papers

Publications (64)

astro-ph.IM2019

CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan

Kevork Abazajian, Graeme Addison, Peter Adshead +222

We present the science case, reference design, and project plan for the Stage-4 ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4.

astro-ph.CO2023

A Lower Bound on the Mass of Compact Objects from Dissipative Dark Matter

James Gurian, Michael Ryan, Sarah Schon +2

We study the minimum mass of dark compact objects formed in dissipative dark-matter halos and show that the simple atomic-dark-matter model consistent with all current observations…

astro-ph.CO2022

Snowmass 2021 CMB-S4 White Paper

Kevork Abazajian, Arwa Abdulghafour, Graeme E. Addison +353

This Snowmass 2021 White Paper describes the Cosmic Microwave Background Stage 4 project CMB-S4, which is designed to cross critical thresholds in our understanding of the origin a…

astro-ph.CO2018

Gravitational Waves from Binary Mergers of Sub-solar Mass Dark Black Holes

Sarah Shandera, Donghui Jeong, Henry S. Grasshorn Gebhardt

We explore the possible spectrum of binary mergers of sub-solar mass black holes formed out of dark matter particles interacting via a dark electromagnetism. We estimate the proper…

astro-ph.HE2018

The ANITA Anomalous Events as Signatures of a Beyond Standard Model Particle, and Supporting Observations from IceCube

Derek B. Fox, Steinn Sigurdsson, Sarah Shandera +4

The ANITA collaboration have reported observation of two anomalous events that appear to be EeV cosmic ray showers emerging from the Earth with e…

astro-ph.IM2018

Methods for the detection of gravitational waves from sub-solar mass ultracompact binaries

Ryan Magee, Anne-Sylvie Deutsch, Phoebe McClincy +6

We describe detection methods for extensions of gravitational wave searches to sub-solar mass compact binaries. Sub-solar mass searches were previously carried out using Initial LI…

astro-ph.CO2019

Primordial Non-Gaussianity

P. Daniel Meerburg, Daniel Green, Muntazir Abidi +175

Our current understanding of the Universe is established through the pristine measurements of structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the distribution and shapes of…

astro-ph.CO2014

Testing Inflation with Large Scale Structure: Connecting Hopes with Reality

Marcelo Alvarez, Tobias Baldauf, J. Richard Bond +25

The statistics of primordial curvature fluctuations are our window into the period of inflation, where these fluctuations were generated. To date, the cosmic microwave background h…

quant-ph2024

Effective dynamics of qubit networks via phase-covariant quantum ensembles

Sean Prudhoe, Unnati Akhouri, Tommy Chin +1

We derive a new constructive procedure to rapidly generate ensembles of phase-covariant dynamical maps that may be associated to the individual spins of a closed quantum system. We…

astro-ph.CO2016

Cosmic variance in inflation with two light scalars

Béatrice Bonga, Suddhasattwa Brahma, Anne-Sylvie Deutsch +1

We examine the squeezed limit of the bispectrum when a light scalar with arbitrary non-derivative self-interactions is coupled to the inflaton. We find that when the hidden sector…

astro-ph.CO2010

Testing the Gaussianity and Statistical Isotropy of the Universe

Dragan Huterer, Eiichiro Komatsu, Sarah Shandera

The last few years have seen a surge in excitement about measurements of statistics of the primordial fluctuations beyond the power spectrum. New ideas for precision tests of Gauss…

quant-ph2023

Increasing extractable work in small qubit landscapes

Unnati Akhouri, Sarah Shandera, Gaukhar Yesmurzayeva

An interesting class of physical systems, including those associated with life, demonstrates the ability to hold thermalization at bay and perpetuate states of high free-energy com…

hep-ph2022

Dark Matter In Extreme Astrophysical Environments

Masha Baryakhtar, Regina Caputo, Djuna Croon +37

Exploring dark matter via observations of extreme astrophysical environments -- defined here as heavy compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, as well…

astro-ph.CO2020

CMB-S4: Forecasting Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves

S4 Collaboration, Kevork Abazajian, Graeme E. Addison +233

CMB-S4---the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment---is set to significantly advance the sensitivity of CMB measurements and enhance our underst…

astro-ph.CO2016

Large-scale anomalies in the cosmic microwave background as signatures of non-Gaussianity

