Related papers: Constraining Viscous Dark Matter in light of CMB S…
We compute the spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) created by an exotic process that extracts or injects photons of a particular frequency into the CMB. Such signatures are a natural prediction of a class of…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are sensitive to energy injection by exotic physics in the early universe. The proposed Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) mission has the raw sensitivity to provide…
We calculate the post-recombination contribution to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortion due to general exotic energy injections, including dark matter (DM) decaying or annihilating to Standard Model particles. Upon…
We propose a new method to constrain elastic scattering between dark matter (DM) and standard model particles in the early Universe. Direct or indirect thermal coupling of non-relativistic DM with photons leads to a heat sink for the…
Current constraints on energy injection in the form of energetic particles before the epoch of recombination using CMB spectral distortions assume that all energy goes into $y$ and $\mu$-type distortions. We revisit these constraints with…
Observational limits on $y$- and $\mu$-type distortions can constrain properties of magnetic fields in the early universe. For a Gaussian, random, and non-helical field, $\mu$ and $y$ are calculated a function of the present-day strength of…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide stringent constraints on energy and entropy production in the post-BBN (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis) era. This has been used to constrain dark photon models with COBE/FIRAS…
We examine bounds on adiabatic and isocurvature density fluctuations from $\mu$-type spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Studies of such distortion are complementary to CMB measurements of the spectral index and…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum is an extraordinary tool for exploring physics beyond the Standard Model. The exquisite precision of the measurement makes it particularly sensitive to small effects caused by hidden sector…
The damping of primordial perturbations at small scales gives rise to distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Here, the dependence of the distortion on the different types of cosmological initial conditions is explored,…
Many extensions of Standard Model (SM) include a dark sector which can interact with the SM sector via a light mediator. We explore the possibilities to probe such a dark sector by studying the distortion of the CMB spectrum from the…
Spectral distortions (SDs) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide a powerful tool for studying particle physics. Here we compute the distortion signals from decaying particles that convert directly into photons at different epochs…
A variety of beyond the standard model scenarios contain very light hidden sector U(1) gauge bosons undergoing kinetic mixing with the photon. The resulting oscillation between ordinary and hidden photons leads to spectral distortions of…
We review aspects of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortions which do not appear to have been fully explored in the literature. In particular, implications of recent evidences of heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM) by…
Ever refined cosmological measurements have established the $\Lambda$CDM concordance model, with the key cosmological parameters being determined to percent-level precision today. This allows us to make explicit predictions for the spectral…
Measuring spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is attracting considerable attention as a probe of high energy particle physics in the cosmological context, since PIXIE and PRISM have recently been proposed. In this…
The cosmic microwave background provides constraints on the annihilation and decay of light dark matter at redshifts between 100 and 1000, the strength of which depends upon the fraction of energy ending up in the form of electrons and…
Infrared emission from intergalactic dust might compromise the ability of future experiments to detect subtle spectral distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the early Universe. We provide the first estimate of foreground…
This paper presents a novel approach to constrain the $\mu$- and y- distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) using the COBE/FIRAS data. The analysis draws from the concept of blackbody radiation inversion (BRI), a mathematical…
We reconsider the effect of electromagnetic radiation from superconducting strings on cosmic microwave background (CMB) mu- and y-distortions and derive present (COBE-FIRAS) and future (PIXIE) constraints on the string tension, mu_s, and…