Related papers: Probing the last scattering surface through the re…
Some of the arguments which support the strong concensus for an $\Omega_o$ = 0.3, $\lambda_o$ = 0.7 model are reexamined. Corrections for Malmquist bias, local flow and metallicity suggest a revised value for $H_o$ of 63 $\pm$ 6 km/s/Mpc,…
We consider unified dark sector models in which the fluid can collapse and cluster into halos, allowing for hierarchical structure formation to proceed as in standard cosmology. We show that both background evolution and linear…
We present model-marginalized limits on mixed hot dark matter scenarios, which consider both thermal neutrinos and thermal QCD axions. A novel aspect of our analyses is the inclusion of small-scale Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)…
Damping of magnetic fields via ambipolar diffusion and decay of magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) turbulence in the post decoupling era heats the intergalactic medium (IGM). Delayed recombination of hydrogen atoms in the IGM yields an optical…
The coupling of photons and baryons by Thomson scattering in the early universe imprints features in both the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and matter power spectra. The former have been used to constrain a host of cosmological…
Observations of clusters and super clusters of galaxies have indicated that the Universe is more dominated by baryons than ever estimated in the homogeneous cosmological model for primordial nucleosynthesis. Recent detections of possibly…
Non-parametric reconstruction or marginalization over the history of reionization using cosmic microwave background data necessarily assumes a prior over possible histories. We show that different but reasonable choices of priors can shift…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies have turned out to represent one of the most stringent 'bottle necks' for scenarios of large scale structure formation. As a possibility to relax this constraint, it has been proposed that…
We find that the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization power spectra measurements from Planck constrain the parameter $\Omega_bh^2$ mostly through: A) the amplitude of Thomson scattering and B) a factor that ensures…
We discuss constraints on so-called `varying speed of light theories' coming from the physics of the early universe. Specifically, we consider the position of the first acoustic peak of the CMB angular power spectrum, showing that the…
The effects of reionization, occurring after standard recombination in cold dark matter-dominated models, on CMB anisotropies are investigated. Late-time reionization reduces the CMB anisotropies, in particular, on degree scales. It is…
I describe briefly the Cosmic Microwave Background (hereafter CMB) physics which explains why high accuracy observations of its spatial structure are a unique observational tool both for the determination of the global cosmological…
We point out that polarization measurements as planned for the upcoming PLANCK mission can significantly enhance the accuracy of cosmic parameter estimation compared to the temperature anisotropy spectrum alone. In order to illustrate this,…
We study the evolutionary and physical properties of evolved O stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), with a special focus on their surface abundances to investigate the efficiency of rotational mixing as a function of age, rotation and…
One still cannot conclusively assert that the universe underwent a neutral phase, despite the new COBE FIRAS limit y<0.000025 on Compton y-distortions of the cosmic microwave background. Although scenarios where the very early (z=1000)…
An ionization front expanding into a neutral medium can be slowed-down significantly by recombinations. In cosmological numerical simulations the recombination rate is often computed using a 'clumping factor', that takes into account that…
Using Planck polarization data, we search for and constrain spatial variations of the polarized dust foreground for cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations, specifically in its spectral index, $\beta_d$. Failure to account for such…
If dark matter decays to electromagnetically-interacting particles, it can inject energy into the baryonic gas and thus affect the processes of recombination and reionization. This leaves an imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB):…
We combine high resolution hydrodynamical simulations with an intermediate resolution, dark matter only simulation and an analytical model for the growth of ionized regions to estimate the large scale distribution and redshift evolution of…
The detection of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background on arcminute scales by the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) provides us with our first measurement of the damping tail and closes one chapter in the CMB story. We now have…