Spectrum Of Background Radiation Research Articles

What does cosmology teach us about non-gravitational properties of dark matter?

Cosmological observations provide our most robust evidence for dark matter that is (approximately) collisionless and cold, and furthermore can provide powerful tests of the non-gravitational properties of dark matter. There are exciting prospects for significant experimental/observational progress in the coming years. In particular, current experiments are targeting a first confirmed detection of primordial 21 cm radiation and a measurement of its power spectrum, which would open a new observational window on the end of the cosmic dark ages and cosmic dawn. On a longer timescale, there are proposed missions that could improve our measurements of the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation by 3+ orders of magnitude, providing a new physical probe of the thermal history of the universe up to keV temperatures. In this contribution, I will discuss how signals from dark matter interactions with Standard Model particles, in particular through annihilation and decay of particle-like dark matter, could appear in these observables, and recent improvements in their theoretical modeling. There are existing stringent and broadly applicable limits on annihilating and decaying dark matter (especially at sub-GeV mass scales) from the cosmic microwave background, and complementary and competitive bounds from the Lyman-α forest for leptonically decaying light dark matter. I will outline how energy injections that are not currently excluded could change the conditions of the early universe, impact the formation of the first stars and black hole seeds, and imprint signals in the cosmological background radiation.

Fast computation of the observer motion effects induced on monopole frequency spectra for tabulated functions

Context. Various methods have been studied to compute the boosting effects produced by the observer peculiar motion, which modifies and transfers the isotropic monopole frequency spectrum of the cosmic background radiation to higher multipoles. Explicit analytical solutions for the spherical harmonic expansion coefficients were already presented and applied to different types of background spectrum, strongly alleviating the computational effort needed for accurate theoretical predictions. The frequency spectra at higher multipoles are inherently led by higher-order derivatives of the monopole spectrum. Provided that it can be well described by analytic or semi-analytic functions, the computation of its transfer is not affected by numerical instabilities when evaluated at the required level of numerical accuracy. Instead, monopole frequency spectra described by tabulated functions are computed with a relatively poor frequency resolution in comparison with the Doppler shift, which necessitates interpolation of the tabular representation. The spectra are also affected by uncertainties related to intrinsic inaccuracies in the modelling or in the related observational data as well as to limited accuracy in their numerical computation. These uncertainties propagate and increase with the derivative order, possibly preventing the trustworthy computation of the transfer to higher multipoles and of the observed monopole. Aims. We study methods to filter the original function or its derivatives and the multipole spectra, to mitigate numerical instabilities, and to derive reliable predictions of the harmonic coefficients for different cosmic background models. Methods. From the analytical solutions, and assuming that the monopole spectrum can be expanded in Taylor’s series, we derive explicit expressions for the harmonic coefficients up to the multipole ℓmax = 6 in terms of monopole spectrum derivatives. We then consider different low-pass filters: prefiltering in Fourier space of the tabular representation; filtering in both real and Fourier space of the numerical derivatives; interpolation approaches; and a dedicated method based on amplification and deamplification of the boosted signal. We study the quality of these methods when applied to suitable analytical approximations of the tabulated functions, possibly polluted with simulated noise. These methods are then applied to the tabulations. Results. We consider two very different types of monopole spectra superimposed to the cosmic microwave background: the (smooth) extragalactic source microwave background signal from radio-loud active galactic nuclei and the (feature-rich) redshifted 21 cm line, and present our results in terms of spherical harmonic coefficients. The direct prediction of these coefficients can be noisy at ℓ > 1 or, depending on the uncertainty level, even at ℓ ≤ 1. Without assuming a functional form for the extragalactic background spectrum, the Gaussian prefiltering coupled to the sequential real-space filtering of derivatives allows us to derive accurate predictions up to ℓ ∼ 6, while a log–log polynomial representation, which is appropriate over several decades, gives accurate solutions at any ℓ. Instead, it is difficult to characterise the 21 cm line model variety, and so it is relevant to work without assumptions about the underlying function. Typically, the prefiltering provides accurate predictions up to ℓ ≃ 3 or 4, while the further sequential filtering of the derivatives or the boosting amplification and deamplification method improves the results up to ℓ = 4, while also allowing reasonable estimations of the spectrum at higher ℓ. Conclusions. The proposed methods can significantly extend the range of realistic cosmic background models manageable with a fast computation, beyond the cases characterised a priori by analytical or semi-analytical functions. These methods require only an affordable increase in computation time compared to the direct calculation via simple interpolation.

