Related papers: On the coupling between different species during r…
PAMELA and, more recently, AMS-02, are ushering us into a new era of greatly reduced statistical uncertainties in experimental measurements of cosmic-ray fluxes. In particular, new determinations of traditional diagnostic tools such as the…
In this paper we study the possibility of testing \emph{CPT} symmetry with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements. Working with an effective lagrangian of the photon with \emph{CPT} violation ${\cal L} \sim p_{\mu}A_{\nu}\tilde…
We survey the results of a long-term study of the process of radiative recombination. A rigorous theory of nonrelativistic electron radiative recombination with a hydrogen-like ion is used to calculate the total cross section of the…
We develop and apply a new framework for reconstructing the ionization history during the epoch of recombination with combinations of cosmic microwave background (CMB), baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and supernova data. We find a wide…
In this thesis we focus on studying the physics of cosmological recombination and how the details of recombination affect the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. We present a detailed calculation of the spectral line distortions…
We investigate signatures of neutrino scattering in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and matter power spectra, and the extent to which present cosmological data can distinguish between a free streaming or tightly coupled fluid of…
We find that the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization power spectra measurements from Planck constrain the parameter $\Omega_bh^2$ mostly through: A) the amplitude of Thomson scattering and B) a factor that ensures…
The Planck experiment will soon provide a very accurate measurement of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies. This will let cosmologists determine most of the cosmological parameters with unprecedented accuracy. Future experiments will…
Photoionization and its inverse, electron-ion recombination, are key processes that influence many astrophysical plasmas (and gasses), and the diagnostics that we use to analyse the plasmas. In this review we provide a brief overview of the…
We present the first measurements and simulations of recombination fluorescence in ultracold neutral plasmas. In contrast with previous work, experiment and simulation are in significant disagreement. Comparison with a recombination model…
Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…
The advent of high signal-to-noise cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy experiments now allow detailed studies on the statistics related to temperature fluctuations. The existence of acoustic oscillations in the anisotropy power…
CMB observables have largely fixed the expansion history of the universe in the deceleration regime and provided two self-calibrated absolute standards for dark energy studies: the sound horizon at recombination as a standard ruler and the…
Calculations of cosmological hydrogen recombination are vital for the extraction of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations, and for imposing constraints to inflation and re-ionization. The Planck}…
The dissipation of small-scale perturbations in the early universe produces a distortion in the blackbody spectrum of cosmic microwave background photons. In this work, we propose to use these distortions as a probe of the microphysics of…
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…
In the near future, observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies will provide accurate determinations of many fundamental cosmological parameters. In this paper, we analyse degeneracies among cosmological parameters to…
As a result of our limited data on reionization, the total optical depth for electron scattering, $\tau$, limits precision measurements of cosmological parameters from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). It was recently shown that the…
Calculations of the Cosmic Microwave Background lensing power implemented into the standard cosmological codes such as CAMB and CLASS usually treat the surface of last scatter as an infinitely thin screen. However, since the CMB…
We show how observations of temperature fluctuations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to extract information related to the large scale structure, including dark matter distribution, pressure and halo velocities involving…