Related papers: Does the CMB prefer a leptonic Universe?

I show that neutral lithium couples strongly to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) through its 6708A resonant transition after it recombines at z~500. At observed wavelengths of <335 micron, the CMB anisotropies are significantly altered…

This is a report on the status and prospects of the quantification of neutrino properties through the cosmological neutrino background for the Cosmic Frontier of the Division of Particles and Fields Community Summer Study long-term planning…

We discuss how much we can probe the effective number of neutrino species N_nu with cosmic microwave background alone. Using the data of WMAP, ACBAR, CBI and BOOMERANG experiments, we obtain a constraint on the effective number of neutrino…

Big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) theory, together with the precise WMAP cosmic baryon density, makes tight predictions for the abundances of the lightest elements. Deuterium and 4He measurements agree well with expectations, but 7Li…

We take a fresh look at the limits on the number of neutrino flavors derived from big bang nucleosynthesis. In particular, recent measurements of the \he4 abundance enable one to estimate the primordial \he4 mass fraction at $Y_p = 0.232…

We show that the predicted primordial helium production is significantly reduced when new measurements of the neutron lifetime and the implied enhancement in the weak reaction rates are included in big-bang nucleosynthesis. Therefore, even…

The anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are computed for the half-turn space E_2 which represents a compact flat model of the Universe, i.e. one with finite volume. This model is inhomogeneous in the sense that the…

From the observations of the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the WMAP satellite has provided a determination of the baryonic density of the Universe, \Omega_b.h^2, with an unprecedented precision. This…

Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contain a wealth of information about the past history of the universe and the present values of cosmological parameters. I ouline some of the theoretical advances of the last few years.…

The connection between cosmological observations and neutrino physics is discussed in detail. Neutrinos decouple from thermal contact in the early Universe at a temperature of order 1 MeV which coincides with the temperature where light…

We investigate how large lepton asymmetries affect the evolution of the early universe at times before big bang nucleosynthesis and in particular how they influence the relic density of WIMP dark matter. In comparison to the standard…

The recent analysis of the cosmic microwave background data carried out by the WMAP team seems to show that the sum of the neutrino masses is <0.7 eV. However, this result is not model-independent, depending on precise assumptions on the…

These lecture notes comprise an informal but pedagogical introduction to the well established physics and phenomenology of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) between big bang nucleosynthesis and recombination. The dominant properties of…

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…

It is clear that matter is dominant in the Universe compared to antimatter. We call this problem baryon asymmetry. The baryon asymmetry is experimentally determined by both cosmic microwave background and big bang nucleosynthesis…

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) provide complementary probes of the early evolution of the Universe and of its particle content. Neutrinos play important roles in both cases, influencing the…

Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…

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…

Interest in non-standard recombination scenarios has been spurred by recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) results from BOOMERANG and MAXIMA, which show an unexpectedly low second acoustic peak, resulting in a best-fit baryon density…

We reanalyze the cosmological constraints on the existence of a net universal lepton asymmetry and neutrino degeneracy. We show that neutrinos can begin to decouple at higher temperatures than previous estimates due to several corrections…