Related papers: CMB Distortions from Superconducting Cosmic String…

The frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relatively untapped source of data which can allow us to peer beyond the surface of last scattering. Small deviations away from a perfect blackbody shape will encode…

Even after dark matter chemically freezes out in the early universe, electromagnetic cascades from dark matter annihilation can still perturb the background photon spectrum when the universe temperature cools down to 0.5 keV. We revisit the…

Cosmic strings are generically predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. We propose a new avenue for detecting cosmic strings through their effect on the filamentary structure in the cosmic web. Using…

We find the constraints from WMAP and SDSS data on the fraction of cosmological fluctuations sourced by local cosmic strings using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis. In addition to varying the usual 6 cosmological parameters and…

Departures of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) frequency spectrum from a blackbody - commonly referred to as spectral distortions - encode information about the thermal history of the early Universe (redshift z < few x 10^6). While the…

We briefly review certain aspects of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as generated in passive and active models of structure formation. We then focus on cosmic strings based models and discuss their status in the light of current…

We provide an analytical expression for the trispectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies induced by cosmic strings. Our result is derived for the small angular scales under the assumption that the…

We discuss the implications for cosmic microwave background (CMB) observables, of a class of pre-inflationary dynamics suggested by string models where SUSY is broken due to the presence of D-branes and orientifolds preserving incompatible…

Superconducting cosmic string may admit shock-like discontinuities of the current when the latter is spacelike ("magnetic" regime), while no shock at timelike current ("electric" regime) was discovered in numerical simulations. We find that…

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is affected by the total radiation density around the time of decoupling. At that epoch, neutrinos comprised a significant fraction of the radiative energy, but there could also be a contribution from…

Cusps in superconducting cosmic strings produce strongly beamed electromagnetic radiation. To calculate the energy emitted requires taking into account the effect of the charge carriers on the string motion, which has previously been done…

We revisit cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on primordial black hole dark matter. Spectral distortion limits from COBE/FIRAS do not impose a relevant constraint. Planck CMB anisotropy power spectra imply that primordial black…

In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…

Cosmic strings are one-dimensional topological defects which could have been formed in the early stages of our Universe. They triggered a lot of interest, mainly for their cosmological implications: they could offer an alternative to…

Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…

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…

Voyage 2050 White Paper highlighting the unique science opportunities using spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). CMB spectral distortions probe many processes throughout the history of the Universe. Precision…

We explore the use of random forest and gradient boosting, two powerful tree-based machine learning algorithms, for the detection of cosmic strings in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), through their unique Gott-Kaiser-Stebbins…

We consider the stochastic background of gravitational waves produced by a network of cosmic strings and assess their accessibility to current and planned gravitational wave detectors, as well as to big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), cosmic…

We summarize some applications of big bang nucleosythesis (BBN) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to constrain the first moments of the creation of matter in the universe. We review the basic elements of BBN and how it constraints…