Misao Sasaki

We point out that the gravitational-wave event GW150914 observed by the LIGO detectors can be explained by the coalescence of primordial black holes (PBHs). It is found that the expected PBH merger rate would exceed the rate estimated by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration if PBHs were the dominant component of dark matter, while it can be made compatible if PBHs constitute a fraction of dark matter. Intriguingly, the abundance of PBHs required to explain the suggested

We consider the dynamics of a multi-component scalar field on super-horizon scales in the context of inflationary cosmology. We present a method to solve the perturbation equations on super- horizon scales, i.e., in the long wavelength limit, by using only the knowledge of spatially homogeneous background solutions. In doing so, we clarify the relation between the perturbation equations in the long wavelength limit and the background equations. Then as a natural extension of our formalism, we pr

We use the $\ensuremath{\delta}N$ formalism to investigate the non-Gaussianity of the primordial curvature perturbation in the curvaton scenario for the origin of structure. We numerically calculate the full probability distribution function allowing for the noninstantaneous decay of the curvaton and compare this with analytic results derived in the sudden-decay approximation. We also present results for the leading-order contribution to the primordial bispectrum and trispectrum. In the sudden-d

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.061101.

A general formula for the magnitude–redshift relation in a linearly perturbed Friedmann universe is derived. The formula does not assume any specific gauge condition, but the gauge-invariance of it is explicitly shown. Then the application of the formula to the spatially flat background model is considered and the implications are discussed.

We consider a class of multi-component hybrid inflation models whose evolution may be analytically solved under the slow-roll approximation. We call it multi-brid inflation (or n-brid inflation where n stands for the number of inflaton fields). As an explicit example, we consider a two-brid inflation model, in which the inflaton potentials are of exponential type and a waterfall field that terminates inflation has the standard quartic potential with two minima. Using the N formalism, we derive a

Motivated by recent studies of the one-bubble inflationary universe scenario that predicts a low density, negative curvature universe, we investigate the Euclidean vacuum mode functions of a scalar field in a spatially open chart of de Sitter space which is foliated by hyperbolic time slices. When we consider the possibility of an open inflationary universe, we are faced with the problem of the initial condition for the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field, because the inflationary era sho