Prospects in extended inflation

title: Wavelets and WMAP non-Gaussianity
abstract: We study the statistical properties of the first-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data on different scales using the spherical Mexican hat wavelet transform. Consistent with the 2004 results of Vielva et al., we find a deviation from Gaussianity in the form of kurtosis of wavelet coefficients on 3-4 scales in the southern Galactic hemisphere. This paper extends the work of Vielva et al. as follows: We find that the non-Gaussian signal shows up more strongly in the form of a larger than expected number of cold pixels and also in the form of scale-scale correlations among wavelet coefficients. We establish the robustness of the non-Gaussian signal under more wide-ranging assumptions regarding the Galactic mask applied to the data and the noise statistics. This signal is unlikely to be due to the usual quadratic term parameterized by the nonlinearity parameter fNL. We use the skewness of the spherical Mexican hat wavelet coefficients to constrain fNL with the first-year WMAP data. Our results constrain fNL to be 50+/-80 at 68% confidence and less than 280 at 99% confidence.

title: Constraints on generalized extended inflationary models.
abstract: We study the physical constraints on generalized extended inflationary theories, in which the Brans-Dicke field {Phi} couples to the inflaton sector in the form of two arbitrary power-law functions of {Phi}. We find that the most stringent constraints arise from the need to suppress large bubbles and from considerations of the density perturbations generated during extended inflation. We find that there are sizable portions of the parameter spaces in which all the constraints are satisfied.

title: A robust distance measurement and dark energy constraints from the spherically averaged correlation function of Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red Galaxies
abstract: We measure the effective distance to z = 0.26, DV (0.26), and mh 2 from the overall shape of the spherically-averaged two-point correlati on function of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7) volume-limited luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample, without assuming a dark energy model or a flat Universe. We giv e the mean and covariance matrix of DV (0.26), mh 2 , bh 2 , and ns. We show that these provide an efficient and accurate summary of the volume-limited LRG data. With flat priors on bh 2 and ns (7σWMAP7), we find mh 2 = 0.131 ± 0.020, and rs/DV (0.26) = 0.1466 +0.0068 0.0073 (the ratio of the sound horizon at the drag epoch to the effective distance to z = 0.26). We find that measurements of mh 2 or m are biased low if flux-limited (instead of volume-limited) L RG sample is used. By scaling the spherically-averaged correlation fun ction, we find the Hubble parameter H(0.26) = 79 +12 13 km s 1 Mpc 1 and the angular diameter distance DA(0.26) = 848 +86 88 Mpc. Combining our results with the cosmic microwave background and supernova data, we obtain k = 0.0059 +0.0092 0.0093 andw = 1.023 +0.054 0.053 (assuming a constant dark energy equation of state). We use LasDamas SDSS mock catalogs to compute the covariance matrix of the correlation function, and investigate the use of lognormal catal ogs as an alternative. We find that the input correlation function can be accurately recovered from lognormal catalogs, although they give larger errors on all scales (especially on small sc ales) compared to the mock catalogs derived from cosmological N-body simulations.

title: Dark Energy Constraints from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
abstract: Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) in the galaxy power spectrum allow us to extract the scale of the comoving sound horizon at recombination, a cosmological standard ruler accurately determined by the cosmic microwave background anisotropy data. We examine various issues important in the use of BAOs to probe dark energy. We find that if we assume a flat universe and priors on ?m, ?mh2, and ?bh2 as expected from the Planck mission, the constraints on dark energy parameters (w0, w') scale much less steeply with survey area than (area)-1/2 for a given redshift range. The constraints on the dark energy density ?X(z), however, do scale roughly with (area)-1/2 due to the strong correlation between H(z) and ?m (which reduces the effect of priors on ?m). Dark energy constraints from BAOs are very sensitive to the assumed linear scale of matter clustering and the redshift accuracy of the survey. For a BAO survey with 0.5 ? z ? 2, ? (R) = 0.4 [corresponding to kmax (z = 0) = 0.086 h Mpc-1], and ?z/ (1 + z) = 0.001, we find = (0.115,0.183) and (0.069, 0.104) for survey areas of 1000 and 10,000 deg2, respectively. We find that it is critical to minimize the bias in the scale estimates in order to derive reliable dark energy constraints. For a 1000 (10,000) deg2 BAO survey, a 1 ? bias in ln H (z) leads to a 2 ? (3 ?) bias in w'. The bias in w' due to the same scale bias from ln DA (z) is slightly smaller and opposite in sign. The results from this paper will be useful in assessing different proposed BAO surveys and guiding the design of optimal dark energy detection strategies.

