Guido D'Amico

Galilean symmetry in the effective theory of inflation: new shapes of non-Gaussianity

We study the consequences of imposing an approximate Galilean symmetry on the Effective Theory of Inflation, the theory of small perturbations around the inflationary background. This approach allows us to study the effect of operators with two derivatives on each field, which can be the leading interactions due to non-renormalization properties of the Galilean Lagrangian. In this case cubic non-Gaussianities are given by three independent operators, containing up to six derivatives, two with a shape close to equilateral and one peaking on flattened isosceles triangles. The four-point function is larger than in models with small speed of sound and potentially observable with the Planck satellite.

arXiv : Flavour anomalies after the

A bstractThe LHCb measurement of the μ/e ratio RK∗ indicates a deficit with respect to the Standard Model prediction, supporting earlier hints of lepton universality violation observed in the RK ratio. We show that the RK and RK∗ ratios alone constrain the chiralities of the states contributing to these anomalies, and we find deviations from the Standard Model at the 4σ level. This conclusion is further corroborated by hints from the theoretically challenging b → sμ+μ− distributions. Theoretical interpretations in terms of Z′, lepto-quarks, loop mediators, and composite dynamics are discussed. We highlight their distinctive features in terms of the chirality and flavour structures relevant to the observed anomalies.

R_{K^*}

We prove that, in a generic single-field model, the consistency relation for the 3-point function in the squeezed limit receives corrections that vanish quadratically in the ratio of the momenta, i.e. as (k L/k S) 2. This implies that a detection of a bispectrum signal going as 1/k L 2 in the squeezed limit, that is suppressed only by one power of k L compared with the local shape, would rule out all single-field models. The absence of this kind of terms in the bispectrum holds also for multifield models, but only if all the fields have a mass much smaller than H. The detection of any scale dependence of the bias, for scales much larger than the size of the haloes, would disprove all single-field models. We comment on the regime of squeezing that can be probed by realistic surveys.

measurement

We analyze an inflationary model in which part of the power in density perturbations arises due to particle production. The amount of particle production is modulated by an auxiliary field. Given an initial gradient for the auxiliary field, this model produces a hemispherical power asymmetry and a suppression of power at low multipoles similar to those observed by WMAP and Planck in the CMB temperature. It also predicts an additive contribution to δT with support only at very small l that is aligned with the direction of the power asymmetry and has a definite sign, as well as small oscillations in the power spectrum at all l.

The (not so) squeezed limit of the primordial 3-point function

We discuss how to formulate a quantum eld theory of dark energy interacting with dark matter. We show that the proposals based on the assumption that dark matter is made up of heavy particles with masses which are very sensitive to the value of dark energy are strongly constrained. Quintessence-generated long range forces and radiative stability of the quintessence potential require that such dark matter and dark energy are completely decoupled. However, if dark energy and a fraction of dark matter are very light axions, they can have signicant mixings which are radiatively stable and perfectly consistent with quantum eld theory. Such models can naturally occur in multi-axion realizations of monodromies. The mixings yield interesting signatures which are observable and are within current cosmological limits but could be constrained further by future observations.

Large-scale anomalies from primordial dissipation

We study the nonlinear evolution of density perturbations in cosmologies where the late-time accelerated expansion is driven by a quintessence field with vanishing speed of sound. For these models matter and quintessence perturbations are comoving and it is possible to write a single continuity equation for the total density fluctuations given by a weighted sum of the two components. Including the Euler equation for the common velocity field we solve the evolution equations for the nonlinear, total density power spectrum in the Time-Renormalization Group approach. In fact any cosmological observable is directly related by gravity only to the total density perturbations, with the two components being individually unobservable. We show that the clustering of quintessence perturbations induces small corrections with respect to the nonlinear evolution of power spectrum in smooth quintessence models described by the same equation of state. Such small corrections, however, contrast with the large effect of a vanishing speed of sound on the linear growth function at low redshift. For this reason, models with the same normalization of the linear density power spectrum can present significantly different nonlinear corrections depending on the value of the sound speed. Although such differences vanish in the w→−1, ΛCDM limit, we argue that the relation between linear and nonlinear growth of structures should be properly taken into account in constraining models with inhomogeneous dark energy.

Quantum Field Theory of Interacting Dark Matter/Dark Energy: Dark Monodromies

A bstractWe study the dynamics of parallel brane-brane and brane-antibrane scattering in string theory in flat spacetime, focusing on the pair production of open strings that stretch between the branes. We are particularly interested in the case of scattering at small impact parameter b < ls, where there is a tachyon in the spectrum when a brane and an antibrane approach within a string length. Our conclusion is that despite the tachyon, branes and antibranes can pass through each other with only a very small probability of annihilating, so long as gs is small and the relative velocity v is neither too small nor too close to 1. Our analysis is relevant also to the case of charged open string production in world-volume electric fields, and we make use of this T-dual scenario in our analysis. We briefly discuss the application of our results to a stringy model of inflation involving moving branes.