Related papers: The evidence for a spatially flat Universe
We explore the possibility that the entire departure of galactic rotational velocities from their luminous Newtonian expectation be cosmological in origin, and show that within the framework of conformal gravity (but not Einstein gravity…
The best-fit values of the density parameter and the amplitude of the linear density power spectrum obtained from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature field scanned by the Planck satellite are found to notably disagree with…
Based on the assumption that the dark energy possessing bulk viscosity is homogenously and isotropically permeated in the universe, we propose three new viscous dark energy (VDE) models to characterize the accelerating universe. By…
We compute the covariance expected between the spherical harmonic coefficients $a_{\ell m}$ of the cosmic microwave temperature anisotropy if the universe had a compact topology. For fundamental cell size smaller than the distance to the…
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy observed by WMAP has an anomalous dip at l~20 and bump at l~40. One explanation for this structure is the presence of features in the primordial curvature…
Spatial curvature is one of the most fundamental parameters in our current concordance flat $\Lambda$CDM model of the Universe. The goal of this work is to investigate how the constraint on the spatial curvature is affected by an assumption…
The observational status of inflation after the Planck 2013 and 2015 results and the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck joint analysis is discussed. These pedagogical lecture notes are intended to serve as a technical guide filling the gap…
A self-consistent pre-inflationary extension of the inflationary scenario with the Starobinsky potential, favored by Planck data, is studied using techniques from loop quantum cosmology (LQC). The results are compared with the quadratic…
The polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to constrain cosmological birefringence, the rotation of the linear polarization of CMB photons potentially induced by parity violating physics beyond the standard model.…
Observations indicate that the universe is effectively flat, but they do not rule out a closed universe. The role of positive curvature is negligible at late times, but can be crucial in the early universe. In particular, positive curvature…
The eternally inflating multiverse provides a consistent framework to understand coincidences and fine-tuning in the universe. As such, it provides the possibility of finding another coincidence: if the amount of slow-roll inflation was…
Using an approximate likelihood method adapted to band--power estimates, we analyze the ensemble of first generation cosmic microwave background anisotropy experiments to deduce constraints over a six--dimensional parameter space describing…
Recent analysis of the Planck measurements opened a possibility that we live in a non-flat universe. Given the renewed interest in non-zero spatial curvature, here we re-visit the light propagation in a non-flat universe and provide the…
We reanalyse optical gravitational lens surveys from the literature in order to determine relative probabilities in the $\lambda_{0}$-$\Omega_{0}$ plane, using a softened singular isothermal sphere lens model. In addition, we examine a…
Relic neutrinos play an important role in the evolution of the Universe, modifying some of the cosmological observables. We summarize the main aspects of cosmological neutrinos and describe how the precision of present cosmological data can…
We investigate a particle physics model for cosmic inflation based on the following assumptions: (i) there are at least two complex scalar fields; (ii) the scalar potential is bounded from below and remains perturbative up to the Planck…
Any variation of the fundamental physical constants, and more particularly of the fine structure constant, $\alpha$, or of the mass of the electron, $m_e$, would affect the recombination history of the Universe and cause an imprint on the…
We forecast the ability of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization datasets to constrain theories of eternal inflation using cosmic bubble collisions. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we determine both the overall…
The anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation contains information about the contents and history of the universe. We report new limits on cosmological parameters derived from the angular power spectrum measured in the first…
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…