Related papers: Green's function of the cosmological thermalizatio…
In this paper, we provide the first computations for the distortion transfer functions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the perturbed Universe, following up on paper I and II in this series. We illustrate the physical effects…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide stringent constraints on energy and entropy production in the post-BBN (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis) era. This has been used to constrain dark photon models with COBE/FIRAS…
Accurate computations of spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are required for constraining energy release scenarios at redshifts $z\gtrsim 10^3$. The existing literature focuses on distortions that are small…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum is an extraordinary tool for exploring physics beyond the Standard Model. The exquisite precision of the measurement makes it particularly sensitive to small effects caused by hidden sector…
The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) allows constraining episodes of energy release in the early Universe. In this paper we revisit and refine the computations of the cosmological thermalization problem. For this…
Energy release in the early Universe leads to spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which in the future might allow probing different physical processes in the pre-recombination (z>~10^3) epoch. Depending on the…
Spectral distortions (SDs) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide a powerful tool for studying particle physics. Here we compute the distortion signals from decaying particles that convert directly into photons at different epochs…
We calculate the post-recombination contribution to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortion due to general exotic energy injections, including dark matter (DM) decaying or annihilating to Standard Model particles. Upon…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been recognized as an important future probe of the early Universe. Existing theoretical studies primarily focused on describing the evolution and creation of average…
Cosmic string loops contain cusps which decay by emitting bursts of particles. A significant fraction of the released energy is in the form of photons. These photons are injected non-thermally and can hence cause spectral distortions of the…
The damping of primordial perturbations at small scales gives rise to distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Here, the dependence of the distortion on the different types of cosmological initial conditions is explored,…
Dark matter annihilation or de-excitation, decay of metastable species, or other new physics may inject energetic electrons and photons into the photon-baryon fluid during and after recombination. As such particles cool, they partition…
Spectral features in the CMB energy spectrum contain a wealth of information about the physical processes in the early Universe, z < 2 x 10^6. The CMB spectral distortions are complementary to all other probes of cosmology. In fact, most of…
Extra radiation injection after neutrino decoupling in the early Universe contributes to the effective number of neutrino species that can be constrained by the cosmic microwave background (CMB). However, any effective neutrino number…
Certain modified gravity theories predict the existence of an additional, non-conformally coupled scalar field. A disformal coupling of the field to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is shown to affect the evolution of the energy…
Spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background provides a unique opportunity to probe primordial perturbations on very small scales by performing large-scale measurements. We discuss in a systematic and pedagogic way all the…
Following the pioneering observations with COBE in the early 1990s, studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have focused on temperature and polarization anisotropies. CMB spectral distortions - tiny departures of the CMB energy…
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…
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…
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…