Related papers: Neutrinogenic CMB spectral distortions
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…
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,…
Following the pioneering observations with COBE in the early 1990s, studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have focused on temperature and polarization anisotropies. CMB spectral distortions - tiny departures of the CMB energy…
Spectral distortions and anisotropies of the CMB provide independent and complementary probes to study energy injection processes in the early universe. Here we discuss the synergy between these observables, and show the promising future of…
High energy neutrinos and anti-neutrinos ($\gtrsim$ 100 GeV) can inject energetic electromagnetic particles into the baryon-photon plasma in the high redshift universe through electroweak showers from electroweak bremsstrahlung, inelastic…
Very different processes characterize the decoupling of neutrinos to form the cosmic neutrino background (C$\nu$B) and the much later decoupling of photons from thermal equilibrium to form the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The C$\nu$B…
We study the evolution of curvature perturbations and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum in the presence of an hypothesized extra anisotropic stress which might arise, for example, from the dark radiation term in…
The frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relatively untapped source of data which can allow us to peer beyond the surface of last scattering. Small deviations away from a perfect blackbody shape will encode…
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…
The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a powerful tool for constraining standard and non-standard physics in the primordial Universe. Previous studies mainly highlight spectral distortions (mu-, y- and r-type)…
The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) allows constraining episodes of energy release in the early Universe. In this paper we revisit and refine the computations of the cosmological thermalization problem. For this…
We investigate the radiative decay of the cosmic neutrino background, and its impact on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that is known to be a nearly perfect black body. We derive exact formulae for the decay of a…
Accurate computations of spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are required for constraining energy release scenarios at redshifts $z\gtrsim 10^3$. The existing literature focuses on distortions that are small…
Spectral features in the CMB energy spectrum contain a wealth of information about the physical processes in the early Universe, z < 2 x 10^6. The CMB spectral distortions are complementary to all other probes of cosmology. In fact, most of…
We demonstrate that the suppression in the lensing power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) caused by massive neutrinos can be mimicked by dark matter-baryon interactions at the precision of next-generation CMB experiments.…
Cosmological parameter constraints from the CMB power spectra alone suffer several well-known degeneracies. These degeneracies can be broken by numerical artefacts and also a variety of physical effects that become quantitatively important…
In this paper, we provide the first computations for the distortion transfer functions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the perturbed Universe, following up on paper I and II in this series. We illustrate the physical effects…
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…
Primordial magnetic fields and massive neutrinos can leave an interesting signal in the CMB temperature and polarization. We perform a systematic analysis of general perturbations in the radiation-dominated universe, accounting for any…
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…