Related papers: Isocurvature perturbations in extra radiation
We study the evolution of perturbations during the domination and decay of a massive particle species whose mass and decay rate are allowed to depend on the expectation value of a light scalar field. We specialize in the case where the…
We show that inflationary models with broken rotational invariance generate testable off-diagonal signatures in the correlation between the $\mu$-type distortion and temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background. More…
This thesis is centered on three main subjects within the theory of inflation and cosmological perturbations: loop corrections to the power spectrum of curvature fluctuations generated during inflation; evolution of cosmological…
Cosmic-ray (CR) protons can accumulate for cosmological times in clusters of galaxies. Their hadronic interactions with protons of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) generate secondary electrons, gamma-rays and high-energy neutrinos. In light…
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…
We develop and examine the principles governing the formation of distortions in the cosmic microwave background. Distortions in the frequency or spectral distribution of the background probe the thermal history of the universe whereas those…
Higher-curvature corrections to the effective gravitational action may leave signatures in the spectrum of primordial tensor perturbations if the inflationary energy scale is sufficiently high. In this paper we further investigate the…
The South Pole Telescope (SPT), Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have each reported measurements of the cosmic microwave background's (CMB) angular power spectrum which favor the existence…
In this paper I review some recent, interlinked, work undertaken using cosmological perturbation theory -- a powerful technique for modelling inhomogeneities in the Universe. The common theme which underpins these pieces of work is the…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
We investigate the CMB $\mu$ distortion in models where two uncorrelated sources contribute to primordial perturbations. We parameterise each source by an amplitude, tilt, running and running of the running. We perform a detailed analysis…
Cosmic rays of the highest energy, above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off of the spectrum, may originate in decays of superheavy long-living X-particles. These particles may be produced in the early Universe from vacuum fluctuations…
The theoretical basis for the prediction of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background is very well developed. Very low amplitude density and temperature perturbations produce small gravitational effects, leading to an anisotropy that…
Blazar emission of gamma rays and cosmic ray production of gamma rays in gas-rich clusters have been proposed recently as alternative sources of the high energy extragalactic diffuse gamma ray background radiation. We show that these…
We study cosmological perturbations in the case that present-day matter consists of a mixture of inflaton and curvaton decay products. We calculate how the curvaton perturbations are transferred to its decay products in the general case…
In this paper we analyze the possibility of detecting nontrivial quantum phenomena in observations of the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation (CBR), for example, if the Universe could be found in a coherent…
Compensated isocurvature perturbations (CIPs) are primordial fluctuations that balance baryon and dark-matter isocurvature to leave the total matter density unperturbed. The effects of CIPs on the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
Accretion of gas during the large scale structure formation has been thought to give rise to shocks that can accelerate cosmic rays. This process then results in an isotropic extragalactic gamma-ray emission contributing to the…
Three independent predictions follow from postulating the existence of protons co-accelerated with electrons in extragalactic jets (i) multi-TeV gamma ray emission from nearby blazars, (ii) extragalactic cosmic ray protons up to 10^20 eV,…
The observed CMBR dipole, generally interpreted as the consequence of the peculiar motion of the Sun with respect to the reference frame of the CMBR, can also be explained by the presence of ultra large scale (of the order of $100H_0^{-1}$)…