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Exploring massive neutrinos in dark cosmologies with eftcamb/EFTCosmoMC
Frusciante, Noemi; Hu, Bin; Raveri, Marco +1 more
We revisit the degeneracy between massive neutrinos and generalized theories of gravity in the framework of the effective field theory of cosmic acceleration. In particular, we consider f (R ) theories and a class of nonminimally coupled models parametrized via a coupling to gravity which is linear in the scale factor. In the former case, we find …
Polyspectra searches for sharp oscillatory features in cosmic microwave sky data
Shellard, E. P. S.; Fergusson, J. R.; Gruetjen, H. F. +1 more
Despite numerous efforts, the search for oscillatory signatures in primordial spectra has not produced any convincing evidence for feature models to date. We undertake a thorough search for signatures of sharp features in the WMAP9 power spectrum and bispectrum as well as in the Planck power spectrum. For the first time, we carry out searches in b…
Multiwavelength constraints on the inflationary consistency relation
Hložek, Renée; Hadzhiyska, Boryana; Meerburg, P. Daniel +1 more
We present the first attempt to use a combination of CMB, LIGO, and Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) data to constrain both the tilt and the running of primordial tensor power spectrum through constraints on the gravitational wave energy density generated in the early universe. Combining measurements at different cosmological scales highlights how compl…
Microwave background correlations from dipole anisotropy modulation
Aiola, Simone; Kosowsky, Arthur; Wang, Bingjie +2 more
Full-sky maps of the cosmic microwave background temperature reveal a 7% asymmetry of fluctuation power between two halves of the sky. A common phenomenological model for this asymmetry is an overall dipole modulation of statistically isotropic fluctuations, which produces particular off-diagonal correlations between multipole coefficients. We com…
Do current data prefer a nonminimally coupled inflaton?
Mena, Olga; Boubekeur, Lotfi; Ramírez, Héctor +1 more
We examine the impact of a nonminimal coupling of the inflaton to the Ricci scalar, 1/2 ξ R ϕ2, on the inflationary predictions. Such a nonminimal coupling is expected to be present in the inflaton Lagrangian on fairly general grounds. As a case study, we focus on the simplest inflationary model governed by the potential V ∝ϕ2
Constraints on the reheating temperature from sizable tensor modes
Domcke, Valerie; Heisig, Jan
Despite its importance for modeling the homogeneous hot early Universe very little is experimentally known about the magnitude of the reheating temperature, leaving an uncertainty of remarkable 18 orders of magnitude. In this paper we consider a general class of polynomial inflaton potentials up to fourth order. Employing a Monte Carlo scan and im…
How well can we really determine the scale of inflation?
Özsoy, Ogan; Sinha, Kuver; Watson, Scott
A detection of primordial B modes has been heralded not only as a smoking gun for the existence of inflation, but also as a way to establish the scale at which inflation took place. In this paper we critically reinvestigate the connection between a detection of primordial gravity waves and the scale of inflation. We consider whether the presence o…
Constraints on dark radiation from cosmological probes
Palanque-Delabrouille, Nathalie; Yèche, Christophe; Rossi, Graziano +1 more
We present joint constraints on the number of effective neutrino species Neff and the sum of neutrino masses ∑mν, based on a technique which exploits the full information contained in the one-dimensional Lyman-α forest flux power spectrum, complemented by additional cosmological probes. In particular, we obtain Neff
Using dark energy to suppress power at small scales
Kunz, Martin; Nesseris, Savvas; Sawicki, Ignacy
The latest Planck results reconfirm the existence of a slight but chronic tension between the best-fit cosmic microwave background (CMB) and low-redshift observables: power seems to be consistently lacking in the late universe across a range of observables (e.g. weak lensing, cluster counts). We propose a two-parameter model for dark energy where …
Hyperbolic inflation in the light of Planck 2015 data
Basilakos, Spyros; Barrow, John D.
Rubano and Barrow have discussed the emergence of a dark energy, with late-time cosmic acceleration arising from a self-interacting homogeneous scalar field with a potential of hyperbolic power type. Here, we study the evolution of this scalar-field potential back in the inflationary era. Using the hyperbolic power potential in the framework of in…