We examine reheating in the two-field matter bounce cosmology. In this model, the Universe evolves from a matter-dominated phase of contraction to an Ekpyrotic phase of contraction before the nonsingular bounce. The Ekpyrotic phase frees the model from unwanted anisotropies, but leaves the Universe cold and empty of particles after the bounce. For this reason, we explore two particle production mechanisms which take place during the course of the cosmological evolution: Parker particle production where the matter field couples only to gravity and particle creation via interactions between the matter field and the bounce field. Although we show that both mechanisms can produce particles in this model, we find that Parker particle production is sufficient to reheat the Universe to high temperatures. Thus there is a priori no need to add an interaction term to the Lagrangian of the model. Still, particle creation via interactions can contribute to the formation of matter and radiation, but only if the coupling between the fields is tuned to be large.

Assuming that curvature perturbations and gravitational waves originally arise from vacuum fluctuations in a matter-dominated phase of contraction, we study the dynamics of the cosmological perturbations evolving through a nonsingular bouncing phase described by a generic single scalar field Lagrangian minimally coupled to Einstein gravity. In order for such a model to be consistent with the current upper limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, there must be an enhancement of the curvature fluctuations during the bounce phase. We show that, while it remains possible to enlarge the amplitude of curvature perturbations due to the nontrivial background evolution, this growth is very limited because of the conservation of curvature perturbations on super-Hubble scales. We further perform a general analysis of the evolution of primordial non-Gaussianities through the bounce phase. By studying the general form of the bispectrum we show that the non-Gaussianity parameter fNL (which is of order unity before the bounce phase) is enhanced during the bounce phase if the curvature fluctuations grow. Hence, in such nonsingular bounce models with matter given by a single scalar field, there appears to be a tension between obtaining a small enough tensor-to-scalar ratio and not obtaining a value of fNL in excess of the current upper bounds. This conclusion may be considered as a "no-go" theorem that rules out any single field matter bounce cosmology starting with vacuum initial conditions for the fluctuations.1 Such a negative potential may arise from the standard model Higgs field since, based on the recent Higgs and top quark mass measurements, the standard model Higgs develops an instability at large field values (in the absence of new physics) [26].

We present a binary evolution study of cataclysmic variables (CVs) and related systems with white dwarf accretors, including for example, AM CVn systems, classical novae, supersoft X-ray sources, and systems with giant donor stars. Our approach intentionally avoids the complications associated with population synthesis algorithms thereby allowing us to present the first truly comprehensive exploration of all of the subsequent binary evolution pathways that ZACVs might follow (assuming fully non-conservative, Roche-lobe overflow onto an accreting WD) using the sophisticated binary stellar evolution code MESA. The grid consists of 56,000 initial models, including 14 white dwarf accretor masses, 43 donor-star masses (0.1 − 4.7 M ), and 100 orbital periods. We explore evolution tracks in the orbital period and donor-mass (P orb − M don ) plane in terms of evolution dwell times, masses of the white dwarf accretor, accretion rate, and chemical composition of the center and surface of the donor star. We report on the differences among the standard CV tracks, those with giant donor stars, and ultrashort period systems. We show where in parameter space one can expect to find supersoft X-ray sources, present a diagnostic to distinguish among different evolutionary paths to forming AM CVn binaries, quantify how the minimum orbital period in CVs depends on the chemical composition of the donor star, and update the P orb (M wd ) relation for binaries containing white dwarfs whose progenitors lost their envelopes via stable Roche-lobe overflow. Finally, we indicate where in the P orb − M don the accretion disks will tend to be stable against the thermal-viscous instability, and where gravitational radiation signatures may be found with LISA.

We revisit nonsingular cosmologies in which the limiting curvature hypothesis is realized. We study the cosmological perturbations of the theory and determine the general criteria for stability. For the simplest model, we find generic Ostrogradski instabilities unless the action contains the Weyl tensor squared with the appropriate coefficient. When considering two specific nonsingular cosmological scenarios (one inflationary and one genesis model), we find ghost and gradient instabilities throughout most of the cosmic evolution. Furthermore, we show that the theory is equivalent to a theory of gravity where the action is a general function of the Ricci and Gauss-Bonnet scalars, and this type of theory is known to suffer from instabilities in anisotropic backgrounds. This leads us to construct a new type of curvature-invariant scalar function. We show that it does not have Ostrogradski instabilities, and it avoids ghost and gradient instabilities for most of the interesting background inflationary and genesis trajectories. We further show that it does not possess additional new degrees of freedom in an anisotropic spacetime. This opens the door for studying stable alternative nonsingular very early Universe cosmologies.

The result presented by the BOSS-SDSS Collaboration measuring the baryon acoustic oscillations of the Lyman-alpha forest from high-redshift quasars indicates a 2.5σ departure from the standard Λ-cold-dark-matter model. This is the first time that the evolution of dark energy at high redshifts has been measured, and the current results cannot be explained by simple generalizations of the cosmological constant. We show here that a simple phenomenological interaction in the dark sector provides a good explanation for this deviation, naturally accommodating the Hubble parameter obtained by BOSS, H(z = 2.34) = 222 ± 7 km s −1 Mpc −1 . By performing a global fit of the parameters with the inclusion of this new data set together with the Planck data for the interacting model, we are able to show that some interacting models have constraints for H(2.34) and DA(2.34) that are compatible with the ones obtained by the BOSS Collaboration, showing a better concordance than ΛCDM. We also show that the interacting models that have a small positive coupling constant, which helps alleviate the coincidence problem, are compatible with the cosmological observations. Adding the likelihood of these new baryon acoustic oscillations data shows an improvement in the global fit, although it is not statistically significant. The coupling constant could not be fully constrained by the data sets used, but the dark energy equation of state shows a slight preference for a value different from a cosmological constant.PACS numbers: 95.36.+x, 98.80.Es, 95.30.Sf, 98.80.Jk