Level correlations of CMB temperature angular power spectrum

If the principle of statistical isotropy is valid, then the angular power spectrum (APS) of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is uncorrelated between different multipoles. We propose a novel technique to analyse any possible correlations of the foreground-cleaned CMB temperature APS measures (\(C_{\ell }\) and \({\mathcal {D}}_\ell =({\ell (\ell +1)})/({2\pi })C_\ell \)). This is motivated by the behaviour of level spacings between random matrix eigenvalues. This method helps to distinguish uncorrelated statistically isotropic CMB APS from correlated APS, where the latter can arise due to breakdown of isotropy or presence of some residual systematics in the foreground cleaned CMB maps. Spacings of statistically isotropic CMB \(C_\ell \)’s and \({\mathcal {D}}_\ell \)’s are seen to closely obey Poisson statistics and introduction of correlations, changes the distribution to appropriate Wigner–Dyson statistics. For foreground-cleaned CMB, we employ the average spacing of consecutive multipole APS for multipoles \(\in [2,31]\). This estimator is sensitive to departures from the null hypothesis of zero correlations between the APS measures of statistically isotropic CMB. We study full sky WMAP 9-year ILC and 2018 Planck foreground-cleaned maps (Commander, NILC and SMICA). Sans parity distinctions, average spacings are in good agreement with theoretical expectation. With parity distinctions, even multipoles indicate unusually low average spacings for both \(C_\ell \)’s (at \(\ge \)98.86% C.L.) and \({\mathcal {D}}_\ell \)’s (at \({\ge }\)95.07% C.L.). We use an inpainting method based on constrained Gaussian realisations and show that for the Planck U73 and WMAP KQ75 masks, all the foreground-cleaned inpainted CMB maps robustly confirm the existence of such unusually low average spacings of even multipole APS. In addition, this signal is independent of the non-Gaussian cold spot.

Modified dispersion relations and a potential explanation of the EDGES anomaly

The Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionisation Signature (EDGES) collaboration has recently reported an important result related to the absorption signal in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation spectrum. This signal corresponds to the red-shifted 21-cm line at z simeq 17.2, whose amplitude is about twice the expected value. This represents a deviation of approximately 3.8sigma from the predictions of the standard model of cosmology, i.e. the Lambda CDM model. This opens a window for testing new physics beyond both the standard model of particle physics and the Lambda CDM model. In this work, we explore the possibility of explaining the EDGES anomaly in terms of modified dispersion relations. The latter are typically induced in unified theories and theories of quantum gravity, such as String/M-theories and Loop Quantum Gravity. These modified dispersion relations affect the density of states per unit volume and thus the thermal spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background photons. The temperature of the 21-cm brightness temperature is modified accordingly giving a potential explanation of the EDGES anomaly.

Inflation and type III seesaw mechanism in ν -gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking

We discuss realization of cosmic inflation in the $\nu$-gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking scenario, in which a set of 24-dimensional chiral superfields responsible for the type III seesaw mechanism play the role of the messenger fields in gauge mediation. Using the data from neutrino oscillations, we show that the model satisfies constraints from the lepton flavor violation, perturbativity of the unified gauge couplings, the observed abundance of dark matter as well as the Higgs mass of 125.1 GeV. The predicted spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation fits well with the observation. We also comment on the falsifiability of this scenario by future experiments.

Constraining Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Evolution With Sunyaev–Zel’Dovich Galaxy Clusters from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope

Abstract The Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect introduces a specific distortion of the blackbody spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation when it scatters off hot gas in clusters of galaxies. The frequency dependence of the distortion is only independent of the cluster redshift when the evolution of the CMB radiation is adiabatic. Using 370 clusters within the redshift range 0.07 ≲ z ≲ 1.4 from the largest SZ-selected cluster sample to date from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, we provide new constraints on the deviation of CMB temperature evolution from the standard model α = 0.017 − 0.032 + 0.029 , where T ( z ) = T 0 1 + z 1 − α . This result is consistent with no deviation from the standard adiabatic model. Combining it with previous, independent data sets we obtain a joint constraint of α = −0.001 ± 0.012. Attributing deviation from adiabaticity to the decay of dark energy, this result constrains its effective equation of state w eff = − 0.998 − 0.010 + 0.008 .

How robust are the inferred density and metallicity of the circumgalactic medium?