Saroj Adhikari, Sarah Shandera, Adrienne L. Erickcek

We derive a general expression for the probability of observing deviations from statistical isotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) if the primordial fluctuations are non…

quant-ph2025

Open-systems tools for non-thermalizing closed quantum systems

Unnati Akhouri, Sarah Shandera, Jackson Henry

We design several examples of constrained, symmetric quantum circuit dynamics that generate non-equilibrium steady states. The qubit networks maintain local memory of the initial c…

astro-ph2010

The structure of correlation functions in single field inflation

Sarah Shandera

Many statistics available to constrain non-Gaussianity from inflation are simplest to use under the assumption that the curvature correlation functions are hierarchical. That is, i…

astro-ph.CO2022

Molecular Chemistry for Dark Matter III: DarkKROME

Michael Ryan, Sarah Shandera, James Gurian +1

Dark matter that is dissipative may cool sufficiently to form compact objects, including black holes. Determining the abundance and mass spectrum of those objects requires an accur…

astro-ph.CO2022

Molecular Chemistry for Dark Matter

Michael Ryan, James Gurian, Sarah Shandera +1

Molecular cooling is essential for studying the formation of sub-structure of dissipative dark-matter halos that may host compact objects such as black holes. Here, we analyze the…

quant-ph2024

Natural disorder distributions from measurement

Šárka Blahnik, Sarah Shandera

We consider scenarios where the dynamics of a quantum system are partially determined by prior local measurements of some interacting environmental degrees of freedom. The resultin…

astro-ph.CO2019

Cosmological Probes of Dark Matter Interactions: The Next Decade

Vera Gluscevic, Yacine Ali-Haimoud, Keith Bechtol +16

Cosmological observations offer unique and robust avenues for probing the fundamental nature of dark matter particles-they broadly test a range of compelling theoretical scenarios,…

astro-ph.CO2016

The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS): a cosmological forecast

Gong-Bo Zhao, Yuting Wang, Ashley J. Ross +28

We present a science forecast for the eBOSS survey, part of the SDSS-IV project, which is a spectroscopic survey using multiple tracers of large-scale structure, including luminous…

astro-ph.CO2026

From Origins to Observables: Distinguishing Dark Compact Objects with Population-Level Microlensing Signatures

Joel Cortez Osuna, Sarah Shandera

While primordial black holes (PBHs) have long been a benchmark target for microlensing searches, the modern landscape of dark matter models suggests other, distinct, formation chan…

astro-ph.CO2016

Constraining primordial and gravitational mode coupling with the position-dependent bispectrum of the large-scale structure

Saroj Adhikari, Donghui Jeong, Sarah Shandera

We develop and study the position-dependent bispectrum. It is a generalization of the recently proposed position-dependent power spectrum method of measuring the squeezed-limit bis…

astro-ph.CO2014

Higher moments of primordial non-Gaussianity and N-body simulations

Saroj Adhikari, Sarah Shandera, Neal Dalal

We perform cosmological N-body simulations with non-Gaussian initial conditions generated from two independent fields. The dominant contribution to the perturbations comes from a p…

astro-ph.CO2018

Statistical anisotropies in temperature and polarization fluctuations from a scale-dependent trispectrum

Saroj Adhikari, Anne-Sylvie Deutsch, Sarah Shandera

We study statistical anisotropies generated in the observed two-point function of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations if the primordial statistics are non-Gaussian.…

astro-ph.CO2016

On the space of non-Gaussian fields with single-clock bispectra

Bekir Baytaş, Sarah Shandera

We develop a mathematical construction of non-Gaussian fields whose bispectra satisfy the single-clock inflation consistency relation. At the same order that our basis for bispectr…

astro-ph.CO2014

Weighing the Giants IV: Cosmology and Neutrino Mass

Adam B. Mantz, Anja von der Linden, Steven W. Allen +14

We employ robust weak gravitational lensing measurements to improve cosmological constraints from measurements of the galaxy cluster mass function and its evolution, using X-ray se…

hep-th2005

Inter-brane Interactions in Compact Spaces and Brane Inflation

Sarah Shandera, Benjamin Shlaer, Horace Stoica +1

It was pointed out that brane-anti-brane inflation without warped geometry is not viable due to compactification effects (in the simplified scenario where the inflaton is decoupled…

astro-ph.CO2009

Observing the Evolution of the Universe

James Aguirre, Alexandre Amblard, Amjad Ashoorioon +172

How did the universe evolve? The fine angular scale (l>1000) temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB are a Rosetta stone for understanding the evolution of the univers…

astro-ph.CO2013

Statistical Naturalness and non-Gaussianity in a Finite Universe

Elliot Nelson, Sarah Shandera

We study the behavior of n-point functions of the primordial curvature perturbations, assuming our observed Universe is only a subset of a larger space with statistically homogeneo…

astro-ph.CO2012

Large non-Gaussian Halo Bias from Single Field Inflation

Ivan Agullo, Sarah Shandera

We calculate Large Scale Structure observables for non-Gaussianity arising from non-Bunch-Davies initial states in single field inflation. These scenarios can have substantial prim…

astro-ph.CO2013

The Effects of Local Primordial Non-Gaussianity on the Formation and Evolution of Galaxies

