Related papers: Detecting the cosmological recombination signal fr…
In this paper we explore the potential effects of DM annihilations on the cosmological recombination spectrum. With this example we want to demonstrate that the cosmological recombination spectrum in principle is sensitive to details…
Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…
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…
A key assumption of the standard cosmological model is that the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation scales with cosmological redshift $z$ as $T_{\rm CMB}(z) \propto (1+z)$ at all times after recombination at…
With the recent measurement of full sky cosmic microwave background polarization from WMAP, key cosmological degeneracies have been broken, allowing tighter constraints to be placed on cosmological parameters inferred assuming a standard…
Since the measurements of COBE/FIRAS in the mid-90's we know that the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is extremely close to that of a perfect blackbody at an average temperature T0~2.726K. However, a number of…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation carries essential information on early stages of the Universe such as the cosmic inflation, forming cosmological structures through gravitational lensing, and the epoch of…
In this paper we consider the re-processing of high frequency photons emitted by HeII and HeI during the epoch of cosmological recombination by HeI and HI. We demonstrate that, in comparison to computations which neglect all feedback…
Details of how the primordial plasma recombined and how the universe later reionized are currently somewhat uncertain. This uncertainty can restrict the accuracy of cosmological parameter measurements from the Cosmic Microwave Background…
The major theoretical limitation for extracting cosmological parameters from the CMB sky lies in the precision with which we can calculate the cosmological recombination process. Uncertainty in the details of hydrogen and helium…
Photons emitted during the epochs of Hydrogen ($500 \lesssim z \lesssim 1600$) and Helium recombination ($1600 \lesssim z \lesssim 3500$ for HeII $\rightarrow$ HeI, $5000 \lesssim z \lesssim 8000$ for HeIII $\rightarrow$ HeII) are predicted…
The frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relatively untapped source of data which can allow us to peer beyond the surface of last scattering. Small deviations away from a perfect blackbody shape will encode…
We use the new cosmological recombination code, CosmoRec, for parameter estimation in the context of (future) precise measurements of the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies. We address the question of how previously neglected…
We study the constraints that future multifrequency Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments will be able to set on the metal enrichment history of the Inter Galactic Medium at the epoch of reionisation. We forecast the signal to noise…
Over the past decades, cosmology has become largely based on experimental data, the most important sources of which are studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). CMB is present in the Universe since the very first moments of its…
A milestone of modern cosmology was the prediction and serendipitous discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the radiation left over after decoupling from matter in the early evolutionary stages of the Universe. A prediction of…
The main goal of this work is to calculate the contributions to the cosmological recombination spectrum due to bound-bound transitions of helium. We show that due to the presence of helium in the early Universe unique features appear in the…
Departures of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) frequency spectrum from a blackbody - commonly referred to as spectral distortions - encode information about the thermal history of the early Universe (redshift z < few x 10^6). While the…
The atomic recombination process leads to a softening of the matter equation of state as reflected by a reduced generalized adiabatic index, with accompanying heat release. We study the effects of this recombination softening and reheating…
The search for cosmic polarization rotation or birefringence in the CMB is well-motivated because it can provide powerful constraints on parity-violating new physics, such as axion-like particles. In this paper we point out that since the…