Related papers: Gravitational Waves as a Big Bang Thermometer
The curl-modes of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization probe horizon-scale primordial gravitational waves related to inflation. A significant source of confusion is expected from a lensing conversion of polarization related to…
Abbreviated: We highlight the remarkable evolution in the CMB power spectrum over the past few years, and in the cosmological parameters for minimal inflation models derived from it. Grand unified spectra (GUS) show pre-WMAP optimal…
The measurement of present-day temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), $T_0 = 2.72548 \pm 0.00057$ K (1$\sigma$), made by the Far-InfraRed Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS), is one of the most precise measurements ever made…
The stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) provides a unique opportunity to probe the early Universe, potentially encoding information about the primordial curvature power spectrum and the energy scale of reheating. Recent…
For a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs boson masses, the Standard Model Higgs potential develops a shallow local minimum at energies of about $10^{16}$ GeV, where primordial inflation could have started in a cold metastable…
The initial conditions on the anisotropies of the stochastic gravitational-wave background of cosmological origin (CGWB) largely depend on the mechanism that generates the gravitational waves. Since the CGWB is expected to be non-thermal,…
A stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves could be detected soon in the polarization of the CMB and/or with laser interferometers. There are at least three GWB coming from inflation: those produced during inflation and…
In this paper, we investigate the Axion-like Particle inflation by applying the multi-nature inflation model, where the end of inflation is achieved through the phase transition (PT). The events of PT should not be less than $200$, which…
The nonlinear interaction between one graviton and two scalars is enhanced in specific inflationary models, potentially leading to distinguishable signatures in the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We…
The standard inflationary model presents a simple scenario within which the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness of the universe appear as natural outcomes and, in addition, fluctuations in the energy density are originated during the…
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) is an invaluable probe of the conditions of the early universe. Recent measurements of its spatial anisotropy have allowed accurate determinations of several fundamental cosmological…
Gravitational waves provide a laboratory for general relativity and a window to energetic astrophysical phenomena invisible with electromagnetic radiation. Several terrestrial detectors are currently under construction, and a space-based…
Near comoving wavenumber k, the gravitational-wave background (GWB) from inflation carries information about the physical conditions near two moments in cosmic history: the moment when k ``left the horizon'' during inflation, and the moment…
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a precious window on fundamental physics at very high energy scales, possibly including quantum gravity, GUTs and supersymmetry. The CMB has already enabled defect-based rivals to inflation to…
Gravitational waves (GW) produced in the early Universe contribute to the number of relativistic degrees of freedom, $N_{\rm eff}$, during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). By using the constraints on $N_{\rm eff}$, we present a new bound on…
In warm inflation, dissipation due to the interactions of the inflaton field to other light degrees of freedom leads naturally to the enhancement of the primordial spectrum during the last 10-20 efolds of inflation. We study this effect in…
In the context of inflationary scenarios, the observed large angle anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature is believed to probe the primordial metric perturbations from inflation. Although the perturbations from…
The inflationary reheating phase begins when accelerated expansion ends. As all Standard Model particles are coupled to gravity, gravitational interactions will lead to particle production. This includes the thermal bath, dark matter and…
It is well-known that first order phase transitions in the early universe can be a powerful source of observable stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds. Any such gravitational wave background must exhibit large-scale anisotropies at…