ABSTRACT Quantitative estimates of the basic properties of the circumgalactic medium (CGM), such as its density and metallicity, depend on the spectrum of incident UV background radiation. Models of UV background are known to have large variations, mainly because they are synthesized using poorly constrained parameters, which introduce uncertainty in the inferred properties of the CGM. Here, we quantify this uncertainty using a large set of new UV background models with physically motivated toy models of metal-enriched CGM. We find that the inferred density and metallicity of low-density (10−5 cm−3) gas is uncertain by factors of 6.3 and 3.2, whereas high-density (10−3 cm−3) gas by factors of 4 and 1.6, respectively. The variation in the shape of the UV background models is entirely responsible for such a variation in the metallicity, while variation in the density arises from both normalization and shape of the UV background. Moreover, we find a harder (softer) UV background infers higher (lower) density and metallicity. We also study warm-hot gas at T = 105.5 K and find that metallicity is robustly estimated but the inferred density is uncertain by a factor of 3 to 5.4 for low to high-density gas. Such large uncertainties in density and metallicity may severely limit the studies of the CGM and demand better observational constraints on the input parameters used in synthesizing UV background.

Scalar–Tensor–Vector Modified Gravity in Light of the Planck 2018 Data

The recent data release by the Planck satellite collaboration presents a renewed challenge for modified theories of gravitation. Such theories must be capable of reproducing the observed angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation. For modified theories of gravity, an added challenge lies in the fact that standard computational tools do not readily accommodate the features of a theory with a variable gravitational coupling coefficient. An alternative is to use less accurate but more easily modifiable semianalytical approximations to reproduce at least the qualitative features of the angular power spectrum. We extend a calculation that was used previously to demonstrate compatibility between the Scalar–Tensor–Vector–Gravity (STVG) theory, also known by the acronym MOG, and data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to show the consistency between the theory and the newly released Planck 2018 data. We find that within the limits of this approximation, the theory accurately reproduces the features of the angular power spectrum.

Blackbody radiation, kappa distribution and superstatistics

In this work we apply superstatistics, in a rather novel way, to derive the blackbody radiation laws in the context of the kappa distribution. Superstatistics incorporates automatically an important aspect of the kappa distribution i.e. the correlations between non-interacting degrees of freedom; this is actually a feature of any stationary non-Boltzmannian distribution derived by superstatistics. The correlations between photons in the same state affect the modified Planck and Wien laws. The correlations between photons of different states affect the fluctuations of the radiated energy, inducing very large fluctuations unless the kappa index is fairly large (i.e. near to the Boltzmannian limit), thereby compromising the very notion of stationarity. It is also shown that the Einstein absorption/emission coefficients are left intact, under the plausible assumption that the system matter-radiation obeys the given non-Boltzmannian distribution. The first-order correction to the Planck’s law near the Boltzmannian limit is deduced, and compared with the residual spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the FIRAS-COBE project data; the modified law cannot account for the residuals. No thermodynamic/entropic arguments are employed in this work.

НЕЛІНІЙНА КОНТАКТНА ДИНАМІКА ТА АНТИСИМЕТРІЯ КОРПУСКУЛЯРНО-ВИХОР-ХВИЛЬОВИХ ФОРМ ЕЛЕКТРОМАГНІТНОГО ТА ГРАВІТАЦІЙНОГО ПОЛІВ У ФОНОВОМУ СЕРЕДОВИЩІ КОМПЛЕКСНОГО ЕВКЛІДОВОГО ПРОСТОРУ. СПЕКТРИ ХІТОННОГО ВИПРОМІНЮВАННЯ

Based on the hydrodynamic-wave calibration of potentials in Maxwell’s equations and their analogues for the gravitational field, nonlinear equations with respect to the vector potentials of these fields in the background medium of a complex Euclidean space are obtained. The nonlinear contact dynamics of corpuscular-vortex-wave forms of fields and violation of antisymmetry, which leads to the formation of matter and generation of electromagnetic, gravitational, hydrodynamic , acoustic waves separately in real and imaginary half-spaces of complex Euclidean space, are considered. Analytical expressions for the spectra of heaton radiation in a complex Euclidean space are obtained. It is shown that these expressions describe, in particular, the spectrum of solar radiation, collider resonance spectra, the spectrum of microwave background radiation generated by the Oort Cloud, and other spectra in technical, space and geodynamic systems. The fundamental technical failures in the field of controlled thermonuclear fusion and the known catastrophes in nuclear energy and hydropower related to the disregard of corpuscular-wave dualism in macrosystems and the limitations of a purely real part of the complex Euclidean space are analyzed.

