Alexander Gallego Cadavid

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PostDoc Position at University of Valparaíso

To date, different alternative theories of gravity, although related, involving Proca fields have been proposed. Unfortunately, the procedure to obtain the relevant terms in some formulations has not been systematic enough or exhaustive, thus resulting in some missing terms or ambiguity in the process carried out. In this paper, we propose a system...

Primordial black holes (PBH) can form in the early Universe from peaks of the primordial curvature perturbations. The statistics of the peaks determines the abundance of PBHs, and is related to the amplitude of the primordial curvature spectrum. We study single field inflationary models with local features of the inflaton potential which induce a g...

Purely geometrical arguments show that there exist classes of homospectral inflationary cosmologies, i.e., different expansion histories producing the same spectrum of comoving curvature perturbations. We develop a general algorithm to reconstruct the potential of minimally coupled single scalar fields from an arbitrary expansion history. We apply...

In this work, we explore the construction of the most general vector-tensor theory with an SU(2) global symmetry in the vector sector as a proposal for a modified theory of gravity. We start with a general Lagrangian containing terms involving symmetric and/or antisymmetric combinations of the covariant derivative of the vector field plus an arbitr...

We study the consistency of the decoupling limit of the generalized SU(2) Proca theory (GSU2P). Namely, we study the healthiness of those terms whose analysis in the scalar limit was not originally established in the reconstruction of the full theory (see the work by Gallego Cadavid et al. [Phys. Rev. D 102, 104066 (2020)]). Those terms are the par...

Purely geometrical arguments show that there exist classes of homospectral inflationary cosmologies, i.e. different expansion histories producing the same spectrum of comoving curvature perturbations. We develop a general algorithm to reconstruct the potential of minimally-coupled single scalar fields from an arbitrary expansion history. We apply i...

We study the healthiness of the decoupling limit of the generalized SU(2) Proca theory (GSU2P). Namely, we study the healthiness of those terms whose analysis in the scalar limit was not originally established in the reconstruction of the full theory (see Phys. Rev. D 102 (2020) 104066). Those terms are the parity-violating $\tilde{\mathcal{L}}_{4,...

In this work, we explore the construction of the most general vector-tensor theory with a SU(2) global symmetry in the vector sector as a proposal for a modified theory of gravity. We start with a general Lagrangian containing terms involving symmetric and/or antisymmetric combinations of the covariant derivative of the vector field plus an arbitra...

The Generalized Chaplygin Gas (GCG) model is characterized by the equation of state P = −A ρ−α, where A>0 and α < 1. The model has been extensively studied due to its interesting properties and applicability in several contexts, from late-time acceleration to primordial inflation. Nonetheless we show that the inflationary slow-roll regime cannot be...

As a modified gravity theory that introduces new gravitational degrees of freedom, the generalized SU(2) Proca theory (GSU2P for short) is the non-Abelian version of the well known generalized Proca theory where the action is invariant under global transformations of the SU(2) group. This theory was formulated for the first time in Phys. Rev. D 94...

The Generalized Chaplygin Gas (GCG) model is characterized by the equation of state $P = -A \rho^{-\alpha}$, where $A>0$ and $\alpha < 1$. The model has been extensively studied due to its interesting properties and applicability in several contexts, from late-time acceleration to primordial inflation. Nonetheless we show that the inflationary slow...

We study the degeneracy of the primordial spectrum and bispectrum of the curvature perturbation in single field inflationary models with a class of features in the inflaton potential. The feature we consider is a discontinuous change in the shape of the potential and is controlled by a couple of parameters that describe the strength of the disconti...

We show that there is an infinite family of slow-roll parameters histories which can produce the same spectrum of comoving curvature perturbations. After expressing the slow-roll parameters in terms of the scale factor this degeneracy can be shown to be related to the freedom in the choice of the initial conditions for the second order differential...

We show that in absence of entropy or effective anisotropic stress the freedom in the choice of the initial energy scale of inflation implies the existence of an infinite family of dual slow-roll parameters histories which can produce the same spectrum of comoving curvature perturbations. This implies that in general there is no one-to-one correspo...

We study the degeneracy of the primordial spectrum and bispectrum of the curvature perturbation in single field inflationary models with a class of features in the inflaton potential. The feature we consider is a discontinuous change in the shape of the potential and is controlled by a couple of parameters that describe the strength of the disconti...

We compare the effects of local features (LF) and branch features (BF) of the inflaton potential on the spectrum of primordial perturbations. We show that LF affect the spectrum in a narrow range of scales while BF produce a step between large and small scales with respect to the featureless spectrum. We comment on the possibility of distinguishing...

We compare the effects of local features (LF) and branch features (BF) of the inflaton potential on the spectrum of primordial perturbations. We show that LF affect the spectrum in a narrow range of scales while BF produce a step between large and small scales with respect to the featureless spectrum. We comment on the possibility of distinguishing...

Recent analysis of the WMAP and Planck data have shown the presence of a dip and a bump in the spectrum of primordial perturbations at the scales $k=0.002$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ and $k=0.0035$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ respectively. We analyze for the first time the effects a local feature in the inflaton potential to explain the observed deviations from scale invarianc...

Recent analysis of the WMAP and Planck data have shown the presence of a dip and a bump in the spectrum of primordial perturbations at the scales $k=0.002$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ and $k=0.0035$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ respectively. We analyze for the first time the effects a local feature in the inflaton potential to explain the observed deviations from scale invarianc...

We study the effects of a class of features of the potential of slow-roll inflationary models corresponding to a step symmetrically dumped by an even power negative exponential factor, which we call local features. Local-type features differ from other branch-type features considered previously, because the potential is only affected in a limited r...

We study the effects of a class of features of the inflaton potential, corresponding to discontinuities in its derivatives. We perform fully numerical calculations and derive analytical approximations for the curvature perturbations spectrum and the bispectrum which are in good agreement with the numerical results. The spectrum of primordial pertur...

We study the effects of a general type of features of the inflaton potential on the spectrum and bispectrum of primordial curvature perturbations. These features correspond to a discontinuity in the $n$-th order derivative of the potential which are dumped exponentially away from the value of the field where the feature happens. Interestingly we fi...

We study the effects of a class of features of the potential of slow-roll inflationary models corresponding to a step symmetrically dumped by an even power negative exponential factor. We compute the effects on the background evolution and on the scalar and tensor perturbations. This class of features differs from other branch-type features conside...

We study the effects of a class of features of the potential of slow-roll inflationary models corresponding to a step symmetrically dumped by an even power negative exponential factor, which we call local features. Local-type features differ from other branch-type features considered previously, because the potential is only affected in a limited r...

We study the effects of a general class of features of the inflaton potential on the spectrum and bispectrum of primordial curvature perturbations. These features correspond to a discontinuity in the $n-th$ order derivative of the potential which is dumped exponentially away from the value of the field where the feature happens. We provide fully nu...