BCS in the Sky: Signatures of Inflationary Fermion Condensation

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Autori principali: Tong, Xi, Wang, Yi, Zhang, Chen, Zhu, Yuhang
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Tong, Xi
Wang, Yi
Zhang, Chen
Zhu, Yuhang
author_facet Tong, Xi
Wang, Yi
Zhang, Chen
Zhu, Yuhang
contents We consider a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS)-like model in the inflationary background. We show that with an axial chemical potential, the attractive quartic fermion self-interaction can lead to a BCS-like condensation. In the rigid-de Sitter (dS) limit of inflation where backreaction from the inflaton and graviton is neglected, we perform the first computation of the non-perturbative effective potential that includes the full spacetime curvature effects in the presence of the chemical potential, subject to the mean-field approximation whose validity has been checked via the Ginzburg criterion. The corresponding BCS phase transition is always first-order, when the varying Hubble is interpreted as an effective Gibbons-Hawking temperature of dS spacetime. In the condensed phase, the theory can be understood from UV and IR sides as fermionic and bosonic, respectively. This leads to distinctive signatures in the primordial non-Gaussianity of curvature perturbations. Namely, the oscillatory cosmological collider signal is smoothly turned off at a finite momentum ratio, since different momentum ratios effectively probe different energy scales. In addition, such BCS phase transitions can also source stochastic gravitational waves, which are feasible for future experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_09428
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BCS in the Sky: Signatures of Inflationary Fermion Condensation
Tong, Xi
Wang, Yi
Zhang, Chen
Zhu, Yuhang
High Energy Physics - Theory
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
We consider a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS)-like model in the inflationary background. We show that with an axial chemical potential, the attractive quartic fermion self-interaction can lead to a BCS-like condensation. In the rigid-de Sitter (dS) limit of inflation where backreaction from the inflaton and graviton is neglected, we perform the first computation of the non-perturbative effective potential that includes the full spacetime curvature effects in the presence of the chemical potential, subject to the mean-field approximation whose validity has been checked via the Ginzburg criterion. The corresponding BCS phase transition is always first-order, when the varying Hubble is interpreted as an effective Gibbons-Hawking temperature of dS spacetime. In the condensed phase, the theory can be understood from UV and IR sides as fermionic and bosonic, respectively. This leads to distinctive signatures in the primordial non-Gaussianity of curvature perturbations. Namely, the oscillatory cosmological collider signal is smoothly turned off at a finite momentum ratio, since different momentum ratios effectively probe different energy scales. In addition, such BCS phase transitions can also source stochastic gravitational waves, which are feasible for future experiments.
title BCS in the Sky: Signatures of Inflationary Fermion Condensation
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.09428