Xinghai Zhao, Yuexing Li, Sarah Shandera +1

Thanks to the rapid progress in precision cosmology in the last few years, we now have access to physical observables that may constrain the theory of inflation through the non-Gau…

hep-th2008

Simple Bounds from the Perturbative Regime of Inflation

Louis Leblond, Sarah Shandera

We examine the conditions under which a perturbative expansion around an inflating background is valid. When inflation is driven by a single field with a general sound speed, we fi…

astro-ph.CO2016

CMB-S4 Science Book, First Edition

Kevork N. Abazajian, Peter Adshead, Zeeshan Ahmed +83

This book lays out the scientific goals to be addressed by the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, CMB-S4, envisioned to consist of dedicated teles…

astro-ph.CO2012

Feeding your Inflaton: Non-Gaussian Signatures of Interaction Structure

Neil Barnaby, Sarah Shandera

Primordial non-Gaussianity is generated by interactions of the inflaton field, either self-interactions or couplings to other sectors. These two physically different mechanisms can…

gr-qc2011

Eternal inflation and a thermodynamic treatment of Einstein's equations

Jose Tomas Galvez Ghersi, Ghazal Geshnizjani, Federico Piazza +1

In pursuing the intriguing resemblance of the Einstein equations to thermodynamic equations, most sharply seen in systems possessing horizons, we suggest that eternal inflation of…

hep-ph2022

Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Probing dark matter with small-scale astrophysical observations

Richard Brito, Sukanya Chakrabarti, Sebastien Clesse +7

The current understanding of dark matter comes largely from measurements of the total matter content in the universe, from the distribution of gravitating matter on very large scal…

astro-ph.CO2021

A gravitational-wave limit on the Chandrasekhar mass of dark matter

Divya Singh, Michael Ryan, Ryan Magee +4

We explore a new paradigm to study dissipative dark matter models using gravitational-wave observations. We consider a dark atomic model which predicts the formation of binary blac…

hep-th2006

Cosmology of the Tachyon in Brane Inflation

Louis Leblond, Sarah Shandera

In certain implementations of the brane inflationary paradigm, the exit from inflation occurs when the branes annihilate through tachyon condensation. We investigate various cosmol…

astro-ph.CO2015

Non-local bispectra from super cosmic variance

Bekir Baytaş, Aruna Kesavan, Elliot Nelson +2

We present examples of non-Gaussian statistics that can induce bispectra matching local and non-local (including equilateral) templates in biased sub-volumes. We find cases where t…

astro-ph.CO2022

Molecular Chemistry for Dark Matter II: Recombination, Molecule Formation, and Halo Mass Function in Atomic Dark Matter

James Gurian, Donghui Jeong, Michael Ryan +1

Dissipative dark matter predicts rich observable phenomena that can be tested with future large-scale structure surveys. As a specific example, we study atomic dark matter, consist…

quant-ph2026

Operator dynamics in k-Markov random circuits

Unnati Akhouri, Pei-Jun Huang, Elliott Rose +1

We demonstrate that -Markov sequences of unitary gates provide low-cost handles to manipulate the rate and structure of information spreading compared to traditional random, 0-M…

astro-ph2009

CMBPol Mission Concept Study: Probing Inflation with CMB Polarization

Daniel Baumann, Mark G. Jackson, Peter Adshead +56

We summarize the utility of precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements as probes of the physics of inflation. We focus on the prospects for using CMB measu…

hep-th2007

Inflation from Wrapped Branes

Melanie Becker, Louis Leblond, Sarah Shandera

We show that the use of higher dimensional wrapped branes can significantly extend the inflaton field range compared to brane inflation models which use D3-branes. We construct a s…

astro-ph.CO2013

Cosmic Variance of the Spectral Index from Mode Coupling

Joseph Bramante, Jason Kumar, Elliot Nelson +1

We demonstrate that local, scale-dependent non-Gaussianity can generate cosmic variance uncertainty in the observed spectral index of primordial curvature perturbations. In a unive…

astro-ph.CO2016

The SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Overview and Early Data

Kyle S. Dawson, Jean-Paul Kneib, Will J. Percival +143

The Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) will conduct novel cosmological observations using the BOSS spectrograph at Apache Point Observatory. Observations will…

astro-ph2008

Effects of Scale-Dependent Non-Gaussianity on Cosmological Structures

Marilena LoVerde, Amber Miller, Sarah Shandera +1

The detection of primordial non-Gaussianity could provide a powerful means to test various inflationary scenarios. Although scale-invariant non-Gaussianity (often described by the…

hep-th2019

Stochastic eternal inflation is in the swampland

Suddhasattwa Brahma, Sarah Shandera

We demonstrate that there is no controlled description of stochastic eternal inflation consistent with the refined swampland de Sitter conjecture.

