Related papers: Particle decays during the cosmic dark ages

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…

As electromagnetic showers may alter the abundance of Helium, Lithium, and Deuterium, we can place severe constraints on the lifetime and amount of electromagnetic energy injected by long-lived particles. Considering up-to-date measurements…

A cosmological model, in which the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a thermal radiation of intergalactic dust instead of a relic radiation of the Big Bang, is revived and revisited. The model suggests that a virtually transparent local…

The decay of dark matter is predicted by many theoretical models and can produce observable contributions to the cosmic-ray fluxes. I shortly discuss the interpretation of the positron and electron excess as observed by PAMELA and Fermi LAT…

If dark matter (DM) is unstable, in order to be present today, its lifetime needs to be longer than the age of the Universe, t_U ~ 4 10^{17} s. It is usually assumed that if DM decays it would do it with some strength through a radiative…

By adding a matter-coupled dark energy field to Einstein's General Relativity (GR), this paper proves that the dynamical dark energy field can change the frequency of photons from distant galaxies as well as from background radiation of…

Cosmic microwave background polarization encodes information not only on the early universe but also dark energy, neutrino mass, and gravity in the late universe through CMB lensing. Ground based surveys such as ACTpol, PolarBear, SPTpol…

It is entirely possible that our Universe is filled with dark radiation, such as SM neutrinos or new physics states, that are sourced by the decay of dark matter with cosmologically long lifetime. If non-thermal neutrinos produced such way…

I discuss the extraction of cosmological parameter constraints from the recent WMAP 3-year data, both on its own and in combination with other data. The large degeneracies in the first year data can be largely broken with the third year…

We investigate the decay of bosonic dark matter with masses between 1 MeV and 2 TeV into Standard Model final states. We specifically focus on dark photons that kinetically mix with the Standard Model, as well as scalar dark matter models…

We perform a detailed and systematic investigation of the possible impacts of dark stars upon the reionization history of the Universe, and its signatures in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We compute hydrogen reionization histories,…

I review two different connections between particle theory and early-Universe cosmology: (1) Cosmic-microwave-background (CMB) tests of inflation and (2) particle dark matter. The inflationary predictions of a flat Universe and a nearly…

We provide a fresh look at the cosmological constraints on axion-like particles (ALPs) that couple predominantly to photons, focusing on lifetimes $\tau_{a} \lesssim 10^{4}\, {\rm s}$ and masses $m_a\lesssim 10\,{\rm GeV}$. We consider Big…

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a precious window on fundamental physics at very high energy scales, possibly including quantum gravity, GUTs and supersymmetry. The CMB has already enabled defect-based rivals to inflation to…

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)…

We give an estimation of the masses of light dark matter particle and dark energy quasiparticle which can be extracted from the astrophysical data about the contributions of baryon, dark matter, and dark energy densities to the total…

Weak-scale dark matter particles, in collisions with nuclei, can mediate transitions between different nuclear energy levels. In particular, owing to sizeable momentum exchange, dark matter particles can enable de-excitation of nuclear…

Cosmology and astroparticle physics give strongest possible evidence for the incompleteness of the Standard Model of particle physics. Leaving aside misterious dark energy, which may or may not be just the cosmological constant, two…

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…

We compute in detail the rate at which energy injected by dark matter annihilation heats and ionizes the photon-baryon plasma at z ~ 1000, and provide accurate fitting functions over the relevant redshift range for a broad array of…