Related papers: Could the Cosmological Recombination Spectrum Help…
Dark matter (DM) annihilation during hydrogen recombination (z ~ 1000) will alter the recombination history of the Universe, and affect the observed CMB temperature and polarization fluctuations. Unlike other astrophysical probes of DM,…
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into account a very large variety of processes, still finding potentially measurable…
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into account a very large variety of processes, still finding potentially measurable…
In this paper we consider the re-processing of high frequency photons emitted by HeII and HeI during the epoch of cosmological recombination by HeI and HI. We demonstrate that, in comparison to computations which neglect all feedback…
It is well known that annihilations in the homogeneous fluid of dark matter (DM) can leave imprints in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy power spectrum. However, the relevance of DM annihilations in halos for cosmological…
We revisit the possibility of constraining the properties of dark matter (DM) by studying the epoch of cosmic reionization. Previous studies have shown that DM annihilation was unlikely to have provided a large fraction of the photons that…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on dark matter annihilation are a uniquely powerful tool in the quest to understand the nature of dark matter. Annihilation of dark matter to Standard Model particles between recombination and…
The injection of secondary particles produced by Dark Matter (DM) annihilation around redshift 1000 would inevitably affect the process of recombination, leaving an imprint on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies and polarization.…
The injection of secondary particles produced by Dark Matter (DM) annihilation at redshift 100<z<1000 affects the process of recombination, leaving an imprint on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. Here we provide a new…
We show that dark matter annihilation around the time of recombination can lead to growing ionization fraction perturbations, that track the linear collapse of matter over-densities. This amplifies small scale cosmological perturbations to…
Anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have proven to be a very powerful tool to constrain dark matter annihilation at the epoch of recombination. However, CMB constraints are currently derived using a number of reasonable…
Spectral distortions of the CMB have recently experienced an increased interest. One of the inevitable distortion signals of our cosmological concordance model is created by the cosmological recombination process, just a little before…
The recombination history of the Universe provides a useful tool for constraining the annihilation of dark matter particles. Even a small fraction of dark matter particles annihilated during the cosmic dark age can provide sufficient energy…
I summarize the recent advances in determining the effects of self-annihilating WIMP dark matter on the modification of the recombination history, at times earlier than the formation of astrophysical objects. Depending on mass and…
The atomic recombination process leads to a softening of the matter equation of state as reflected by a reduced generalized adiabatic index, with accompanying heat release. We study the effects of this recombination softening and reheating…
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…
In this thesis we focus on studying the physics of cosmological recombination and how the details of recombination affect the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. We present a detailed calculation of the spectral line distortions…
Dark Matter (DM) annihilation and decay during the Dark Ages can affect the cosmic ionization history and leave imprints in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy spectra. CMB polarization anisotropy can be sensitive to such…
We solve the recombination equation by taking into account the induced recombinations and a physical cut off in the hydrogen spectrum. The effective recombination coefficient is parametrized as a function of temperature and free electron…
We place new constraints on sources of ionizing and resonance radiation at the epoch of the recombination process using the recent CMB temperature and polarization spectra coming from WMAP. We find that non-standard recombination scenarios…