Related papers: Unavoidable CMB spectral features and blackbody ph…
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…
We calculate numerical solutions and analytic approximations for the intermediate-type spectral distortions. Detection of a \mu-type distortion (saturated comptonization) in the CMB will constrain the time of energy injection to be at a…
In this paper, we provide the first computations for the distortion transfer functions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the perturbed Universe, following up on paper I and II in this series. We illustrate the physical effects…
We calculate the post-recombination contribution to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortion due to general exotic energy injections, including dark matter (DM) decaying or annihilating to Standard Model particles. Upon…
Deviations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) frequency spectrum from a pure blackbody tell an exciting story about the thermal history of our Universe. In this paper we illustrate how well future CMB measurements might decipher this…
Current constraints on energy injection in the form of energetic particles before the epoch of recombination using CMB spectral distortions assume that all energy goes into $y$ and $\mu$-type distortions. We revisit these constraints with…
Extra radiation injection after neutrino decoupling in the early Universe contributes to the effective number of neutrino species that can be constrained by the cosmic microwave background (CMB). However, any effective neutrino number…
Energy release in the early Universe (z<~ 2x10^6) should lead to some broad spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation field, which can be characterized as y-type distortion when the injection process started at…
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into account a very large variety of processes, still finding potentially measurable…
Accurate computations of spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are required for constraining energy release scenarios at redshifts $z\gtrsim 10^3$. The existing literature focuses on distortions that are small…
Spectral distortions and anisotropies of the CMB provide independent and complementary probes to study energy injection processes in the early universe. Here we discuss the synergy between these observables, and show the promising future of…
I examine a possible spectral distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) due to its absorption by galactic and intergalactic dust. I show that even subtle intergalactic opacity of $1 \times 10^{-7}\, \mathrm{mag}\, h\,…
The cosmological recombination radiation (CRR) is one of the inevitable $\Lambda$CDM spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). While it shows a rich spectral structure across dm-mm wavelengths, it is also one of the…
The dimming of Type Ia supernovae could be the result of Hubble-scale inhomogeneity in the matter and spatial curvature, rather than signaling the presence of a dark energy component. A key challenge for such models is to fit the detailed…
We compute the spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) arising during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination within the standard cosmological (concordance) model for frequencies in the range 1 GHz-3500 GHz.…
The blackbody nature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation spectrum is used in a modern test of the Copernican Principle. The reionized universe serves as a mirror to reflect CMB photons, thereby permitting a view of ourselves…
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.…
We compute the spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization induced by non-linear effects in the Compton interactions between CMB photons and cold intergalactic electrons. This signal is of the $y$-type and is…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relic radiation of the Big Bang and as such it contains a wealth of cosmological information. Statistical analyses of the CMB, in conjunction with other cosmological observables, represent some of…
We review aspects of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortions which do not appear to have been fully explored in the literature. In particular, implications of recent evidences of heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM) by…