Related papers: A Hydrodynamical Approach to CMB mu-distortions
We compute the spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) created by an exotic process that extracts or injects photons of a particular frequency into the CMB. Such signatures are a natural prediction of a class of…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…
We study the QCD--DM scenario by analyzing the imprint of energy injection from decaying dark-sector particles on the spectral distortions (SDs) of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We adopt a unified framework capable of describing…
Skewness of temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) produced by initially Gaussian adiabatic perturbations with the flat (Harrison-Zeldovich) spectrum, which arises due to non-linear corrections to a gravitational…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are sensitive to energy injection by exotic physics in the early universe. The proposed Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) mission has the raw sensitivity to provide…
Thermal inflation is a second epoch of exponential expansion at typical energy scales $V^{1/4} \sim 10^{6 \sim 8} \mathrm{GeV}$. If the usual primordial inflation is followed by thermal inflation, the primordial power spectrum is only…
With the release of the data from the Boomerang and MAXIMA-1 balloon flights, estimates of cosmological parameters based on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have reached unprecedented precision. In this paper I show that it is possible…
Spectral features in the CMB energy spectrum contain a wealth of information about the physical processes in the early Universe, z < 2 x 10^6. The CMB spectral distortions are complementary to all other probes of cosmology. In fact, most of…
We review the theory of the temperature anisotropy and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and describe what we have learned from current CMB observations. In particular, we discuss how the CMB is being used to…
The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) allows constraining episodes of energy release in the early Universe. In this paper we revisit and refine the computations of the cosmological thermalization problem. For this…
The recently detected polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) holds the potential for revealing the physics of inflation and gravitationally mapping the large-scale structure of the universe, if so called B-mode signals below…
The linear anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation and its polarization provide a clean picture of fluctuations in the universe some 370 kyr after the big bang. Simple physics connects these…
These lecture notes form a primer on the theory of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy formation. With emphasis on conceptual aspects rather than technical issues, we examine the physical foundations of anisotropy evolution in…
Many inflation models predict that primordial density perturbations have a nonzero three-point correlation function, or bispectrum in Fourier space. Of the several possibilities for this bispectrum, the most commmon is the local-model…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral distortion from Rayleigh scattering is calculated for the first time in rigorous second-order cosmological perturbation theory. The new spectral distortion is sensitive to acoustic dissipation at…
Spectral distortion anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide a new probe of the early Universe that can be accessed using traditional CMB imaging techniques. It is possible to compute the creation and evolution of…
Energy release in the early Universe leads to spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which in the future might allow probing different physical processes in the pre-recombination (z>~10^3) epoch. Depending on the…
We review the present status of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy observations and discuss the main related astrophysical issues, instrumental effects and data analysis techniques. We summarise the balloon-borne and ground-based…
Weak lensing distortion of the background cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization patterns by the foreground density fluctuations is well studied in the literature. We discuss the gravitational lensing modification to…
Distortions to the cosmic microwave background~(CMB) blackbody spectrum are calculated in the framework of cosmological perturbation theory. The second order Boltzmann equation is explicitly solved, with the spectral $y$ distortion and the…