quant-ph2022

Classifying the non-time-local and entangling dynamics of an open qubit system

Sean Prudhoe, Sarah Shandera

We study families of dynamical maps generated from interactions with varying degrees of symmetry. For a family of time-independent Hamiltonians, we demonstrate the relationship bet…

astro-ph.IM2019

CMB-S4 Decadal Survey APC White Paper

Kevork Abazajian, Graeme Addison, Peter Adshead +222

We provide an overview of the science case, instrument configuration and project plan for the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4, for consid…

astro-ph.CO2013

Number Counts and Non-Gaussianity

Sarah Shandera, Adrienne L. Erickcek, Pat Scott +1

We describe a general procedure for using number counts of any object to constrain the probability distribution of the primordial fluctuations, allowing for generic weak non-Gaussi…

astro-ph.CO2019

Probing the origin of our Universe through cosmic microwave background constraints on gravitational waves

Sarah Shandera, Peter Adshead, Mustafa Amin +16

The next generation of instruments designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will provide a historic opportunity to open the gravitational wave…

astro-ph.CO2010

A generalized local ansatz and its effect on halo bias

Sarah Shandera, Neal Dalal, Dragan Huterer

Motivated by the properties of early universe scenarios that produce observationally large local non-Gaussianity, we perform N-body simulations with non-Gaussian initial conditions…

astro-ph.CO2022

Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier: Cosmic Microwave Background Measurements White Paper

Clarence L. Chang, Kevin M. Huffenberger, Bradford A. Benson +128

This is a solicited whitepaper for the Snowmass 2021 community planning exercise. The paper focuses on measurements and science with the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB…

astro-ph.CO2013

X-ray Cluster Constraints on Non-Gaussianity

Sarah Shandera, Adam Mantz, David Rapetti +1

We report constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity from the abundance of X-ray detected clusters. Our analytic prescription for adding non-Gaussianity to the cluster mass function…

quant-ph2026

Excitation Flow, Positivity, and Fisher Information for Open Subsystems of an -Qubit Network

Tommy Chin, Sarah Shandera

We derive closed-form propagators for any -qubit subsystem of a closed -qubit network with a single conserved excitation. A single transition amplitude simultaneously control…

astro-ph.CO2013

Non-Gaussian Mode Coupling and the Statistical Cosmological Principle

Marilena LoVerde, Elliot Nelson, Sarah Shandera

Local-type primordial non-Gaussianity couples statistics of the curvature perturbation ζon vastly different physical scales. Because of this coupling, statistics (i.e. the polyspe…

hep-th2017

Power-counting during single-field slow-roll inflation

Peter Adshead, C. P. Burgess, R. Holman +1

We elucidate the counting of the relevant small parameters in inflationary perturbation theory. Doing this allows for an explicit delineation of the domain of validity of the semi-…

astro-ph.CO2014

Constraining the initial conditions of the Universe using large scale structure

Nishant Agarwal, Shirley Ho, Sarah Shandera

Primordial non-Gaussianity induces a scale-dependent bias in large scale structure (LSS) data, proportional to for the exact local ansatz. Recent work has shown th…

astro-ph.CO2014

Fossilized Gravitational Wave Relic and Primordial Clocks

Suddhasattwa Brahma, Elliot Nelson, Sarah Shandera

If long wavelength primordial tensor modes are coupled to short wavelength scalar modes, the scalar curvature two-point function will have an off-diagonal component. This `fossil'…

astro-ph.CO2025

SHH method for SIDM: An SIDM-hydro hybrid method for simulating self-interacting dark matter

Sarah Schon, Michael Ryan, John Blakely +3

We present a new scheme to couple existing numerical methods for elastic self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) to the hydrodynamic equations via a continuous function of the local Kn…

quant-ph2024

Spontaneously interacting qubits from Gauss-Bonnet

Sean Prudhoe, Rishabh Kumar, Sarah Shandera

Building on previous constructions examining how a collection of small, locally interacting quantum systems might emerge via spontaneous symmetry breaking from a single-particle sy…

hep-th2018

A cosmological open quantum system

Sarah Shandera, Nishant Agarwal, Archana Kamal

We derive the evolution equation for the density matrix of a UV- and IR- limited band of comoving momentum modes of the canonically normalized scalar degree of freedom in two examp…