Related papers: On quantifying and resolving the BICEP2/Planck ten…
The recent claim by BICEP2 of evidence for primordial gravitational waves from inflation has focused interest on the potential for early-Universe cosmology using observations of gravitational waves. In addition to cosmic microwave…
Quantifying tensions -- inconsistencies amongst measurements of cosmological parameters by different experiments -- has emerged as a crucial part of modern cosmological data analysis. Statistically-significant tensions between two…
An inflationary gravitational wave background consistent with BICEP2 is difficult to reconcile with a simple power-law spectrum of primordial scalar perturbations. Tensor modes contribute to the temperature anisotropies at multipoles with…
BICEP2 observations, interpreted most simply, suggest an era of inflation with energy densities of order ($10^{16}\, {\rm GeV})^4$, not far below the Planck density. However, models of TeV gravity with large extra dimensions might allow a…
In general relativity gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light, however in alternative theories of gravity that might not be the case. We study the effects of a modified speed of gravity, $c_T^2$, on the B-modes of the Cosmic…
The recent measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies provided by the Planck satellite experiment have significantly improved the constraints on several cosmological parameters. In this brief paper we point out a small but…
The estimation of the Hubble constant in the past few decades has increasingly become more accurate with the advance of new techniques. But its value seems to depend on the epoch at which the measurements are made. The Planck estimate of…
New physics in the early Universe could lead to parity-violation in the late Universe, sourcing statistics whose sign changes under point reflection. The best constraints on such phenomena have come from the Planck temperature fluctuations;…
Recently BICEP2 found that the vanishing of the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ is excluded at $7\sigma$ level, and its most likely value is $r=0.2^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ at $1 \sigma$ level. This immediately causes a tension with the Planck…
The BB-mode correlation angular power spectrum of CMB is studied for primordial massive gravitational waves for several inflation models. The comparative study of the angular power spectrum with the joint BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck data…
We are in the era of precision cosmology which offers us a unique opportunity to investigate beyond standard model physics. Toward this endeavor, inflaton is assumed to be a perfect new physics candidate. In this submission, we explore the…
We propose a testable alternative to inflation directly built in a very general class of ultraviolet complete theories of quantum gravity enjoying Weyl invariance. After the latter is spontaneously broken, logarithmic quantum corrections to…
There is a tension between measurements of the amplitude of the power spectrum of density perturbations inferred using the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and directly measured by Large-Scale Structure (LSS) on smaller scales. We show…
The first direct observation of gravitational waves' action upon matter has recently been reported by the BICEP2 experiment. Advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are being installed. They will soon be commissioned, and then…
We present the first attempt to use a combination of CMB, LIGO, and PPTA data to constrain both the tilt and the running of primordial tensor power spectrum through constraints on the gravitational wave energy density generated in the early…
BICEP2 has reported the detection of a degree-scale B-mode polarization pattern in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and has interpreted the measurement as evidence for primordial gravitational waves. Motivated by the profound…
In light of the recent BICEP2 B-mode polarization detection, which implies a large inflationary tensor-to-scalar ratio r_{0.05}=0.2^{+0.07}_{-0.05}, we re-examine the evidence for an extra sterile massive neutrino, originally invoked to…
The observation of primordial gravitational waves could provide a new and unique window on the earliest moments in the history of the universe, and on possible new physics at energies many orders of magnitude beyond those accessible at…
We study quasi-matter bounce cosmology in light of Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) angular anisotropy measurements along with the BICEP2/Keck Array data. We propose a new primordial scalar power spectrum by considering a linear…
We investigate the implications for inflation of the detection of B-modes polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by BICEP2. We show that the hypothesis of primordial origin of the measurement is only favored by the first four…