Jose M. Diego

Gravitational waves from binary black holes that are gravitationally lensed can be distorted by small microlenses along the line of sight. Microlenses with masses of a few tens of solar masses, and that are close to a critical curve in the lens plane, can introduce a time delay of a few millisecond. Such time delay would result in distinctive interference patterns in the gravitational wave that can be measured with current experiments such as LIGO/Virgo. We consider the particular case of primordial black holes with masses between 5 and 50 solar masses acting as microlenses. We study the effect of a population of primordial black holes constituting a fraction of the dark matter, and contained in a macrolens (galaxy or cluster), over gravitational waves that are being lensed by the combined effect of the macrolens plus microlenses. We find that at the typical magnifications expected for observed GW events, the fraction of dark matter in the form of compact microlenses, such as primordial black holes, can be constrained to percent level. Similarly, if a small percentage of the dark matter is in the form of microlenses with a few tens of solar masses, at sufficiently large magnification factors, all gravitational waves will show interference effects. These effects could have an impact on the inferred parameters. The effect is more important for macroimages with negative parity, which usually arrive after the macroimages with positive parity.

Pavel Fileviez Perez, Clara Murgui, Alexis D. Plascencia

We discuss the possibility to predict the QCD axion mass in the context of grand unified theories. We investigate the implementation of the DFSZ mechanism in the context of renormalizable SU(5) theories. In the simplest theory, the axion mass can be predicted with good precision in the range $m_a = (2-16)$ neV, and there is a strong correlation between the predictions for the axion mass and proton decay rates. In this context, we predict an upper bound for the proton decay channels with antineutrinos, $\tau(p\to K^+ \bar{\nu}) \lesssim 4 \times 10^{37} \text{ yr}$ and $\tau(p \to \pi^+ \bar{\nu}) \lesssim 2 \times 10^{36}\text{ yr}$. This theory can be considered as the minimal realistic grand unified theory with the DFSZ mechanism and it can be fully tested by proton decay and axion experiments.

Jan Plefka, Canxin Shi, Tianheng Wang

We construct the gravitational theory emerging from the double-copy of massive scalar quantum chromodynamics in general dimensions. The resulting two-form-dilaton-gravity couples to flavored massive scalars gravitationally and via the dilaton. It displays scalar self-interactions terms of arbitrary even order in the fields but quadratic in derivatives. We work out the emerging Lagrangian explicitly up to the sixth order in scalar fields.

James Bonifacio, Kurt Hinterbichler, Laura A. Johnson, Austin Joyce, Rachel A. Rosen

Scalar effective field theories with enhanced soft limits behave in many ways like gauge theories and gravity. In particular, symmetries fix the structure of interactions and the tree-level S-matrix in both types of theories. We explore how this analogy persists in the presence of matter by considering theories with additional fields coupled to the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) scalar or the special galileon in a way that is consistent with their symmetries. Using purely on-shell arguments, we show that these theories obey analogues of the S-matrix equivalence principle whereby all matter fields must couple to the DBI scalar or the special galileon through a particular quartic vertex with a universal coupling. These equivalence principles imply the universality of the leading double soft theorems in these theories, which are scalar analogues of Weinberg's gravitational soft theorem, and can be used to rule out interactions with massless higher-spin fields when combined with analogues of the generalized Weinberg-Witten theorem. We verify in several examples that amplitudes with external matter fields nontrivially exhibit enhanced single soft limits and we show that such amplitudes can be constructed using soft recursion relations when they have sufficiently many external DBI or special galileon legs, including amplitudes with massive higher-spin fields. As part of our analysis we construct a recently conjectured special galileon-vector effective field theory.