Related papers: Cosmological Constraints on Light (but Massive) Re…
Cosmological data provide a powerful tool in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). An interesting target are light relics, new degrees of freedom which decoupled from the SM while relativistic. Nearly massless relics…
One of the primary targets of current and future cosmological observations are light thermal relics of the hot big bang. Within the Standard Model of particle physics, an important thermal relic are cosmic neutrinos, while interesting…
Many well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model predict the existence of new light species that may have been produced in the early universe. Prominent examples include axions, sterile neutrinos, gravitinos, dark photons, and more. The…
Light thermal relics of the hot big bang, often quantified by the parameter $N_\mathrm{eff}$, are one of the primary targets of cosmological measurements. At present, the energy density in such relics is constrained to be less than ten…
The hot dense environment of the early universe is known to have produced large numbers of baryons, photons, and neutrinos. These extreme conditions may have also produced other long-lived species, including new light particles (such as…
The presence of additional relativistic particles at the time of recombination can be inferred through their contribution to $\Delta N_{\rm eff}$. If these species have a finite but low mass (Light Massive Relics - LiMRs), they act as a hot…
Cosmologies with Light Massive Relics (LiMRs) as a subdominant component of the dark sector are well-motivated from a particle physics perspective, and can also have implications for the $\sigma_8$ tension between early and late time probes…
We consider the effect of Light (but Massive) Relics (LiMRs) on the clustering of matter in the early Universe. We account for the fact that LiMRs which are massive enough may cluster on large length scales at early times, and may thus…
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…
We use here a family of scaling transformations, that scale key rates in the evolution equations, to analytically understand constraints on light relics from cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps, given cosmological models of varying…
Cosmological bounds on neutrinos and additional hypothetical light thermal relics, such as QCD axions, are currently among the most restrictive ones. These limits mainly rely on Cosmic Microwave Background temperature anisotropies.…
We discuss the relic density of the lightest of the supersymmetric particles in view of new cosmological data, which favour the concept of an accelerating Universe with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. Recent astrophysical…
Although the MiniBooNE experiment has severely restricted the possible existence of light sterile neutrinos, a few anomalies persist in oscillation data, and the possibility of extra light species contributing as a subdominant hot (or warm)…
Future CMB experiments have the potential to probe the density of relativistic species at the sub-percent level. Sensitivity at this level allows light thermal relics to be detected up to arbitrarily high decoupling temperatures.…
Light gravitinos of mass $\lesssim \mathcal{O} (10)$ eV are of particular interest in cosmology, offering various baryogenesis scenarios without suffering from the cosmological gravitino problem. The gravitino may contribute considerably to…
We investigate the relic density n_\chi of non-relativistic long-lived or stable particles \chi in non-standard cosmological scenarios. We calculate the relic abundance starting from arbitrary initial temperatures of the radiation-dominated…
We study the cosmological signatures of new light relics that are collisionless like standard neutrinos or are strongly interacting. We provide a simple and succinct rephrasing of their physical effects in the cosmic microwave background,…
The light relic density affects the thermal and expansion history of the early Universe leaving a number of observable imprints. We focus on the primordial abundances of light elements produced during the process of Big Bang nucleosynthesis…
We present up to date cosmological bounds on the sum of active neutrino masses as well as on extended cosmological scenarios with additional thermal relics, as thermal axions or sterile neutrino species. Our analyses consider all the…
We discuss the relic density of the lightest of the supersymmetric particles ({\small LSP}) in view of new cosmological data, which favour the concept of an accelerating Universe with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. The new bound on…