Related papers: Neutrinos, WMAP, and BBN
Deviations from unitarity in the three-neutrino mixing canonical picture are expected in many physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model. The mixing of new heavy neutral leptons with the three light neutrinos would in principle modify the…
Recently, two issues concerning the three-year WMAP likelihood code were pointed out. On large angular scales ($l \lesssim 30$), a sub-optimal likelihood approximation resulted in a small power excess. On small angular scales ($l \gtrsim…
In the present work the primordial Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter are discussed in a certain class of modified gravitational theories, namely $f(R) \sim R^n$ gravity. The new…
Certainly one of the most exciting areas of research at present is neutrino physics. The neutrinos are fantastically numerous in the universe and as such they have bearing on our understanding of the universe. Therefore, we must understand…
Neutrinos are amongst the most abundant particles in the universe. The fact that they are massive particles proves that the Standard Model is an incomplete theory and needs to be extended. This thesis focuses on the study of neutrino…
Massive neutrinos have a detectable effect on cosmological structure formation, in particular on the large-scale distribution of galaxies. Adding Hot Dark Matter to the now-standard Lambda CDM model leads to a worse fit to large-scale…
Recent observations suggest that the number of relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe might exceed what is predicted in the standard cosmological model. If even a small, percent-level fraction of dark matter particles are…
Evidence from the WMAP polarization data indicates that the Universe may have been reionized at very high redshift. It is often suggested that the ionizing UV flux originates from an early population of massive or very massive stars.…
The three-year WMAP(WMAP3), combined with other cosmological observations from galaxy clustering and Type Ia Supernova (SNIa), prefers a non-vanishing running of the primordial spectral index independent of the low CMB multipoles. Motivated…
We study neutrino physics in a model with one large extra dimension. We assume the existence of two four-dimensional branes in the five-dimensional space-time, one for the ordinary particles and the other one for mirror particles, and we…
Primordial neutrino-antineutrino asymmetries can be constrained through big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) relic abundances and cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, both observables being sensitive to neutrino properties. The latter…
The present experimental data on neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double beta decay and tritium beta decay are collected together and possible mass ranges for Dirac and Majorana neutrinos are found. Four future experimental situations…
Data on solar and atmospheric neutrinos provide evidence for neutrino masses and mixings. We review some basic neutrino properties, the status of neutrino oscillations and implications for grand unified theories, including leptogenesis.
Neutrinos are believed to be the most abundant fermions in the Universe, but their masses are unknown, except for being non-zero but much smaller than other fermions. Cosmological relic neutrinos could also have non-zero chemical potentials…
The weak lensing (WL) distortions of distant galaxy images are sensitive to neutrino masses by probing the suppression effect on clustering strengths of total matter in large-scale structure. We use the latest measurement of WL…
Nowadays, at least two relics of the Big Bang have survived - the cosmological microwave background (CMB) and the cosmological neutrino background (C$\nu$B). Being the second most abundant particle in the Universe, the neutrino has a…
We review the Cosmology and Physics underlying Primordial Nucleosynthesis and survey current observational data in order to compare the predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with the inferred primordial abundances. From this comparison we…
To elucidate the significance of the effect of systematic uncertainties in light element abundance estimates on cosmological bounds derivable from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) we present tables giving bounds on $\Omega_{baryon}$ and…
Big bang nucleosynthesis has long provided the primary determination of the cosmic baryon density $\omb h^2$, or equivalently the baryon-to-photon ratio, \eta. Recently, data on CMB anisotropies have become increasingly sensitive to \eta.…
In the primordial Universe, neutrino decoupling occurs only slightly before electron-positron annihilations, leading to an increased neutrino energy density with order $10^{-2}$ spectral distortions compared to the standard instantaneous…