Related papers: Cosmological phase transitions from the functional…
In the present thesis, the author reviews the physics of cosmological first-order phase transitions that may have occured shortly after the Big Bang. Such transitions proceed via the nucleation and expansion of true vacuum bubbles and give…
Modified gravity theories often contain a scalar field of gravitational strength which interacts with matter. We examine constraints on the range and the coupling strength of a scalar gravitational degree of freedom using a subset of…
In this work, we show that a large class of models with a composite dark sector undergo a strong first order phase transition in the early universe, which could lead to a detectable gravitational wave signal. We summarise the basic…
This paper is the third in a series of theorems which state how cosmological observations can provide evidence for an early phase of acceleration in the universe. Previous theorems demonstrated that the observed power spectrum for scalar…
The recent discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration created renewed interest in the investigation of alternative gravitational detector designs, such as small scale resonant detectors. In this article, it is shown…
Gravitational wave observations of compact binary mergers are already providing stringent tests of general relativity and constraints on modified gravity. Ground-based interferometric detectors will soon reach design sensitivity and they…
We study the dependence of the observable stochastic gravitational wave background induced by a first-order phase transition on the global properties of the scalar effective potential in particle physics. The scalar potential can be that of…
This article reviews the current status of gravitational wave astronomy and explains why astronomers are excited about the new generation of gravitational wave detectors. As part of the review we compare and contrast gravitational radiation…
Several extensions of General Relativity and high energy physics include scalar fields as extra degrees of freedom. In the search for predictions in the non-linear regime of cosmological evolution, the community makes use of numerical…
Cold Dark Matter particles may interact with ordinary particles through a dark photon, which acquires a mass thanks to a spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism. We discuss a dark photon model in which the scalar singlet associated to the…
Gravitational wave observations can provide unprecedented insight into the fundamental nature of gravity and allow for novel tests of modifications to General Relativity. One proposed modification suggests that gravity may undergo a phase…
We report on a novel phenomenon of particle cosmology, which features specific cosmological phase transitions via quantum tunnelings through multiple vacua. The latter is inspired by the axiverse ideas and enables us to probe the associated…
Two new observational windows have been opened to strong gravitational physics: gravitational waves, and very long baseline interferometry. This suggests observational searches for new phenomena in this regime, and in particular for those…
Particle physics and gravitational waves provide complementary probes of the deep structure of the Universe. Gravitational waves from the mergers of neutron stars and black holes are sensitive to the structure of dense quark matter and to…
It is believed that there are extra fundamental gauge symmetries beyond these described by the Standard Model of particle physics. The scale of these new gauge symmetries are usually too high to be reachable by particle colliders.…
Scalar polarization modes of gravitational waves, which are often introduced in the context of the viable extension of gravity, have been actively searched. However, couplings of the scalar modes to the matter are strongly constrained by…
Neutron star binaries and their associated gravitational wave signal facilitate precision tests of General Relativity. Any deviation of the detected gravitational waveform from General Relativity would therefore be a smoking gun signature…
The second-generation of gravitational-wave detectors are just starting operation, and have already yielding their first detections. Research is now concentrated on how to maximize the scientific potential of gravitational-wave astronomy.…
We study the electroweak phase transition within a 5D warped model including a scalar potential with an exponential behavior, and strong back-reaction over the metric, in the infrared. By means of a novel treatment of the superpotential…
We focus on the interaction of a plane gravitational wave with electromagnetic fields and we describe this interaction in the proper detector frame where, thanks to the introduction of Fermi coordinates, it is possible to refer to directly…