Marcos Flores, "Long-range forces and the early Universe: primordial black holes and gravitational waves "

Thursday 14 Mar 2024, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/London

OC218

Most of the elementary particles discovered in the past century have Compton wavelengths that are much smaller than the size of the atom, and, therefore, cannot mediate any long-range forces between atoms. This changes in the early Universe, when the horizon size is small. The forces that mediate attractive interactions between particles, like Yukawa forces, are of particular interest in this early era. These forces lead to an instability similar to gravitational instability but are generally stronger, enabling the formation of structure even in a radiation-dominated era. Simultaneously, this same attractive interaction enables the removal of energy and angular momentum through the emission of scalar radiation which facilitates collapse. The process of primordial structure formation and collapse, has a rich phenomenology and has been utilized to address numerous open questions in particle physics and cosmology. In this talk, I will discuss the implications of long-range forces in the context of dark matter, baryogenesis and gravitational waves.