Related papers: How much primordial tensor mode is allowed?
New results, namely the independent determination of the deuterium abundance in several quasar absorption systems, and the complementary determination of the cosmological baryon density by observations of anisotropies in the cosmic…
Non-inflationary sources of gravitational waves in the early Universe generically predict causality-limited tensor power spectra at low frequencies. We report the first-ever constraints on such sources based on cosmic microwave background…
In the past years 'quintessence' models have been considered which can produce the accelerated expansion in the universe suggested by recent astronomical observations. One of the key differences between quintessence and a cosmological…
In this article we provide a new closed relationship between cosmic abundance of primordial gravitational waves and primordial blackholes originated from initial inflationary perturbations for inflection-point models of inflation where…
The BICEP2 collaboration reports a detection of primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode with a tensor-scalar ratio $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ (68% C.L.). However, this result is in tension with the recent Planck limit, $r<0.11$…
We constrain the primordial fluctuation spectrum P(k) by using the new data on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the Boomerang and MAXIMA experiments. Our study is based on slow-roll inflationary models, and we consider the…
We combine the most recent observations of large-scale structure (2dF and SDSS galaxy surveys) and cosmic microwave anisotropies (WMAP and ACBAR) to put constraints on flat cosmological models where the number of massive neutrinos and of…
We consider a minimal scale-invariant extension of the Standard Model of particle physics combined with Unimodular Gravity formulated in \cite{Shaposhnikov:2008xb}. This theory is able to describe not only an inflationary stage, related to…
From a combination of probes including the cosmic microwave background (WMAP7+SPT), Hubble constant (HST), baryon acoustic oscillations (SDSS+2dFGRS), and supernova distances (Union2), we have explored the extent to which the constraints on…
Inflation predicts a primordial gravitational wave spectrum that is slightly ``red,'' i.e., nearly scale-invariant with slowly increasing power at longer wavelengths. In this paper, we compute both the amplitude and spectral form of the…
Presence of any extra radiation energy density at the time of cosmic microwave background formation can significantly impact the measurement of the effective relativistic neutrino degrees of freedom or ${\rm \Delta N_{eff}}$ which is very…
Cosmic microwave background measurements have pushed to higher resolution, lower noise, and more sky coverage. These data enable a unique test of the early universe's expansion rate and constituents such as effective number of relativistic…
Inflationary gravitational waves, behaving as additional radiation in the Early Universe, can increase the effective number of relativistic species ($N_{\rm eff}$) by a further correction that depends on the integrated energy-density in…
We revisit regular primordial vector modes sustained by the anisotropic stress of free-streaming neutrinos. We consider two classes of neutrino-sector initial conditions, the neutrino velocity isocurvature mode ($\nu\mathrm{VI}$) and the…
Assuming that inflation is followed by a phase where the energy density of the Universe is dominated by a component with a general equation of state, we evaluate the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves induced in the…
We eliminate the parameters originally present in models of inflation of the $\alpha$-attractor type in favor of the scalar spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. We then write expressions for the number of $e$-folds…
Although the standard $\Lambda$+Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model is well tested on large scales, the primordial power spectrum may deviate from the $\Lambda$CDM spectrum on small scales due to specific dark matter properties or…
We analyse the implications of the Planck data for cosmic inflation. The Planck nominal mission temperature anisotropy measurements, combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, constrain the scalar spectral index to $n_s = 0.9603 \pm…
Quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field in the early Universe, amplified by inflation, produce a primordial gravitational-wave background across a broad frequency band. We derive constraints on the spectrum of this gravitational…
In the present work we study a warm inflationary model defined by a quasi-exponential inflaton potential and an inflaton decay rate proportional to the Hubble rate. The model is characterized by three free parameters. We compute the power…