Initial fluctuations and power spectrum of flow anisotropies in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Flow has emerged as a crucial probe for the properties of the thermalized medium produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The evolution of initial state fluctuations leaves imprints on the power spectrum of flow coefficients. Therefore, flow coefficients are a crucial probe of initial state fluctuations arising from the parton distributions of the colliding nuclei. This has a very strong correspondence with the physics of power spectrum of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) anisotropies which directly probes initial inflationary fluctuations. Much work has been done to probe these interesting interconnections, in particular, in developing techniques for the measurements of higher flow coefficients. We present a short review of these developments. The effect of initial magnetic field on these features will also be reviewed. All this acquires special importance in view of upcoming electron-ion collider which will directly probe initial parton distribution of the colliding nucleus.

On distortion of the background radiation spectrum by wormholes: kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect

The problem of scattering of the background radiation on relic cosmological wormholes is considered. It is shown that static wormholes do not perturb the spectrum at all. The presence of peculiar velocities of wormholes results in a distortion of the CMB spectrum which is analogous to the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. In the first order in $v/c$ the distortion of CMB cannot be separated from from the Compton scattering on electrons. In next orders the scattering on wormholes exhibits some difference from the Compton scattering. High-energy cosmic-ray particles spectrum does not change the form by KSZ, but undergoes a common Doppler shift. Such features may give a new tool to detect the presence of relic wormholes in our Universe.

Local burst model of CMB temperature fluctuations: luminescence in lines of primary para- and orthohelium

We have considered the formation of the luminescent subordinate HeI lines by the absorption of continuum radiation from a source in the lines of the main HeI series in the expanding Universe. It is suggested that at some moment of time, corresponding to the redshift z0, a burst of superequilibrium blackbody radiation with a temperature T + ΔT occurs. This radiation is partially absorbed at different z < z0 in the lines of the main HeI series and then converted into the radiation of subordinate lines. If νij is the laboratory frequency of the transition of some subordinate line originating at some z, then in the present time its frequency will be ν = νij/(1 + z). For different z (and, consequently, for different ν), the quantum yield for the subordinate lines of para- and orthohelium - the number of photons emitted in the subordinate line, per one initial excited atom and line profiles are calculated. Different pumping channels were considered. Spatial and angular distributions of radiation intensity of luminescent lines for the spherically symmetric radiation sources are presented. It is shown that for sufficiently large ΔT/T, the luminescent lines can be very noticeable in the spectrum of blackbody background radiation.

MeV dark matter complementarity and the dark photon portal

We discuss the phenomenology of an MeV-scale Dirac fermion coupled to the Standard Model through a dark photon with kinetic mixing with the electromagnetic field. We compute the dark matter relic density and explore the interplay of direct detection and accelerator searches for dark photons. We show that precise measurements of the temperature and polarization power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation lead to stringent constraints, leaving a small window for the thermal production of this MeV dark matter candidate. The forthcoming MeV gamma-ray telescope e-ASTROGAM will offer important and complementary opportunities to discover dark matter particles with masses below ∼ 10 MeV . Lastly, we discuss how a late-time inflation episode and freeze-in production could conspire to yield the correct relic density while being consistent with existing and future constraints.

Loop corrections to primordial non-Gaussianity

We discuss quantum gravitational loop effects to observable quantities such as curvature power spectrum and primordial non-Gaussianity of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. We first review the previously shown case where one gets a time dependence for zeta-zeta correlator due to loop corrections. Then we investigate the effect of loop corrections to primordial non-Gaussianity of CMB. We conclude that, even with a single scalar inflaton, one might get a huge value for non-Gaussianity which would exceed the observed value by at least 30 orders of magnitude. Finally we discuss the consequences of this result for scalar driven inflationary models.

