Related papers: Constraining SUSY with Heavy Scalars -- using the …
The late integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect correlates the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies with foreground cosmic large-scale structures. As the correlation depends crucially on the growth history in the era of…
In the first part of this work, I review the theoretical framework of cosmological perturbation theory necessary to understand the generation and evolution of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Using analytical and numerical…
Exotic dark matter together with the vacuum energy or cosmological constant seem to dominate in the Universe. An even higher density of such matter seems to be gravitationally trapped in the Galaxy. Thus its direct detection is central to…
A period of early matter domination can give rise to the correct dark matter abundance for a broad range of dark matter annihilation rate $\langle \sigma_{\rm ann} v \rangle_{\rm f}$. Here, we examine this scenario for situations where…
We perform a general analysis of axionic dark radiation produced from the decay of the lightest modulus in the sequestered LARGE Volume Scenario. We discuss several cases depending on the form of the Kahler metric for visible sector matter…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) places a variety of model-independent constraints on the strength interactions of the dominant component of dark matter with the Standard Model. Percent-level subcomponents of the dark matter can evade…
We use the WMAP 7 data to place constraints on oscillations supplementing an almost scale-invariant primordial power spectrum. Such oscillations are predicted by a variety of models, some of which amount to assuming there is some…
We investigate the creation of dark matter particles as a result of the decay of the scalar field in the framework of warm inflationary models, by using the irreversible thermodynamics of open systems with matter creation/annihilation. We…
Primordial non-Gaussianity can source $\mu$-distortion anisotropies that are correlated with the large-scale temperature and polarization signals of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). A measurement of $\mu T$ and $\mu E$ correlations…
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…
Weak-scale supersymmetry (SUSY) is well motivated as a technically natural solution to the gauge hierarchy problem. LHC limits on superpartners, however, have sharpened the Little Hierarchy problem, raising the question of why $m_{weak} \ll…
We devise a measure n(r) to quantify a robust feature in the coherent cosmic perturbations, namely the narrowness of the first peak in the power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy. A maximum-likelihood analysis…
We perform a cosmological analysis in which we allow the primordial power spectrum of scalar perturbations to assume a shape that is different with respect to the usual power-law, arising from the simplest models of cosmological inflation.…
We constrain the form of the primordial power spectrum using Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 3-year cosmic microwave background (CMB) data (+ other high resolution CMB experiments) in addition to complementary large-scale…
We consider Cosmic Microwave Background constraints on inflation models for which the primordial power spectrum is a mixture of perturbations generated by inflaton fluctuations and fluctuations in a curvaton field. If future experiments do…
The Cosmological Principle states that the universe is statistically isotropic and homogeneous on large length scales, typically $\gtrsim 70$Mpc. A detection of significant deviation would help us falsify the simplest models of inflation.…
Are geometrical summaries of the CMB and LSS sufficient for estimating cosmological parameters? And how does our choice of a dark energy model impact the current constraints on standard cosmological parameters? We address these questions in…
Over the next decade, improvements in cosmological parameter constraints will be driven by surveys of large-scale structure. Its inherent non-linearity suggests that significant information will be embedded in higher correlations beyond the…
Full suite of the present day Cosmic Microwave background (CMB) data, when combined with weak prior information on the Hubble constant and the age of the Universe, or the Large-Scale structure, provides strong indication for a non-zero…
The dissipation of small-scale perturbations in the early universe produces a distortion in the blackbody spectrum of cosmic microwave background photons. In this work, we propose to use these distortions as a probe of the microphysics of…