17558967
Accelerated recombination and primordial baryonic clouds: the recent CMB and SDSS data constraint, and the constraint forecast for the PLANCK surveyor
We have constrained the extended (delayed and accelerated) models of hydrogen recombination, by investigating associated changes of the position and the width of the last scattering surface. Using the recent CMB and SDSS data, we find that the recent data constraints favor the accelerated recombination model, though the other models (standard, delayed recombination) are not ruled out at 1-σ confidence level. If the accelerated recombination had actually occurred in our early Universe, baryonic clustering on small-scales is likely to be the cause of it. By comparing the ionization history of baryonic cloud models with that of the best-fit accelerated recombination model, we find that some portion of our early Universe has baryonic underdensity. We have made the forecast on the PLANCK data constraint, which shows that we will be able to rule out the standard or delayed recombination models, if the recombination in our early Universe had proceeded with ǫα ∼ −0.01 or lower, and residual foregrounds and systematic effects are negligible. PACS numbers: 98.70.Vc, 98.80.Bp, 98.80.-k, 98.80.Es Accelerated recombination and primordial baryonic clouds 2
119074604
Removing the ISW-lensing bias from the local-form primordial non-Gaussianity estimation
The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect produces a secondary temperature aniso\-tropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as CMB photons travel through time-varying potentials along the line-of-sight. The main contribution comes from redshifts z2, where dark energy leads to a decay of potentials. As the same photons are gravitationally lensed by these decaying potentials, there exists a high degree of correlation between the ISW effect and CMB lensing, leading to a non-zero three-point correlation (bispectrum) of the observed temperature anisotropy. This ISW-lensing bispectrum, whose shape resembles that of the so-called ``local-form'' primordial bispectrum parametrized by fNL, is known to be the largest contamination of fNL. In order to avoid a spurious detection of primordial non-Gaussianity, we need to remove the ISW-lensing bias. In this work, we investigate three debiasing methods: (I) subtraction of an expected, ensemble average of the ISW-lensing bispectrum; (II) subtraction of a measured ISW-lensing bispectrum; and (III) direct subtraction of an estimated ISW signal from an observed temperature map. One may use an estimation of the ISW map from external non-CMB data or that from the CMB data themselves. As the methods II and III are based on fewer assumptions about the nature of dark energy, they are preferred over the method I. While the methods I and II yield unbiased estimates of fNL with comparable error bars, the method III yields a biased result when the underlying primordial fNL is non-zero and the ISW map is estimated from a lensing potential reconstructed from the observed temperature map. One of the sources of the bias is a lensing reconstruction noise bias which is independent of fNL and can be calculated precisely, but other fNL-dependent terms are difficult to compute reliably. We thus conclude that the method II is the best, model-independent way to remove the ISW-lensing bias of fNL, enabling us to test the physics of inflation with smaller systematic errors.
17325286
THE GAUSS–LEGENDRE SKY PIXELIZATION FOR THE CMB POLARIZATION (GLESP-POL) ERRORS DUE TO PIXELIZATION OF THE CMB SKY
We present the development of the method for numerical analysis of polarization in the Gauss–Legendre sky pixelization (GLESP) scheme for CMB maps. This incorporation of the polarization transforms in the pixelization scheme GLESP completes the creation of our new method for numerical analysis of CMB maps. A comparison of GLESP and HEALPix calculations is done.
119245195
CMB map derived from the WMAP data through harmonic internal linear combination
We are presenting an internal linear combination CMB map, in which the foreground is reduced through harmonic variance minimization. We have derived our method by converting a general form of pixel-space approach into spherical harmonic space, maintaining full correspondence. By working in spherical harmonic space, spatial variability of linear weights is incorporated in a self-contained manner and our linear weights are continuous functions of position over the entire sky. The full correspondence to pixel-space approach enables straightforward physical interpretation on our approach. In variance minimization of a linear combination map, the existence of a cross term between residual foregrounds and CMB makes the linear combination of minimum variance differ from that of minimum foreground. We have developed an iterative foreground reduction method, where perturbative correction is made for the cross term. Our CMB map derived from the WMAP data is in better agreement with the WMAP best-fit {lambda}CDM model than the WMAP team's internal linear combination map. We find that our method's capacity to clean foreground is limited by the availability of enough spherical harmonic coefficients of good signal-to-noise ratio.
118530966
How accurately can we measure the hydrogen 2S->1S transition rate from the cosmological data?
