Related papers: Microwave Background Constraints on Decaying Defec…
We use a high-accuracy computational code to investigate the precision with which cosmological parameters could be reconstructed by future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, in particular the two satellite missions MAP and…
Any theory invoked to explain cosmic acceleration predicts consistency relations between the expansion history, structure growth, and all related observables. Currently there exist high-quality measurements of the expansion history from…
Any time variation in the fine-structure constant alters the ionization history of the universe and therefore changes the pattern of cosmic microwave background fluctuations. We calculate the changes in the spectrum of these fluctuations as…
Cosmic reionization and dark matter decay can impact observations of the cosmic microwave sky in a similar way. A simultaneous study of both effects is required to constrain unstable dark matter from cosmic microwave background…
An intense X wave propagating perpendicularly to dc magnetic field is unstable with respect to a parametric decay into an electron Bernstein wave and a lower-hybrid wave. A modified theory of this effect is proposed that extends to the…
We derive general constraints on the relic abundances of a long-lived particle which mainly decays into a neutrino (and something else) at cosmological time scales. Such an exotic particle may show up in various particle-physics models…
High-precision measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation have been previously employed to set robust constraints on dark matter annihilation during recombination. In this work…
A dark photon may kinetically mix with the ordinary photon, inducing oscillations with observable imprints on cosmology. Oscillations are resonantly enhanced if the dark photon mass equals the ordinary photon plasma mass, which tracks the…
Polarization of the cosmic microwave background, though not yet detected, provides a source of information about cosmological parameters complementary to temperature fluctuations. This paper provides a complete theoretical treatment of…
Anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have been detected on a range of scales by several different experiments. These anisotropies reflect the primordial spectrum of metric perturbations in the early universe.…
One of the main challenges facing upcoming CMB experiments will be to distinguish the cosmological signal from foreground contamination. We present a comprehensive treatment of this problem and study how foregrounds degrade the accuracy…
Precision measurements of the acoustic peaks of the cosmic microwave background indicate that neutrinos must be freely streaming at the photon decoupling epoch when T ~ 0.3 eV. This requirement implies restrictive limits on ``secret…
The recent high-quality measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies have presented cosmologists with the possibility of studying the large scale properties of our universe with unprecedented precision. Here I review the…
A primordial degree of circular polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background is not observationally excluded. The hypothesis of primordial dichroism can be quantitatively falsified if the plasma is magnetized prior to photon decoupling…
A massive neutrino which decays after recombination (t > 10^{13} sec) into relativistic decay products produces an enhanced integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, allowing constraints to be placed on such neutrinos from present cosmic microwave…
We investigate constraints on early dark energy (EDE) from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy, taking into account data from WMAP9 combined with latest small scale measurements from the South Pole Telescope (SPT). For a…
Weak-lensing distortions of the cosmic-microwave-background (CMB) temperature and polarization patterns can reveal important clues to the intervening large-scale structure. The effect of lensing is to deflect the primary temperature and…
The V-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background is discussed in a weakly magnetized plasma. The VV and VT angular power spectra are computed for adiabatic initial conditions of the Einstein-Boltzmann hierarchy. Depending upon the…
We demonstrate the viability of electroweak baryogenesis scenarios in which the necessary departure from equilibrium is realized by the evolution of a network of topological defects. We consider several effective models of TeV physics, each…
The potential role of cosmic topological defects has raised interest in the astrophysical community for many years now. In this set of notes, we give an introduction to the subject of cosmic topological defects and some of their possible…