Related papers: Early Reionization in Cosmology
Accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies with an angular resolution of a few arcminutes can be used to determine fundamental cosmological parameters such as the densities of baryons, cold and hot dark…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies have and will continue to revolutionize our understanding of cosmology. The recent discovery of the previously predicted acoustic peaks in the power spectrum has established a…
The Thomson optical depth from reionization is a limiting factor in measuring the amplitude of primordial fluctuations, and hence in measuring physics that affects the low-redshift amplitude, such as the neutrino masses. Current constraints…
We discuss upcoming opportunities with cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations during the post-WMAP era. The curl-modes of CMB polarization probe inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs). While a significant source of confusion is…
I present recent work aimed at showing how currently competing theories of the early universe leave their imprint on the temperature anisotropies of the CMB radiation. We consider the 3-point correlation function, as well as the inherent…
The low quadrupole of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), measured by COBE and confirmed by WMAP, has generated much discussion recently. We point out that the well-known correlation between temperature and polarization anisotropies of…
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a unique opportunity for a direct study of the primordial cosmic plasma at redshift z ~1000. The angular power spectra of temperature and polarisation fluctuations are…
Neutral hydrogen around high-z QSO and an optical depth tau ~ 0.17 can be reconciled if reionization is more complex than a single transition at z ~ 6-8. Tracing its details could shed a new light on the first sources of radiation. Here we…
Global, symmetry-breaking phase transitions in the early universe can generate scaling seed networks which lead to metric perturbations. The acoustic waves in the photon-baryon plasma sourced by these metric perturbations, when Silk damped,…
Current cosmological constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are typically derived assuming a standard recombination scheme, however additional resonance and ionizing radiation sources can delay recombination,…
In addition to its spectrum and temperature anisotropy, the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background is also expected to exhibit a low level of polarization. The spatial power spectrum of the polarization can provide details about the formation of…
The WMAP first year detection of a high redshift reionization through its imprints on CMB anisotropy T and TE mode angular power spectra calls for a better comprehension of the universe ionization and thermal history after the standard…
Anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have proven to be a very powerful tool to constrain dark matter annihilation at the epoch of recombination. However, CMB constraints are currently derived using a number of reasonable…
We analyze the spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in the timescape cosmology: a potentially viable alternative to homogeneous isotropic cosmologies without dark energy. We exploit the fact that the timescape…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation carries essential information on early stages of the Universe such as the cosmic inflation, forming cosmological structures through gravitational lensing, and the epoch of…
The ionization history of the universe provides a major source of ambiguity in constraining cosmological models using small angular scale microwave background anisotropies. To clarify these issues, we consider a complete treatment of…
The bulk of the hydrogen in the universe transformed from neutral to ionized somewhere in the redshift interval 5 < z < 40, most likely due to ionizing photons produced by an early generation of stars or mini-quasars. The resulting free…
We investigate the imprint of nonlinear matter condensations on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in an $\Omega=1$, Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model universe. Temperature anisotropies are obtained by numerically evolving matter…
In this lecture, after a synthetic review of measurements of CMB temperature anisotropies and of their cosmological implications, the theoretical background of CMB polarization is summarized and the concepts of the main experiments that are…
The standard inflationary model presents a simple scenario within which the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness of the universe appear as natural outcomes and, in addition, fluctuations in the energy density are originated during the…