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.
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.
118455901
CMB data constraint on self-annihilation of dark matter particles
Recently, self‐annihilation of dark matter particles is proposed to explain the “WMAP Haze” and excess of energetic positrons and electrons in ATIC and PAMELA results. If self‐annihilation of dark matter occurs around the recombination of cosmic plasma, energy release from self‐annihilation of dark matter delays the recombination, and hence affects CMB anisotropy. By using the recent CMB data, we have investigated the self‐annihilation of dark matter particles. In this investigation, we do not find statistically significant evidence, and impose an upper bound on 〈σν〉/mϰ.The upcoming data from Planck surveyor and the Fermi Gamma‐ray telescope will allow us to break some of parameter degeneracy and improve constraints on self‐annihilation of dark matter particles.
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.
118997460
Alfv\'en turbulence in the WMAP 5 year data and a forecast for the PLANCK
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.
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.
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.
119261119
Axionic dark energy and a composite QCD axion
We discuss the idea that the model-independent (MI) axion of string theory is the source of quintessential dark energy. The scenario is completed with a composite QCD axion from hidden sector squark condensation that could serve as dark matter candidate. The mechanism relies on the fact that the hidden sector anomaly contribution to the composite axion is much smaller than the QCD anomaly term. This intuitively surprising scenario is based on the fact that below the hidden sector scale Λh there are many light hidden sector quarks. Simply, by counting engineering dimensions the hidden sector instanton potential can be made negligible compared to the QCD anomaly term.
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.
119287184
Axions and the Strong CP Problem
Current upper bounds on the neutron electric dipole moment constrain the physically observable quantum chromodynamic (QCD) vacuum angle $|\overline{\ensuremath{\theta}}|\ensuremath{\lesssim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}11}$. Since QCD explains a great deal of experimental data from the $100\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{MeV}$ to the TeV scale, it is desirable to explain this smallness of $|\overline{\ensuremath{\theta}}|$ in the QCD framework; this is the strong $CP$ problem. There now exist two plausible solutions to this problem, one of which leads to the existence of a very light axion. The axion decay constant window, ${10}^{9}\ensuremath{\lesssim}{F}_{a}\ensuremath{\lesssim}{10}^{12}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ for an $O(1)$ initial misalignment angle ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{1}$, has been obtained from astrophysical and cosmological data. For ${F}_{a}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{10}^{12}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{GeV}$ with ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{1}lO(1)$, axions may constitute a significant fraction of the dark matter of the universe. The supersymmetrized axion solution of the strong $CP$ problem introduces its superpartner the axino, which might have affected the evolution of the Universe significantly. The very light axion (theory, supersymmetrization, and models) using recent particle, astrophysical, and cosmological data, and present prospects for its discovery is reviewed here.