Recent progress in observational cosmology, and especially the forthcoming PLANCK mission data, open new directions in so-called precision cosmology. In this paper we illustrate this statement considering the accuracy of cosmological determination of the two-quanta decay rate of 2s hydrogen atom state. We show that the PLANCK data will allow us to measure this decay rate significantly better than in the laboratory experiments.
118613110
How to make a clean separation between CMB E and B modes with proper foreground masking
We investigate the E/B decomposition of CMB polarization on a masked sky. In real space, operators of E and B mode decomposition involve only differentials of CMB polarization. We may, therefore in principle, perform a clean E/B decomposition from incomplete sky data. Since it is impractical to apply second derivatives to observation data, we usually rely on spherical harmonic transformation and inverse transformation, instead of using real-space operators. In spherical harmonic representation, jump discontinuities in a cut sky produces Gibbs phenomenon, unless a spherical harmonic expansion is made up to an infinitely high multipole. By smoothing a foreground mask, we may suppress the Gibbs phenomenon effectively in a similar manner to apodization of a foreground mask discussed in other works. However, we incur foreground contamination by smoothing a foreground mask, because zero-value pixels in the original mask may be rendered non-zero by the smoothing process. In this work, we investigate an optimal foreground mask, which ensures proper foreground masking and suppresses Gibbs phenomenon. We apply our method to a simulated map of the pixel resolution comparable to the Planck satellite. The simulation shows that the leakage power is lower than unlensed CMB B mode power spectrum of tensor-to-scalar ratio r ∼ 1 × 10 −7 . We compare the result with that of the original mask. We find that the leakage power is reduced by a factor of 10 6 ∼ 10 9 at the cost of a sky fraction 0.07, and that that the enhancement is highest at lowest multipoles. We confirm that all the zero-value pixels in the original mask remain zero in our mask. The application of this method to the Planck data will improve the detectability of primordial tensor perturbation.
118343398
Probing Minimal Flavor Violation with Long-Lived Stops and Light Gravitinos at Hadron Colliders
In the framework of minimal flavor violation (MFV), we discuss the decay properties of a supersymmetric scalar top (stop) in the presence of a light gravitino. Given a small mass difference between the lighter stop and lightest neutralino and an otherwise sufficiently decoupled spectrum, the stop may be long-lived and thus can provide support to MFV at hadron colliders. For a bino-like lightest neutralino, we apply bounds from searches in the gamma gamma plus missing transverse energy channel (ATLAS with 1 fb^-1 and D0 with 6.3 fb^-1) and give a 5 fb^-1 projection for the ATLAS search.
120761592
Massive vector field and initial singularity problem in a charged universe
Abstract We find that a massive U (1) vector field A μ in a charged Robertson-Walker universe for k =+1, 0, and −1 can solve the initial singularity problem even at the level of classical gravity because the energy density becomes negative as the scale factor a of the metric approaches zero. Namely, our universe might have started to expand from a finite size a 0 . The condition that the universe expands from a 0 larger than the Planck scale gives a constraint on the charge density at t =0.
9857534
Neutralino dark matter from heavy axino decay
We consider cosmological consequences of a heavy axino, decaying to the neutralino in R-parity conserving models. The importance and influence of the axino decay on the resultant abundance of neutralino dark matter depends on the lifetime and the energy density of axino. For a high reheating temperature after inflation, copiously produced axinos dominate the energy density of the universe, and its decay produces a large amount of entropy. As a bonus, we obtain that the upper bound on the reheating temperature after inflation via gravitino decay can be moderated, because the entropy production by the axino decay more or less dilutes the gravitinos.
121311744
Polarization of recoil-electron beam in high-energy Moller and Bhabha scattering
Longitudinal and transverse polarizations of the final electron beam in Moller and Bhabha scattering are analyzed in electroweak gauge models involving more than one neutral vector boson. In pure QED, for given initial polarizations of incoming particles, the polarization of the outgoing electron beam is the same for Moller and Bhabha scattering and is energy independent. However, in various electroweak gauge models, we find that the energy dependence and final-state polarizations are in general different for the two scattering processes; thus, observing polarization effects in such scattering processes may be useful to test various gauge models at high energy.
119003668
Neutrino Magnetic Moments and Atmospheric Neutrinos
I review the history on neutrino magnetic moments and apply the neurino magnetic moment idea to constrain its bound from Super-Kamiokande neutrino oscillation data.