Related papers: Cosmology meets functional QCD: First-order cosmic…
We consider a mechanism of dark matter production in the course of first order phase transition. We assume that there is an asymmetry between X- and anti-X-particles of dark sector. In particular, it may be related to the baryon asymmetry.…
We show that a `QCD dilaton' field, whose vacuum expectation value sets the strong coupling, can render the Quantum Chromodynamic (QCD) confinement transition first-order. The QCD dilaton is cosmologically attracted to a false vacuum at…
Primordial neutrino-antineutrino asymmetries can be constrained through big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) relic abundances and cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, both observables being sensitive to neutrino properties. The latter…
We use recent lattice QCD outputs to work out the expansion law of the Universe during the cosmological quark--hadron transition. To do so, a suitable technique to exploit both pressure and energy density data, with the related error bars,…
Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) provides promising resolutions to the trans-Planckian issue and initial singularity arising in the inflationary models of general relativity. In general, due to different quantization approaches, LQC involves…
Despite impressive phenomenological successes, cosmological models are incomplete without an understanding of what happened at the big bang singularity. Depending on the model, one would like to understand how appropriate initial conditions…
We prove that lattice quantum systems may undergo a first-order quantum phase transition through a general mechanism which consists in an infinite dilution of the states associated to (or, more in general, near to) the lowest energy levels.…
In the first one of these two lectures, I give an introductory review of phase transitions in finite temperature field theories. I highlight the differences between theories with global and local symmetries, and the similarities between…
Topological defects are thought to be left behind by the cosmological phase transitions which occur as the universe expands and cools. Similar processes can be studied in the phase transitions which take place in the laboratory:…
Thermal leptogenesis explains the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe in terms of neutrino masses, consistent with neutrino oscillation experiments. We present a full quantum mechanical calculation of the generated lepton…
Vacuum energy changes during cosmological phase transitions and becomes relatively important at epochs just before phase transitions. For a viable cosmology the vacuum energy just after a phase transition must be set by the critical…
The higher dimensional cosmology provides a natural setting to treat, at a classical level, the cosmological effects of vacuum energy. Here we discuss two situations where starting with an ordinary matter field without any equation of state…
Current astronomical observations are successfully explained by the present cosmological paradigm based on the concordance model ($\Lambda_0$CDM + Inflation). However, such a scenario is composed of a heterogeneous mix of ingredients for…
The order of the thermal transition in the chiral limit of QCD with two dynamical flavours of quarks is a long-standing issue. Still, it is not definitely known whether the transition is of first or second order in the continuum limit.…
We construct two spin models on lattices (both two and three-dimensional) to study the capability of quantum computational power as a function of temperature and the system parameter. There exists a finite region in the phase diagram such…
We discuss the asymmetry of cosmic background evolution in time with respect to the quantum bounce in the Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC), employing the value of scalar field at the bounce $\phi_{\rm B}$. We use the Chaotic and the $R^2$…
The nature of finite temperature transition in QCD is studied on a lattice with Wilson fermion. For massless quarks, the transition is smooth for two flavors, while it is of first order for three and six flavors. Form the study of…
A chiral chemical potential present in the early universe can source helical hypermagnetic fields through the chiral plasma instability. If these hypermagnetic fields survive until the electroweak phase transition, they source a…
We study the physics of quantum phase transitions from the perspective of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. For first order quantum phase transitions, we find that the average work done per quench in crossing the critical point is…
In this review, I discuss briefly how the presence of a cosmological constant in the Universe may imply a decoherent evolution of quantum matter in it, and as a consequence a fundamental irreversibility of time unrelated in principle to CP…