Related papers: Correlations between cosmic strings and extra rela…
We demonstrate that string motivated inflation ending via tachyonic instability leaves a detectable imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation by virtue of the excitation of non-Gaussian gravitational fluctuations. The…
Cosmological data probe massive neutrinos via their effects on the geometry of the Universe and the growth of structure, both of which are degenerate with the late-time expansion history. We clarify the nature of these degeneracies and the…
We search for stochastic gravitational wave background emitted from cosmic strings using the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data over 15 years. While we find that the common power-law excess revealed by several pulsar timing array experiments…
Perturbations in the cosmic neutrino background produce a characteristic phase shift in the acoustic oscillations imprinted in the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), providing a unique observational probe of neutrino…
Planck data have been used to provide stringent new constraints on cosmic strings and other defects. We describe forecasts of the CMB power spectrum induced by cosmic strings, calculating these from network models and simulations using…
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…
We review the status of neutrino mass constraints obtained from cosmological observations, with a particular focus on the results derived considering Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data by various experiments (Planck, ACT and SPT),…
Recent indications from both particle physics and cosmology suggest the existence of more than three neutrino species. In cosmological analyses the effects of neutrino mass and number of species can in principle be disentangled for fixed…
From a combination of probes including the cosmic microwave background (WMAP7+SPT), Hubble constant (HST), baryon acoustic oscillations (SDSS+2dFGRS), and supernova distances (Union2), we have explored the extent to which the constraints on…
It has been claimed recently that massive sterile neutrinos could bring about a new concordance between observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the large-scale structure (LSS) of the Universe, and local measurements of the…
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…
Since the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) was detected by the BICEP2 experiment and an unexpectedly large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$, was found, the base standard cosmology should at least…
We report a search for signatures of cosmic strings in the the Cosmic Microwave Background data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. We used a digital filter designed to search for individual cosmic strings and found no evidence…
We explore the possibility of redshift-dependent deviations in the contribution of relativistic degrees of freedom to the radiation budget of the cosmos, conventionally parameterized by the effective number of neutrinos $N_{\rm eff}$, from…
We continue our studies of the evolution and cosmological consequences of current-carrying cosmic string networks, described by a charge-velocity-dependent one scale (CVOS) model. We present a detailed calculation of the effects of these…
Much recent work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has focussed on the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies and particularly on the recovery of cosmological parameters from acoustic peaks in the power spectrum. However,…
In this work, we consider a network of cosmic strings to explain possible deviation from \Lambda CDM behaviour. We use different observational data to constrain the model and show that a small but non zero contribution from the string…
The presence of non--Gaussian features in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation maps represents one of the most long--awaited clues in the search for the actual structure of the primordial radiation, still needing confirmation.…
We construct a simple analytical model to study the effects of cosmic strings on the microwave background radiation. Our model is based on counting random multiple impulses inflicted on photon trajectories by the string network between the…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…