Related papers: Probing Decoupling in Dark Sectors with the Cosmic…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy encodes a lot of information about our Universe. In this paper we take the ground-based CMB observations (GCMB), including the South Pole Telescope (SPT), SPTpol and the Atacama Cosmology…
A phase shift in the acoustic oscillations of CMB spectra is a characteristic signature for the presence of non-photon radiation propagating differently from photons, even when the radiation couples to SM particles solely gravitationally.…
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…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum provides tight constraints on the thermal history of the universe up to $z \sim 2\times 10^6$. At higher redshifts thermalization processes become very efficient so that even large energy…
In the near future, observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies will provide accurate determinations of many fundamental cosmological parameters. In this paper, we analyse degeneracies among cosmological parameters to…
Neutrino physics in the early Universe is key to our understanding of later cosmological stages, such as primordial nucleosynthesis (BBN) or the formation of large-scale structures. The coming decade promises new experimental results to…
We explore the fundamental limits to which reionization histories can be constrained using only large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements. The redshift distribution of the fractional ionization $x_e(z)$ affects…
The radiative component of the Universe has a characteristic impact on both large scale structure (LSS) and the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). We use the recent WMAP data, together with previous CBI data and 2dF matter power…
It is attractive to suppose for several astrophysical reasons that the universe has close to the critical density in light (~30 eV) neutrinos which decay radiatively with a lifetime of ~10^{23} sec. In such a cosmology the universe is…
We search for the presence of cosmological neutrino background (CNB) anisotropies in recent WMAP 5-year data using their signature imprinted on modifications to cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy power spectrum. By parametrizing…
Working toward a model independent understanding of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies and their significance, we undertake a comprehensive and self-contained study of scalar perturbation theory. Initial conditions, evolution,…
Interacting dark sectors may undergo changes in the number of their relativistic species during the early universe, due to a mass threshold $m$ (similar to changes in the Standard Model bath), and in doing so affect the cosmic history. When…
Scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation in galaxy clusters induces a polarization signal proportional to the CMB quadrupole anisotropy at the cluster's location and look-back time. A survey of such remote quadrupole…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) encodes information about the content and evolution of the universe. The presence of light, weakly interacting particles impacts the expansion history of the early universe, which alters the temperature…
The vast majority of extensions of the Standard Model affecting the number of effective relativistic neutrino species ($N_{\rm eff}$) do so additively, namely, they enhance this quantity with some light state contributing to dark radiation.…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization, whose experimental detection must become the next natural step in the study of the CMB radiation, depends on the dynamics of hydrogen recombination in the Universe, on the relation between…
The existence of a cosmic neutrino background can be probed indirectly by CMB experiments, not only by measuring the background density of radiation in the universe, but also by searching for the typical signatures of the fluctuations of…
Most of the cosmological information extracted from the CMB has been obtained through the power spectrum, however there is much more to be learnt from the statistical distribution of the temperature random field. We review some recent…
Cosmological observations allow to measure the abundance of light relics produced in the early Universe. Most studies focus on the thermal freeze-out scenario, yet light relics produced by freeze-in are generic for models in which new light…
In this Thesis I discuss several recent results obtained using the CMB spectra measured by Planck and several other cosmological probes. Extensions of the $\Lambda$CDM model are studied, including the presence of an additional sterile…