Théorie

Stochastic formalism of cosmic inflation, with applications to the physics of primordial black holes. La soutenance HDR Vincent Vennin

Dear friends and colleagues,

It is my pleasure to invite you to my habilitation defense, which will take place on the 30th of June at 3pm. 

I will present my work on the stochastic formalism of cosmic inflation, with applications to the physics of primordial black holes (a short description follows below).

Due to the current covid-19 restrictions, unfortunately, only members of the jury will be allowed to be physically present. The defense will however be broadcasted online, via the BlackBoard Collaborate platform:

Free falling with a pulsar in a triple system 

Universality of free fall, famously depicted by Galileo's letting down various masses from the top of Pisa's tower, is a cornerstone of General Relativity to the extent that any alternative theory of gravity would almost certainly break that principle. This is why it is being tested by ever more sensitive experiments in the Solar system, such as the recent Microscope satellite.

The H0 tension and non-minimal couplings to gravity

Theoretical models that aim to solve the tension between local measurements of the Hubble constant H0 and its inference from CMB data  have to include a modification to the standard LCDM model around the time of matter-radiation equality. I propose that such an early-time modification consists in a scalar field non-minimally coupled to the Ricci scalar, which behaves effectively like a dark radiation component and induces a time evolution of the Newton constant G.

Vainshtein screening for slowly rotating stars 

We study the Vainshtein mechanism in the context of slowly rotating stars in scalar-tensor theories.
While the Vainshtein screening is well established for spherically symmetric spacetimes, we introduce a slow rotation of the source and examine its validity in the axi-symmetric case.
We solve for the frame-dragging function accounting for the slow rotation and show that the deviations from the general relativity (GR) solution are screened in the weak-field approximation, meaning the solution for the frame-dragging function is the same as GR to leading order.
This suggests that the Vainsh

General relativistic weak-field limit and Newtonian N-body simulations

Future galaxy surveys such as Euclid, LSST and SKA will cover larger and larger scales where general relativistic effects become important. On the other hand, our study of large scale structure still relies on Newtonian N-body simulations. I show how standard Newtonian N-body simulations can be interpreted in terms of the weak-field limit of general relativity. Our framework allows the inclusion of radiation perturbations and the non-linear evolution of matter. I show how to construct the weak-field metric by combining Newtonian simulations with results from Einstein-Boltzmann codes.

Formation and abundance of primordial black holes

Primordial black holes can form in the early Universe from the collapse of cosmological perturbations after the cosmological horizon crossing. They are possible candidates for the dark matter as well as for the seeds of supermassive black holes observed today in the centre of galaxies. In calculations of spherically symmetric collapse, a Lagrangian relativistic hydrodynamical code is used to follow the non linear evolution. If the perturbation is larger than a threshold depending on the equation of state and on the specific shape of the perturbation, a black hole is formed.
Théorie