Alfonso Sastre

Gravitational wave background from reheating after hybrid inflation

The reheating of the Universe after hybrid inflation proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in the form of bubblelike structures moving at relativistic speeds. This generates a significant fraction of energy in the form of a stochastic background of gravitational waves, whose time evolution is determined by the successive stages of reheating: First, tachyonic preheating makes the amplitude of gravity waves grow exponentially fast. Second, bubble collisions add a new burst of gravitational radiation. Third, turbulent motions finally sets the end of gravitational waves production. From then on, these waves propagate unimpeded to us. We find that the fraction of energy density today in these primordial gravitational waves could be significant for grand unified theory (GUT)-scale models of inflation, although well beyond the frequency range sensitivity of gravitational wave observatories like LIGO, LISA, or BBO. However, low-scale models could still produce a detectable signal at frequencies accessible to BBO or DECIGO. For comparison, we have also computed the analogous gravitational wave background from some chaotic inflation models and obtained results similar to those found by other groups. The discovery of such a background would open a new observational window into the very early universe, where the details of the process of reheating, i.e. the big bang, could be explored. Moreover, it could also serve in the future as a new experimental tool for testing the inflationary paradigm.

Isospin splittings in the light baryon octet from lattice QCD and QED

While electromagnetic and up-down quark mass difference effects on octet baryon masses are very small, they have important consequences. The stability of the hydrogen atom against beta decay is a prominent example. Here, we include these effects by adding them to valence quarks in a lattice QCD calculation based on Nf=2+1 simulations with five lattice spacings down to 0.054 fm, lattice sizes up to 6 fm, and average up-down quark masses all the way down to their physical value. This allows us to gain control over all systematic errors, except for the one associated with neglecting electromagnetism in the sea. We compute the octet baryon isomultiplet mass splittings, as well as the individual contributions from electromagnetism and the up-down quark mass difference. Our results for the total splittings are in good agreement with experiment.

Adjoint zero-modes as a tool to understand the Yang-Mills vacuum

The use of adjoint (quasi) zero-modes of the Dirac operator to probe the Yangs-Mills vacuum has been recently advocated by Gonzalez-Arroyo and Kirchner. The construction relies on the use of the super-symmetric zero mode which, for classical config urations, provides a direct estimate of the gauge action density. In the lattice implementation of this idea, we show how the results improve considerably if the overlap operator is used instead of the Wilson-Dirac one. Before proceeding to the detailed study of Monte Carlo ensembles, we studied here a series of potentially complicated situations which can be encountered. In particular, we study the case of instanton anti-instanton pairs and analyse how the results depend upon separation. The effect of lattice artifacts is also of concern. Indeed, a statistical analysi s of zero modes of thermalised SU(2) configurations at β = 2.57 shows a significant fraction having 4 N + 2 adjoint zero modes, in contradiction with the index theorem. This violation must be associated to the roughness of the lattice configurations. Indeed, we show that this situation occurs for instantons of size of the order of the lattice spacing.

Adjoint fermion zero-modes for SU(N) calorons

We derive analytic formulas for the zero-modes of the Dirac equation in the adjoint representation in the background field of Q = 1 SU(N) calorons. Solutions with various boundary conditions are obtained, including the physically most relevant cases of periodic and anti-periodic ones. The latter are essential ingredients in a semi-classical treatment of finite temperature supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. A detailed discussion of adjoint zero-modes in several other contexts is also presented.

Lattice QCD at the physical point meetsSU(2)chiral perturbation theory

We perform a detailed, fully-correlated study of the chiral behavior of the pion mass and decay constant, based on 2+1 flavor lattice QCD simulations. These calculations are implemented using tree-level, O(a)-improved Wilson fermions, at four values of the lattice spacing down to 0.054 fm and all the way down to below the physical value of the pion mass. They allow a sharp comparison with the predictions of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory (\chi PT) and a determination of some of its low energy constants. In particular, we systematically explore the range of applicability of NLO SU(2) \chi PT in two different expansions: the first in quark mass (x-expansion), and the second in pion mass (\xi-expansion). We find that these expansions begin showing signs of failure around M_\pi=300 MeV for the typical percent-level precision of our N_f=2+1 lattice results. We further determine the LO low energy constants (LECs), F=88.0 \pm 1.3\pm 0.3 and B^\msbar(2 GeV)=2.58 \pm 0.07 \pm 0.02 GeV, and the related quark condensate, \Sigma^\msbar(2 GeV)=(271\pm 4\pm 1 MeV)^3, as well as the NLO ones, l_3=2.5 \pm 0.5 \pm 0.4 and l_4=3.8 \pm 0.4 \pm 0.2, with fully controlled uncertainties. We also explore the NNLO expansions and the values of NNLO LECs. In addition, we show that the lattice results favor the presence of chiral logarithms. We further demonstrate how the absence of lattice results with pion masses below 200 MeV can lead to misleading results and conclusions. Our calculations allow a fully controlled, ab initio determination of the pion decay constant with a total 1% error, which is in excellent agreement with experiment.

The thermal instanton determinant in compact form

The thermal instanton determinant for the gauge group

Gluino zero-modes for calorons at finite temperature

SU(2)

Probing the Yang-Mills vacuum with adjoint zero-modes

can be reduced to a form involving two simple functions. Various boundary conditions can easily incorporated. Only a two dimensional integral has to be done numerically. As an example we compute the contribution to the free energy of

Ultraviolet filtering of lattice configurations and applications to Monte Carlo dynamics

\mathcal{N}=1

Up and down quark masses and corrections to Dashen's theorem from lattice QCD and quenched QED

theory.