Related papers: Cosmological Perturbations at Second Order and Rec…
Early energy injection to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from dissipation of acoustic waves generates deviations from the blackbody spectrum not only at second-order but also at third-order in cosmological perturbations. We compute…
Over the past decades, cosmology has become largely based on experimental data, the most important sources of which are studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). CMB is present in the Universe since the very first moments of its…
These lecture notes present the computation of the full system of Boltzmann equations describing the evolution of the photon, baryon and cold dark matter fluids up to second order in perturbation theory, as recently studied in (Bartolo,…
Evolution of large-scale scalar perturbations in the presence of stiff solid (solid with pressure to energy density ratio > 1/3) is studied. If the solid dominated the dynamics of the universe long enough, the perturbations could end up…
We compute cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy constraints on exotic forms of energy injection in electromagnetic (e.m.) channels over a large range of timescales. These constraints are very powerful around or just after…
With the recent measurement of full sky cosmic microwave background polarization from WMAP, key cosmological degeneracies have been broken, allowing tighter constraints to be placed on cosmological parameters inferred assuming a standard…
A second--order perturbation theory approach is developed to calculate temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Results are given for open universes and fluctuations corresponding to CDM models with either…
We investigate constraints on the time variation of the fine structure constant between the recombination epoch and the present epoch, \Delta\alpha/\alpha \equiv (\alpha_{rec} - \alpha_{now})/\alpha_{now}, from cosmic microwave background…
The fundamental constants at recombination can differ from their present-day values due to degeneracies in cosmological parameters, raising the possibility of yet-undiscovered physics coupled directly to the Standard Model. We study the…
Current cosmological constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are typically derived assuming a standard recombination scheme, however additional resonance and ionizing radiation sources can delay recombination,…
We present the initial conditions for a decaying cosmological perturbation and study its signatures in the CMB anisotropies and matter power spectra. An adiabatic decaying mode in presence of components which are not described as perfect…
We develop a linear perturbation theory for the spectral $y$-distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The $y$-distortions generated during the recombination epoch are usually negligible because the energy transfer due to the…
Induced emission due to the presence of soft CMB photons slightly increases the two-photon decay rate of the 2s level of hydrogen defining the rate of cosmological recombination. This correspondingly changes the degree of ionization, the…
Nonlinear perturbations of Friedmann-Lemaitre cosmologies with dust and a positive cosmological constant have recently attracted considerable attention. In this paper our first goal is to compare the evolution of the first and second order…
We calculate the post-recombination contribution to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortion due to general exotic energy injections, including dark matter (DM) decaying or annihilating to Standard Model particles. Upon…
Prior to recombination photons, electrons, and atomic nuclei rapidly scattered and behaved, almost, like a single tightly-coupled photon-baryon plasma. We investigate here the accuracy of the tight-coupling approximation commonly used to…
A key prediction of cosmological theories for the origin and evolution of structure in the Universe is the existence of a `Doppler peak' in the angular power spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations. We present new results…
We discuss the two potentially important effects which should be taken into account in the analysis of the cosmological redshift-space distortion especially at high redshifts; the effect of inhomogeneities in the light propagation and the…
The present article analyses the impact on cosmology, in particular on the evolution of cosmological perturbations, of the existence of extra-dimensions. The model considered here is that of a five-dimensional Anti-de Sitter spacetime where…
Certain modified gravity theories predict the existence of an additional, non-conformally coupled scalar field. A disformal coupling of the field to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is shown to affect the evolution of the energy…