimal interactions with gravity.