Related papers: Constraints on millicharged particles from Planck
We solve the recombination equation by taking into account the induced recombinations and a physical cut off in the hydrogen spectrum. The effective recombination coefficient is parametrized as a function of temperature and free electron…
The standard cosmological model, LCDM, provides an excellent fit to Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. However, the model has well known problems. For example, the cosmological constant, is fine-tuned to 1 part in 10^100 and the cold…
We investigate the degree to which the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can be used to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity coming from the presence of spinning particles coupled to the inflaton. We compute the $\langle TTT \rangle$ and…
The lecture is devoted to the comparison of a few models of cosmic recombination kinetics with recent CMB anisotropy data and to corresponding predictions for the upcoming PLANCK mission. The influence of additional sources of ionized…
The production of a primordial stochastic gravitational-wave background by processes occuring in the early Universe is expected in a broad range of models. Observing this background would open a unique window onto the Universe's…
We analyze the limits on resonant particle production during inflation based upon the power spectrum of fluctuations in matter and the cosmic microwave background. We show that such a model is consistent with features observed in the matter…
In many versions of brane model, the modulus field of extra dimensions, the radion, could have cosmological evolution, which induces variation of the Higgs vacuum expectation value, $<H>$, resulting in cosmological variation of the electron…
We present a summary of recent constraints on the value of the fine-structure constant at the epoch of decoupling from the recent observations made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite. Within the set of models…
The fine-structure constant, $\alpha$, controls the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. There are extensions of the standard model in which $\alpha$ is dynamical on cosmological length and time-scales. The physics of the cosmic…
We present a joint analysis of the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) final data releases. A key novelty of our study is the use of a new full-shape (FS) likelihood for the…
Any variation of the fundamental physical constants, and more particularly of the fine structure constant, $\alpha$, or of the mass of the electron, $m_e$, would affect the recombination history of the Universe and cause an imprint on the…
The cosmic microwave background provides constraints on the annihilation and decay of light dark matter at redshifts between 100 and 1000, the strength of which depends upon the fraction of energy ending up in the form of electrons and…
Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) provide a powerful tool for measuring the primary cosmological parameters. However, there is a large degree of parameter degeneracy in simultaneous measurements of the matter…
The fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are investigated for a small open universe, i.e., one which is periodically composed of a small fundamental cell. The evolution of initial metric perturbations is computed using the…
Departures of the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from a perfect blackbody probe a fundamental property of the universe -- its thermal history. Current upper limits, dating back some 25 years, limit such spectral…
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) contains information on virtually all cosmological parameters of interest, including the geometry of the Universe ($\Omega$), the baryon density, the Hubble constant ($h$),…
We present constraints on the patchy reionization by measuring the trispectrum of the Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. The patchy reionization leads to anisotropies in the CMB optical depth, and the…
Measuring the primordial matter power spectrum is our primary means of probing unknown physics in the very early universe. We allow the primordial power spectrum to be an arbitrary function, and parametrize it in terms of wavelet band…
Recent data on CBR anisotropies show a Doppler peak higher than expected in CDM cosmological models, if the spectral index $n=1$. However, CDM and LCDM models with n>1 can hardly be consistent with LSS data. Mixed models, instead, whose…
We present robust constraints on the stochastic gravitational waves (GWs) at Mpc scales from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. CMB constraints on GWs are usually characterized as the tensor-to-scalar ratio, assuming specifically a…