Related papers: First study of reionization in the Planck 2015 nor…
We use the most recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) data to perform a Bayesian statistical analysis and discuss the observational viability of inflationary models with a non-minimal coupling,~$\xi$, between the inflaton field and the…
The recent measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropies made by the Planck satellite have provided impressive confirmation of the $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model. However interesting hints of slight…
We extend the existing analytical model of reionization by Furlanetto et al. (2004) to include the biasing of reionization sources and additional absorption by Lyman Limit systems. Our model is, by construction, consistent with the observed…
Although natural inflation is a theoretically well-motivated model for cosmic inflation, it is in tension with recent Planck cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements. We present a way to alleviate this tension by considering a…
This paper presents the Planck 2015 likelihoods, statistical descriptions of the 2-point correlations of CMB data, using the hybrid approach employed previously: pixel-based at $\ell<30$ and a Gaussian approximation to the distribution of…
Multi-field models of inflation typically assume that interactions between particles can be treated perturbatively. Strongly-coupled models provide an intriguing alternative and may offer novel inflationary phenomenology. We study the…
The escape fraction of LyC ionizing radiation ($f_{lyc}$) is crucial for understanding reionization, yet difficult to measure at $z \gtrsim 4$. Recently, studies have focused on calibrating indirect indicators of $f_{lyc}$ at $z \sim 0.3$,…
We study the signal in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization anisotropy resulting from patchy reionization. It is well known that the primordial polarization of the CMB is very sensitive to the details of reionization.…
Cosmic reionization is expected to be complex, extended and very inhomogeneous. Existing constraints at z~6 on the volume-averaged neutral hydrogen fraction, <x_HI>, are highly model-dependent and controversial. Constraints at z<6,…
We use Bayesian model selection tools to forecast the Planck satellite's ability to distinguish between different models for the reionization history of the Universe, using the large angular scale signal in the cosmic microwave background…
This paper is aimed to study the compelling issue of cosmic inflation during rapid oscillations using the framework of non-minimal derivative coupling. To this end, an anisotropic and homogeneous Bianchi I background is considered. In this…
We present here 21 cm predictions from high dynamic range simulations for a range of reionization histories that have been tested against available Lyman-alpha and CMB data. We assess the observability of the predicted spatial 21 cm…
We show that a combined analysis of CMB anisotropy power spectra obtained by the Planck satellite and luminosity distance data simultaneously excludes a flat universe and a cosmological constant at $99 \%$ CL. These results hold separately…
In this article, I have studied the cosmological and particle physics constraints on a generic class of large field ($|\Delta\phi|>M_{p}$) and small field ($|\Delta\phi<M_{p}$) models of brane inflationary magnetic field from: (1)…
We present results based on full-mission Planck observations of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB. These data are consistent with the six-parameter inflationary LCDM cosmology. From the Planck temperature and lensing…
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,…
A new parametrization of the reionization history is presented to facilitate robust comparisons between different observations and with theory. The evolution of the ionization fraction with redshift can be effectively captured by specifying…
The current most accepted paradigm for the early universe cosmology, the inflationary scenario, shows a good agreement with the recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and polarization data. However, when the inflation consistency relation…
We present constraints on the reionization optical depth, $\tau$, obtained using several independent methods. First, we perform a non-parametric reconstruction of the reionization history, using Lyman-$\alpha$ constraints on the evolution…
(ABRIDGED)The rise of cosmic structure depends upon the statistical distribution of initial density fluctuations generated by inflation. While the simplest models predict an almost perfectly Gaussian distribution, more-general models…