Related papers: Spectator fields and their imprints on the Cosmic …
The ability to test and constrain theories of cosmic inflation will advance substantially over the next decade. Key data sources include cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements and observations of the distribution of matter at…
There is an apparent power deficit relative to the Lambda-CDM prediction of the CMB spectrum at large scales, which, though not yet statistically significant, persists from WMAP to Planck data. We first present a simple toy model…
We study the effect of global topology of the spatial geometry on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for closed flat and closed hyperbolic models in which the spatial hypersurface is multiply connected. If the CMB temperature…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) represents a unique source for the study of gravitational lensing. It is extended across the entire sky, partially polarized, located at the extreme distance of z=1100, and is thought to have the…
We explore the possible impact of galactic and extragalactic foregrounds on measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We find that, given our present understanding of the foregrounds, they are unlikely to qualitatively affect…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides us with our most direct observational window to the early universe. Observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB have played a critical role in defining the…
We consider the distribution of the non-Gaussian signal induced by weak lensing on the primary total intensity cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Our study focuses on the three point statistics exploiting an harmonic analysis…
Cosmic microwave background lensing has become a new cosmological probe, carrying rich information on the matter power spectrum and distances over the redshift range $z\approx1$-4. We investigate the role of scale dependent new physics,…
We perform a combined perturbation and observational investigation of the scenario of non-minimal derivative coupling between a scalar field and curvature. First we extract the necessary condition that ensures the absence of instabilities,…
The behaviour of oscillating scalar spectator fields after inflation depends on the thermal background produced by inflaton decay. Resonant decay of the spectator is often blocked by large induced thermal masses. We account for the finite…
We consider a cosmological model in which the tensor mode becomes massive during inflation, and study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization bispectra arising from the mixing between the scalar mode and the…
Rayleigh scattering of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by neutral hydrogen shortly after recombination leaves frequency-dependent imprints on intensity and polarization fluctuations. High signal-to-noise observations of CMB Rayleigh…
Bouncing models of cosmology, as they arise e.g. in loop quantum cosmology, can be followed by an inflationary phase and generate close-to-scale-invariant fluctuation spectra as observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). However,…
We probe the cosmological consequences of a recently proposed class of solutions to the cosmological constant problem. In these models, the universe undergoes a long period of inflation followed by a contraction and a bounce that sets the…
If during inflation the inflaton couples to a "fossil" field, some new scalar, vector, or tensor field, it typically induces a scalar-scalar-fossil bispectrum. Even if the fossil field leaves no direct physical trace after inflation, it…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) contains perturbations that are close to Gaussian and isotropic. This means that its information content, in the sense of the ability to constrain cosmological models, is closely related to the number…
We consider the weak lensing effect induced by linear cosmological perturbations on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropies. We find that the amplitude of the lensing peak in the BB mode power spectrum is a faithful…
The 2.725 K cosmic microwave background has played a key role in the development of modern cosmology by providing a solid observational foundation for constraining possible theories of what happened at very large redshifts and theoretical…
We study the generation of primordial perturbations in a (single-field) slow-roll inflationary universe. In momentum space, these (Gaussian) perturbations are characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance $\Delta^2(k, t)$. However,…
We summarize the physical mechanism by which the Cosmic Microwave Background acquires a small degree of polarization. We discuss the imprint left by gravitational waves and the use of polarization as a test of the inflationary paradigm. We…