Related papers: Updated CMB constraints on Dark Matter annihilatio…
We reexamine the impact of dark matter (DM) annihilation on the intergalactic medium, taking into account the clumping of DM particles. We find that energy injection from the annihilation of the thermal relic DM particles may significantly…
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…
We examine cosmological, astrophysical and collider constraints on thermal dark matter (DM) with mass mX in the range 1 MeV to 10 GeV. Cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations, which severely constrain light symmetric DM, can be…
We consider the propagation and energy losses of protons and anti-protons produced by dark matter annihilation at redshifts 100<z<~2000. In the case of dark matter annihilations into quarks, gluons and weak gauge bosons, protons and…
We compute the bounds on the dark matter (DM) annihilation cross section using the most recent Cosmic Microwave Background measurements from WMAP9, SPT'11 and ACT'10. We consider DM with mass in the MeV-TeV range annihilating 100% into…
In co-annihilation scenarios, the weakly interacting dark matter particle (WIMP) is close in mass to another particle that can decay into the WIMP. As a result, both particles freeze out at roughly the same time in the early universe, and…
Spectral distortions (SDs) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide a powerful tool for studying particle physics. Here we compute the distortion signals from decaying particles that convert directly into photons at different epochs…
We study the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in cold and mixed dark matter (CDM and MDM) models, with non scale-invariant primordial power spectra (i.e. $n \neq 1$) and a late, sudden reionization of the intergalactic…
Dark matter annihilation or de-excitation, decay of metastable species, or other new physics may inject energetic electrons and photons into the photon-baryon fluid during and after recombination. As such particles cool, they partition…
We study the cosmological signatures of Invisibly Annihilating Dark Matter (IAnDM), where DM annihilates into dark radiation particles that are decoupled from the Standard Model (SM). In the simple benchmark model we consider here, such…
Decaying cold dark matter (CDM) has been considered as a mechanism to tackle the tensions in the Hubble expansion rate and the clustering of matter. However, polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) severely…
Recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies by Planck provide a sensitive probe of dark matter annihilation during the cosmic dark ages, and specifically constrain the annihilation parameter $f_\mathrm{eff}…
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment has detected reionization at the $5.5 \sigma$ level and has reported a mean optical depth of $0.088 \pm 0.015$. A powerful probe of reionization is the large-angle $EE$ polarization…
We consider a possibility to explain the observed suppression of the second acoustic peak in the anisotropy spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by interaction between a fraction of non-baryonic Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and…
Data from Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) place important constraints on models with light dark matter (DM) and light mediators especially when both lie in the mass range below $\sim 1 $ GeV. In models involving…
The possibility of light dark matter (DM) annihilating through a dark photon (DP) which kinetically mixes (KM) with the Standard Model (SM) hypercharge field is a very attractive scenario. For DM in the interesting mass range below $\sim 1$…
Energy injected into the Cosmic Microwave Background at redshifts z<10^6 will distort its spectrum permanently. In this paper we discuss the distortion caused by annihilations of relic particles. We use the observational bounds on…
The resonant conversion, within the inter-galactic medium, of regular photons into dark photons amplifies the anisotropy observed in the CMB, thereby imposing stringent constraints on the existence of light dark photons. In this study, we…
We present a new, more powerful and accurate, analytic treatment of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in the weakly coupled regime. Three applications are presented: gravitational redshifts in a time dependent potential, the…
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…