Search results for " Background"
showing 10 items of 316 documents
On the Rees-Sciama effect: maps and statistics
2006
Small maps of the Rees-Sciama (RS) effect are simulated by using an appropriate N-body code and a certain ray-tracing procedure. A method designed for the statistical analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps is applied to study the resulting simulations. These techniques, recently proposed --by our team-- to consider lens deformations of the CMB, are adapted to deal with the RS effect. This effect and the deviations from Gaussianity associated to it seem to be too small to be detected in the near future. This conclusion follows from our estimation of both the RS angular power spectrum and the RS reduced n-direction correlation functions for n<7.
Impact of neutrino properties on the estimation of inflationary parameters from current and future observations
2016
We study the impact of assumptions about neutrino properties on the estimation of inflationary parameters from cosmological data, with a specific focus on the allowed contours in the $n_s/r$ plane. We study the following neutrino properties: (i) the total neutrino mass $ M_\nu =\sum_i m_i$; (ii) the number of relativistic degrees of freedom $N_{eff}$; and (iii) the neutrino hierarchy: whereas previous literature assumed 3 degenerate neutrino masses or two massless neutrino species (that do not match neutrino oscillation data), we study the cases of normal and inverted hierarchy. Our basic result is that these three neutrino properties induce $< 1 \sigma$ shift of the probability contours in…
Relic neutrinos, thermal axions, and cosmology in early 2014
2014
We present up to date cosmological bounds on the sum of active neutrino masses as well as on extended cosmological scenarios with additional thermal relics, as thermal axions or sterile neutrino species. Our analyses consider all the current available cosmological data in the beginning of year 2014, including the very recent and most precise Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) measurements from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. In the minimal three active neutrino scenario, we find Sum m_nu < 0.22 eV at 95% CL from the combination of CMB, BAO and Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the Hubble constant. A non zero value for the sum of the three active neutrino masses of about …
Cosmological limits on neutrino unknowns versus low redshift priors
2015
Recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropy measurements from the Planck mission have significantly improved previous constraints on the neutrino masses as well as the bounds on extended models with massless or massive sterile neutrino states. However, due to parameter degeneracies, additional low redshift priors are mandatory in order to sharpen the CMB neutrino bounds. We explore here the role of different priors on low redshift quantities, such as the Hubble constant, the cluster mass bias, and the reionization optical depth $\tau$. Concerning current priors on the Hubble constant and the cluster mass bias, the bounds on the neutrino parameters may di…
Effects of degenerate sterile neutrinos on the supernova neutrino flux
2004
We consider the possibility that there exist sterile neutrinos which are closely degenerate in mass with the active neutrinos and mixed with them. We investigate the effects of this kind of active-sterile neutrino mixing on the composition of supernova neutrino flux at the Earth. If an adiabatic MSW-transition between active and sterile neutrinos takes place, it could dramatically diminish the electron neutrino flux.
Scaling laws in the distribution of galaxies
2004
Research done during the previous century established our Standard Cosmological Model. There are many details still to be filled in, but few would seriously doubt the basic premise. Past surveys have revealed that the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the Universe is far from random: it is highly structured over a vast range of scales. To describe cosmic structures, we need to build mathematically quantifiable descriptions of structure. Identifying where scaling laws apply and the nature of those scaling laws is an important part of understanding which physical mechanisms have been responsible for the organization of clusters, superclusters of galaxies and the voids between them. Find…
Learning from observations of the microwave background at small angular scales
1996
In this paper, we focus our attention on the following question: How well can we recover the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from the maps of a given experiment?. Each experiment is described by a a pixelization scale, a beam size, a noise level and a sky coverage. We use accurate numerical simulations of the microwave sky and a cold dark matter model for structure formation in the universe. Angular scales smaller than those of previous simulations are included. The spectrum obtained from the simulated maps is appropriately compared with the theoretical one. Relative deviations between these spectra are estimated. Various contributions to these deviations are analyzed. The…
Estimate of the gravitational-wave background from the observed cosmological distribution of quasars
2021
We study the gravitational-wave background from the observed cosmological quasar distribution. Using the DR9Q quasar catalogue from the ninth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we create a complete, statistically consistent sample of quasars from $z=0.3$ to $5.4$. Employing the spectroscopic information from the catalogue we estimate the masses of the supermassive black holes hosted by the quasars in the sample, resulting in a log-normal distribution of mean $10^{8.32\pm0.33}M_{\odot}$. The computation of the individual gravitational-wave strains relies on specific functional forms derived from simulations of gravitational collapse and mergers of massive black hole binarie…
Cosmological Applications of Extended Electromagnetism
2013
Extended electromagnetism (EE) has been applied to cosmology in various papers. In all of them, the zero order energy density of the EE vector field plays the same role as vacuum energy. Perturbations of this field have been studied by using different approaches. Firstly, some basic equations and ideas are summarized and, then, the CMBFAST code is used to calculate the cosmic microwave background angular power spectrum for appropriate values of the EE parameters. Comparisons of the resulting spectra with a good observational one compatible with WMAP7 (Wilkinson map anisotropy probe 7 years data) seem to be promising. We are currently looking for a set of parameters leading to the best fitti…
Cosmological Vector Perturbations and CMB Anomalies
2010
Recently, it has been proved that large scale vector modes could explain most of the CMB anomalies in the first temperature multipoles. Some divergenceless (vortical) velocity fields–which are superimpositions of vector modes–can explain both the alignment of the second and third multipoles and the planar character of the octopole. In this paper we comment: (a) some papers trying to account for the mentioned anomalies, (b) our explanation based on vector modes, and (c) some current ideas about the possible origin of these modes.