title: Dark Energy Search with Supernovae
abstract: To determine the nature of dark energy from observational data, it is important that we use model-independent and optimal methods. We should probe dark energy using its density (allowed to be a free function of cosmic time) instead of its equation of state. We should minimize gravitational lensing effect on supernovae by flux-averaging. We need to include complementary data (for example, from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure (LSS)) in a consistent manner to help break the degeneracy between the dark energy density and the matter density fraction. We should push for ambitious future supernova surveys that can observe a large number of supernovae at the highest possible redshifts. I discuss these and other issues that will be important in our quest to unravel the mystery of the nature of dark energy. Current supernova, CMB, and LSS data already rule out dark energy models with dark energy densities that vary greatly with time; with the cosmological constant model providing an excellent fit to the data. A precise measurement of dark energy density as a free function of cosmic time will have a fundamental impact on particle physics and cosmology.

title: Inflation with high derivative couplings
abstract: We study a class of generalized inflation models in which the inflaton is coupled to the Ricci scalar by a general f(φ, R) term. The scalar power spectrum, the spectral index, the running of the spectral index, the tensor mode spectrum and a new consistency relation of the model are calculated.

title: Experimental study of hadron inclusive production in J / psi energy region

title: Recent Results and Future Prospects on Neutrino Oscillations from Reactors

title: BSG alignment of SDSS galaxy groups
abstract: We study the alignment signal between the distribution of brightest satellite galaxies (BSGs) and the major axis of their host groups using SDSS group catalog constructed by Yang et al. (2007). After correcting for the effect of group ellipticity, a statistically significant (∼ 5σ) major-axis alignment is detected and the alignment angle is found to be 43.0 ± 0.4. More massive and richer groups show stronger BSG alignment. The BSG alignment around blue BCGs is slightly stronger than that around red BCGs. And red BSGs have much stronger major-axis alignment than blue BSGs. Unlike BSGs, other satellites do not show very significant alignment with group major axis. We further explore the BSG alignment in semi-analytic model (SAM) constructed by Guo et al. (2011). We found general good agreement with observations: BSGs in SAM show strong major-axis alignment which depends on group mass and richness in the same way as observations; and none of other satellites exhibit prominent alignment. However, discrepancy also exists in that the SAM shows opposite BSG color dependence, which is most probably induced by the missing of large scale environment ingredient in SAM. The combination of two popular scenarios can explain the detected BSG alignment. The first one: satellites merged into the group preferentially along the surrounding filaments, which is strongly aligned with the major axis of the group. The second one: BSGs enter their host group more recently than other satellites, then will preserve more information about the assembling history and so the major-axis alignment. In SAM, we found positive evidence for the second scenario by the fact that BSGs merged into groups statistically more recently than other satellites. We also found that most of BSGs (80%) were BCGs before they merged into groups and earlier merged BSGs tend to be closer to their BCGs than other BSGs. On the other hand, although is opposite in SAM, the BSG color dependence in observation might indicate the first scenario as well.  BSG – alignment – group of galaxies – SAM – SDSS

title: Constraints on the universal varying Yukawa couplings: from SM-like to fermiophobic
abstract: A bstractVarying the Standard Model (SM) fermion Yukawa couplings universally by a generic positive scale factor $ ({F_{{Y\,u}}}) $, we study the phenomenological fit to the current available experimental results for the Higgs boson search at hadron colliders. We point out that the Higgs production cross section and its decay branching ratio to γγ can be varied oppositely by $ {F_{{Y{ ~ }u}}} $ to make their product almost invariant. Thus, our scenario and the SM Higgs are indistinguishable in the inclusive H → γγ channel. The current measurements on direct Yukawa coupling strength in the $ H \to b\overline b /\tau \tau $ channel are not precise enough to fix the scale factor $ {F_{{Y{ ~ }u}}} $. The most promising is the vector-boson-fusion channel in which the CMS has already observed possible suppression effect on the Yukawa couplings. Further more, the global χ2 fit of the experimental data can get the optimal value by introducing a suppression factor $ {F_{{Y{ ~ }u}}} \sim {1}/{2} $ on the SM Yukawa couplings.