Related papers: Precision Neutrino Counting
Abundances of light nuclei formed during primordial nucleosynthesis are predicted by Standard Big Bang Model. The latest data from WMAP, with precision's higher than ever before, provides a motivation to determine theoretical higher order…
Within the framework of the Standard Model of particle physics and standard cosmology, observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) set stringent bounds on the sum of the masses of neutrinos.…
In the early universe, neutrinos decouple from equilibrium with the electromagnetic plasma at a temperature which is only slightly higher than the temperature where electrons and positrons annihilate. Therefore neutrinos to some extent…
Neutrinos are the least known particle in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. They play a crucial role in cosmology, governing the universe's evolution and shaping the large-scale structures we observe today. In this chapter,…
Recent work on increasing the effective number of neutrino species (Neff) in the early universe has focussed on introducing extra relativistic species (`dark radiation'). We draw attention to another possibility: a new particle of mass less…
We present a model-independent reconstruction of the early expansion and thermal histories of the universe, obtained from light element abundance measurements. The expansion history is tightly constrained around the onset of the Big Bang…
Deviations from unitarity in the three-neutrino mixing canonical picture are expected in many physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model. The mixing of new heavy neutral leptons with the three light neutrinos would in principle modify the…
The thermal relic abundance of species critically depends on the assumed underlying cosmological model. In the case of neutralinos, freeze-out takes place long before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, which provides the strongest constraint on the…
Neutrinos can play an important role in the evolution of the Universe, modifying some of the cosmological observables. In this contribution we summarize the main aspects of cosmological relic neutrinos and we describe how the precision of…
Distortion of the equilibrium spectra of cosmic neutrinos due to interaction with hotter electrons and positrons in the primeval cosmic plasma is considered. The set of integro-differential kinetic equations for neutrinos is accurately…
Limits can be placed on nonstandard neutrino physics when big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) calculations employing standard neutrino physics agree with the observationally inferred primordial abundances of deuterium (D), $^3$He, $^4$He, and…
The South Pole Telescope (SPT), Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have each reported measurements of the cosmic microwave background's (CMB) angular power spectrum which favor the existence…
Oscillations between ordinary and sterile neutrinos can generate large neutrino asymmetries in the early universe. These asymmetries can significantly affect big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) through modification of nuclear reaction rates. We…
Relic neutrinos play an important role in the evolution of the Universe, modifying some of the cosmological observables. We summarize the main aspects of cosmological neutrinos and describe how the precision of present cosmological data can…
The Cosmic Neutrino Background (C$\nu$B) constitutes the last observable prediction of the standard cosmological model, which has yet to be detected directly. In this work, we show how the coherent scattering of neutrinos off dense neutron…
The combination of detections of anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation and observations of the large-scale distribution of galaxies probes the primordial density fluctuations of the universe on spatial scales varying by…
We present cosmological perturbation theory in neutrinos probe interacting dark-energy models, and calculate cosmic microwave background anisotropies and matter power spectrum. In these models, the evolution of the mass of neutrinos is…
We review the distortions of spectra of relic neutrinos due to the interactions with electrons, positrons, and neutrinos in the early universe. We solve integro-differential kinetic equations for the neutrino density matrix, including…
Late-decaying particles naturally arise in many extensions of the Standard Model, directly impacting key cosmological processes in the early universe, such as Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). BBN studies often consider electromagnetic energy…
We discuss how a laboratory detection of a sterile neutrino not only would constitute a fundamental discovery of a new particle, but could also provide an indication of the evolution of the Universe before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), a…