Related papers: The CMB flexes its BICEPs while walking the Planck
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarimeters aspire to measure the faint $B$-mode signature predicted to arise from inflationary gravitational waves. They also have the potential to constrain cosmic birefringence which would produce…
The role of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarisation data in constraining the presence of primordial isocurvature modes is examined. While the MAP satellite mission will be unable to simultaneously constrain isocurvature modes and…
We present a new signature by which to one could potentially discriminate between a spectrum of gravitational radiation generated by a self-ordering scalar field vs that of inflation, specifically a comparison of the magnitude of a flat…
Single-field inflation, arguably the simplest and most compelling paradigm for the origin of our Universe, is strongly supported by the recent results of the Planck satellite and the BICEP2 experiment. The results from Planck, however, also…
Quantum gravity effects are expected to modify the primordial density fluctuations produced during inflation and leave their imprint on the cosmic microwave background observed today. We present a new analysis discussing whether these…
We analyze a class of generalized inflationary models proposed in Ref. [1], known as $\beta$-exponential inflation. We show that this kind of potential can arise in the context of brane cosmology, where the field describing the size of the…
The network of cosmic strings generated in a phase transition during inflation enters the scaling regime later than that of usual strings. If it occurs after the recombination, temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
Constraining the Galactic foregrounds with multi-frequency Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations is an essential step towards ultimately reaching the sensitivity to measure primordial gravitational waves (PGWs), the sign of…
The recent Planck results and future releases on the horizon present a key opportunity to address a fundamental question in inflationary cosmology of whether primordial density perturbations have a quantum or thermal origin, i.e. whether…
The power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from both the Planck and WMAP data exhibits a slight dip in for multipoles in the range of l=10-30. We show that such a dip could be the result of resonant creation of a massive particle…
The weak gravity conjecture imposes severe constraints on natural inflation. A trans-Planckian axion decay constant can only be realized if the potential exhibits an additional (subdominant) modulation with sub-Planckian periodicity. The…
The PLANCK satellite mission has been launched the 14th of May 2009 and is dedicated to the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in temperature and polarization. The presence of diffuse galactic polarized emission…
We develop a method to constrain non-isotropic features of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization, of a type expected to arise in some models describing quantum gravity effects on light propagation. We describe the expected…
Rapid progress has been made in observations of the temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). These observations have enabled cosmologists to characterize the state of the universe at recombination, and…
We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction…
Different inflationary models predict oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum. These can leave an imprint on both the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale structure (LSS) of our Universe, that can be searched…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature are being studied with ever increasing precision. Two competing types of theories might describe the origins of these fluctuations: ``inflation'' and ``defects''. Here we…
The magnitude of B-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background as measured by BICEP2 favours models of chaotic inflation with a quadratic $m^2 \phi^2/2$ potential, whereas data from the Planck satellite favour a small value of the…
Previous claims of significant evidence for mirror-parity in the large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment have been recently echoed in the first study of isotropy and…