Constraints on QSO emissivity using H i and He ii Lyman α forest

The spectrum of cosmic ultraviolet background radiation at He II ionizing energies (E > 4 Ryd) is important to study the He II reionization, thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) and metal lines observed in QSO absorption spectra. It is determined by the emissivity of QSOs at E > 4 Ryd obtained from their observed luminosity functions and the mean spectral energy distribution (SED). The SED is approximated as a power-law at energies E > 1 Ryd, $f_E \propto E^{\alpha}$, where the existing observations constrain the power-law index $\alpha$ only up to ~2.3 Ryd. Here, we constrain $\alpha$ for E > 4 Ryd using recently measured He II Lyman-alpha effective optical depths ($\tau_{HeII}$), H I photoionization rates and updated H I distribution in the IGM. We find that -1.6 > $\alpha$ > -2 is required to reproduce the $\tau_{HeII}$ measurements when we use QSO emissivity obtained from their luminosity function using optical surveys. We also find that the models where QSOs can alone reionize H I can not reproduce the $\tau_{HeII}$ measurements. These models need modifications, such as a break in mean QSO SED at energies greater than 4 Ryd. Even after such modifications the predicted He II reionization history, showing that the He II is highly ionized even at z~5, is significantly different from the standard models. Therefore, the thermal history of the IGM will be crucial to distinguish these models. We also provide the He II photoionization rates obtained from binned $\tau_{HeII}$ measurements.

Can we remove the systematic error due to isotropic inhomogeneities?

Usually, we assume that there is no inhomogeneity isotropic in terms of our location in our uni- verse. This assumption has not been observationally confirmed yet in sufficient accuracy, and we need to consider the possibility that there are non-negligible large-scale isotropic inhomogeneities in our universe. The existence of large-scale isotropic inhomogeneities affects the determination of the cosmological parameters. In particular, from only the distance-redshift relation, we can not dis- tinguish the inhomogeneous isotropic universe model from the homogeneous isotropic one, because of the ambiguity in the cosmological parameters. In this paper, in order to avoid such ambiguity, we consider three observables, the distance-redshift relation, the fluctuation spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation(CMBR) and the scale of the baryon acoustic oscillation(BAO), and compare these observables in two universe models; One is the inhomogeneous isotropic uni- verse model with the cosmological constant and the other is the homogeneous isotropic universe model with the dark energy other than the cosmological constant. We show that these two universe models can not predict the same observational data of all three observables but the same ones of only two of three, as long as the perturbations are adiabatic. In principle, we can distinguish the inhomogeneous isotropic universe from the homogeneous isotropic one through appropriate three observables, if the perturbations are adiabatic.

Fluctuations of the cosmic background radiation appearing in the 10-dimensional cosmological model

We consider a cosmological model starting from (1) the(1+3+6)-dimensional space-times consisting of the outer space (the 3-dimensional expanding section) and the inner space (the 6-dimensional section) and reaching (2) the Friedmann model after the decoupling between the outer space and the inner space, and derive fluctuations of the background radiation appearing in the above 10-dimensional space-times. For this purpose we first derive the fluid-dynamical perturbations in the above 10-dimensional space-times, corresponding to two kinds of curvature perturbations (in the scalar mode) in the non-viscous case, and next study the quantum fluctuations in the scalar and tensor modes, appearing at the stage when the perturbations are within the horizon of the inflating outer space. Lastly we derive the wave-number dependence of fluctuations (the power spectrum) in the two modes, which formed at the above decoupling epoch and are observed in the Friedmann stage. It is found that it can be consistent with the observed spectra of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Ultimate target for dark matter searches

The combination of S-matrix unitarity and the dynamics of thermal freeze-out for massive relic particles (denoted here simply by WIMPs) implies a lower limit on the density of such particles, that provide a (potentially sub-dominant) contribution to dark matter. This then translates to lower limits to the signal rates for a variety of techniques for direct and indirect detection of dark matter. For illustration, we focus on models where annihilation is s-wave dominated. We derive lower limits to the flux of gamma-rays from WIMP annihilation at the Galactic center; direct detection of WIMPs; energetic neutrinos from WIMP annihilation in the Sun; and the effects of WIMPs on the angular power spectrum and frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The results suggest that a variety of dark-matter-search techniques may provide interesting avenues to seek new physics, even if WIMPs do not constitute all the dark matter. While the limits are quantitatively some distance from the reach of current measurements, they may be interesting for long-range planning exercises.

Gravitational waves: A test for modified gravity

In a modified gravity theory, the propagation equation of gravitational waves will be presented in a non-standard way. Therefore this tenor mode perturbation of time-space, as a complement to the scalar mode perturbation, provides a unique character distinguishing modified gravity from general relativity. To avoid the model-dependent issue, in this paper, we propose a parametrised modification to the propagation of gravitational waves. We show the effects on the angular power spectrum of cosmic microwave background radiation due to the parametrised modification and its degeneracy to the tensor mode power spectrum index $n_t$ and its running $\alpha_t$. At last, we report the current status on the detection of modified gravity through the currently available cosmic observations. Our results show no significant deviation to general relativity.