Related papers: Transplanckian signatures in WMAP3?
The recent BICEP2 measurement of primordial gravity waves (r = 0.2^{+0.07}_{-0.05}) appears to be in tension with the upper limit from WMAP (r<0.13 at 95% CL) and Planck (r<0.11 at 95% CL). We carefully quantify the level of tension and…
Primordial oscillatory features in the power spectrum of curvature perturbations are sensitive probes of the dynamics of the early Universe and can provide insights beyond the standard inflationary scenario. While these features have been…
We present a new signature by which to one could potentially discriminate between a spectrum of gravitational radiation generated by a self-ordering scalar field vs that of inflation, specifically a comparison of the magnitude of a flat…
In this paper we implement an improved (error sensitive) Richardson-Lucy deconvolution algorithm on the measured angular power spectrum from the WMAP 3 year data to determine the primordial power spectrum assuming different points in the…
We studied the role of fundamental constants in an updated recombination scenario, focusing on the time variation of the fine structure constant \alpha and the electron mass m_e in the early Universe. Using CMB data including WMAP 5-yr…
We investigate the impact of stochastic quantum noise due to trans--Planckian effects on the primordial power spectrum for gravity waves during inflation. Given an energy scale Lambda, expected to be close to the Planck scale m_Pl and…
Upcoming searches for the stochastic background of inflationary gravitational waves (GWs) offer the exciting possibility to probe the evolution of our Universe prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In this spirit, we explore the sensitivity of…
Using a large N sigma model approximation we explicitly calculate the power spectrum of gravitational waves arising from a global phase transition in the early universe and we confirm that it is scale invariant, implying an observation of…
Any variation of the fundamental physical constants, and more particularly of the fine structure constant, $\alpha$, or of the mass of the electron, $m_e$, would affect the recombination history of the Universe and cause an imprint on the…
Well-known causality arguments show that events occurring during or at the end of inflation, associated with reheating or preheating, could contribute a blue component to the spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations, with the…
We provide analytic solutions for the power spectrum and bispectrum of curvature fluctuations produced by a step feature in the inflaton potential, valid in the limit that the step is short and sharp. In this limit, the bispectrum is…
As a test of the standard inflationary cosmology, which generically predicts nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial curvature fluctuations, we perform Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo analysis to search for possible modulations in the power…
Using the temperature data from Planck we search for departures from a power-law primordial power spectrum, employing Bayesian model-selection and posterior probabilities. We parametrize the spectrum with $n$ knots located at arbitrary…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
We briefly summarize the impact of the recent Planck measurements for string inflationary models, and outline what might be expected to be learned in the near future from the expected improvement in sensitivity to the primordial…
Inter alia, the high precision WMAP data on Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation marginally indicate that the universe has positively curved (and hence spherical) spatial sections. In this paper, we take this data seriously and consider…
We present a circular cross-correlation tests for the phases of the Internal Linear Combination Map (ILC) and {\it WMAP}'s foregrounds for all K--W frequency bands at the range of multipoles $\ell\le 50$. We have found significant…
In this paper, we suppose that the universe begins in a holographic thermal equilibrium phase with the diverged correlation length, and the phase transition to the radiation phase of standard cosmology goes with the abrupt reducing of…
Recent fits of cosmological parameters by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) measurement favor a primordial scalar spectrum with varying index. This result, if stands, could severely constrain inflation model buildings. Most…
We consider a minimum uncertainty vacuum choice at a fixed energy scale Lambda as an effective description of trans-Planckian physics, and discuss its implications for the linear perturbations of a massless scalar field in power-law…