Related papers: Particle decays during the cosmic dark ages
Recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies by Planck provide a sensitive probe of dark matter annihilation during the cosmic dark ages, and specifically constrain the annihilation parameter $f_\mathrm{eff}…
Although most proposed dark matter candidates are stable, in order for dark matter to be present today, the only requirement is that its lifetime is longer than the age of the Universe, t_U ~ 4 10^17 s. Moreover, the dark matter particle…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…
We present the initial conditions for a decaying cosmological perturbation and study its signatures in the CMB anisotropies and matter power spectra. An adiabatic decaying mode in presence of components which are not described as perfect…
It is possible that the strongest interactions between dark matter and the Standard Model occur via the neutrino sector. Unlike gamma rays and charged particles, neutrinos provide a unique avenue to probe for astrophysical sources of dark…
We consider a model for the reionization history of the Universe in which a significant fraction of the observed optical depth is a result of direct reionization by the decay products of a scaling cosmic defect network. We show that such…
The standard cold dark matter cosmological model, while successful in explaining the observed large scale structure of the Universe, tends to overpredict structure on small scales. It has been proposed this problem may be alleviated in a…
We forecast constraints on dark matter (DM) scattering with baryons in the early Universe with upcoming and future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, for DM particle masses down to 15 keV. In terms of the upper limit on the…
From observations at low and high redshifts, it is well known that the bulk of dark matter (DM) has to be stable or at least very long-lived. However, the possibility that a small fraction of DM is unstable or that all DM decays with a…
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…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…
We present cosmological constraints on the sum of neutrino masses as a function of the neutrino lifetime, in a framework in which neutrinos decay into dark radiation after becoming non-relativistic. We find that in this regime the cosmic…
Previous works have demonstrated that the generation of secondary CMB anisotropies due to the molecular optical depth is likely too small to be observed. In this paper, we examine additional ways in which primordial chemistry and the dark…
We examine the dark energy and matter densities allowed by precision measurements of distances out to various redshifts, in the presence of spatial curvature and (near) arbitrary behavior of the dark energy equation of state. Degeneracies…
Dark Matter is essential for structure formation in the late Universe so it must be stable on cosmological time scales. But how stable exactly? Only assuming decays into relativistic particles, we report an otherwise model independent bound…
Since the measurements of COBE/FIRAS in the mid-90's we know that the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is extremely close to that of a perfect blackbody at an average temperature T0~2.726K. However, a number of…
Cosmic Microwave Background satellite missions as the on-going Planck experiment are expected to provide the strongest constraints on a wide set of cosmological parameters. Those constraints, however, could be weakened when the assumption…
In this paper, we study the degeneracies among several cosmological parameters in detail and discuss their impacts on the determinations of these parameters from the current and future observations. By combining the latest data sets,…
The lack of energy conservation introduces new particle processes in curved spacetime that are forbidden in flat space. Therefore one has to be very cautious about using the results calculated in Minkowskian space in early universe…
Several observational constraints are imposed on the interacting holographic model of Dark Energy and Dark Matter. First we use the age parameter today, as given by the WMAP results. Subsequently, we explained the reason why it is possible,…