A tale of two particles
Name
898282573-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
11.25 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0cb1eb9e85e03a7f1aebe00c39b6e0cf
Author(s)
Schutz, Katelin
Advisor(s)
David Kaiser and Tracy Slatyer.
Alternative Title
Tale of 2 particles
Date Issued
2014
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
It was the earliest of times, it was the latest of times, it was the age of inflation, it was the age of collapse, it was the epoch of perturbation growth, it was the epoch of perturbation damping, it was the CMB of light, it was the dwarf galaxy of darkness, it was the largest of cosmic scales, it was the smallest of Milky Way subhalos, we had multiple nonminimally coupled inflatons before us, we had inelastically selfinteracting dark matter before us, we were all going direct to the Planck scale, we were all going direct the other way. Motivated by apparent discrepancies between the standard theory and observation, we analyze two astrophysical systems in the context of new particle physics. Taking a phenomenological approach, we calculate observable consequences of novel particle models during two different stages in the development of our universe. First, we explore the possibility that nonminimally coupled multifield inflation can generate a large primordial isocurvature fraction and account for the "low-multipole anomaly" in the Cosmic Microwave Background. Second, we consider the effects of dark matter that inelastically self-interacts to determine the effect on the structure and abundance of Milky Way satellites and dwarf galaxies. The disparity of time and energy scales examined in this thesis serves to highlight the range of ways to use observables in the sky as a probe of new particle physics that may be elusive at current experiments on the ground.
Description
Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 122-136).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
