Jens Chluba

The evolution of CMB spectral distortions in the early Universe

The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) allows us to constrain episodes of energy release in the early Universe. In this paper, we revisit and refine computations of the cosmological thermalization problem. For this purpose a new code, called CosmoTherm, was developed that allows us to solve the coupled photon–electron Boltzmann equation in the expanding, isotropic Universe for a small spectral distortion in the CMB. We explicitly compute the shape of the spectral distortions caused by energy release due to (i) annihilating dark matter; (ii) decaying relict particles; (iii) dissipation of acoustic waves; and (iv) quasi-instantaneous heating. We also demonstrate that (v) the continuous interaction of CMB photons with adiabatically cooling non-relativistic electrons and baryons causes a negativeμ-type CMB spectral distortion of ΔIν/Iν∼ 10−8 in the GHz spectral band. We solve the thermalization problem including improved approximations for the double Compton and Bremsstrahlung emissivities, as well as the latest treatment of the cosmological recombination process. At redshifts z≲ 103, the matter starts to cool significantly below the temperature of the CMB so that at very low frequencies, free–free absorption alters the shape of primordial distortions significantly. In addition, the cooling electrons down-scatter CMB photons, introducing a small late negative y-type distortion at high frequencies. We also discuss our results in the light of the recently proposed CMB experiment PIXIE, for which CosmoTherm should allow detailed forecasting. Our current computations show that for energy injection because of points (ii) and (iv), PIXIE should allow us to improve existing limits, while the CMB distortions caused by the other processes seem to remain unobservable with the currently proposed sensitivities and spectral bands of PIXIE.

CMB at 2 × 2 order: the dissipation of primordial acoustic waves and the observable part of the associated energy release

Silk damping of primordial small scale perturbations in the photon-baryon fluid due to di ffusion of photons inevitably creates spectral distortions in the CMB. With the proposed CMB experiment PIXIE it might become possible to measure these distortions and thereby constrain the primordial power spectrum at comoving wavenumbers 50 Mpc −1 . k. 10 4 Mpc −1 . Since primordial fluctuations on these scales are completel y erased by Silk damping, these distortions may provide the only way to shed light on otherwise unobservable aspects of inflationary physics. A consistent treatment of the primordial dissipation problem requires going to second order in perturbation theory, while thermalizati on of these distortions necessitates consideration of second order in Compton scattering energy transfer. Here we give a full 2x2 treatment for creation and evolution of spectral distortio ns due to the acoustic dissipation process, consistently including the effect of polarization and photon mixing in the free streaming regime. We show that 1/3 of the total energy (9/4 larger than previous estimate) stored in small scale temperature perturbations imprints observable spectral distortions, while the remaining 2/3 only raise the average CMB temperature, an effect that is unobservable. At high redshift dissipation is mainly mediated through the quadrupole anisotropies, while after recombination peculiar motions are most important. During recombination the damping of the higher multipoles is also significant. We compute the average disto rtion for several examples using CosmoTherm, analyzing their dependence on parameters of the primordial power spectrum. For one of the best fit WMAP7 cosmologies, with nS = 1.027 and nrun =−0.034, the cooling of baryonic matter practically compensates the heating from acoustic dissipation in the µ-era. We also derive the evolution equations in first order pe rturbation theory for the spectral distortions. These first order anisotropies of spectral dis tortions may dominate over the corresponding second order contributions from recombination if an average fractional distortion of ∼ 10 −5 is already present before recombination.

Towards a complete treatment of the cosmological recombination problem

A new approach to the cosmological recombination problem is presented, which completes our previous analysis on the effects of two-photon processes during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination, accounting for ns-1s and nd-ls Raman events and two-photon transitions from levels with n ≥ 2. The recombination problem for hydrogen is described using an effective 400-shell multilevel approach to which we subsequently add all important recombination corrections discussed in the literature thus far. We explicitly solve the radiative transfer equation of the Lyman-series photon field to obtain the required modifications to the rate equations of the resolved levels. In agreement with earlier computations, we find that 2s-1s Raman scattering leads to a delay in recombination by ΔN e /N e ~ 0.9 per cent at z ~ 920. Two-photon decay and the Raman scattering from higher levels (n > 3) result in small additional modifications, and precise results can be obtained when including their effect for the first three to five shells. This work is a major step towards a new cosmological recombination code (COSMOREC) that supersedes the physical model included in RECFAST, and which, owing to its short run time, can be used in the analysis of future cosmic microwave background data from the PLANCK Surveyor.

WMAP7 and future CMB constraints on annihilating dark matter: implications for GeV-scale WIMPs

Context. We calculate constraints from current and future cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements on annihilating dark matter (DM) with masses below the electroweak scale: mDM = 5 − 100 GeV. In particular, we focus our attention on the lower end of this mass range, as DM particles with masses mDM � 10GeV have been recently claimed to be consistent with the CoGeNT and DAMA/LIBRA results, while also providing viable DM candidates to explain the measurements of Fermi and WMAP haze. Aims. We study the model (in)dependence of CMB spectrum on particle physics DM models, large scale structure formation and cosmological uncertainties. We attempt to find a simple and practical recipe for estimating current and future CMB bounds on a broad class of DM annihilation models. Methods. We use a model independent description for DM annihilation into a wide set of Standard Model particles simulated by PYTHIA Monte Carlo. Our Markov chain Monte Carlo calculations used for finding model constraints

Cosmological parameters from pre-planck cosmic microwave background measurements

Erminia Calabrese, Renée A. Hlozek, Nick Battaglia, Elia S. Battistelli, J. Richard Bond, Jens Chluba, Devin Crichton, Sudeep Das, 8 Mark J. Devlin, Joanna Dunkley, Rolando Dünner, Marzieh Farhang, 11 Megan B. Gralla, Amir Hajian, Mark Halpern, Matthew Hasselfield, 12 Adam D. Hincks, Kent D. Irwin, Arthur Kosowsky, Thibaut Louis, Tobias A. Marriage, 2, 15 Kavilan Moodley, Laura Newburgh, Michael D. Niemack, 13, 17 Michael R. Nolta, Lyman A. Page, Neelima Sehgal, Blake D. Sherwin, Jonathan L. Sievers, Cristóbal Sifón, David N. Spergel, Suzanne T. Staggs, Eric R. Switzer, and Edward J. Wollack Sub-department of Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA Department of Physics, University of Rome ‘Sapienza’, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Rome, Italy CITA, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, Canada Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-2686, USA High Energy Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL 60439, USA BCCP, LBL and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd St., Philadelphia,PA 19104,USA Departamento de Astronomı́a y Astrof́ısica, Pontifićıa Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St George , Toronto, ON, M5S 3H4 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada NIST Quantum Devices Group, 325 Broadway Mailcode 817.03, Boulder, CO 80305, USA Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Jadwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544,USA Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 4041, South Africa Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA 14853 Physics and Astronomy Department, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800, USA Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

Induced two-photon decay of the 2s level and the rate of cosmological hydrogen recombination

Induced emission due to the presence of soft CMB photons slightly increases the two-photon decay rate of the 2s level of hydrogen defining the rate of cosmological recombination. This correspondingly changes the degree of ionization, the visibility function and the resulting primordial temperature anisotropies and polarization of the CMB on the percent level. These changes exceed the precision of the widely used CMBFAST and CAMB codes by more than one order of magnitude and can be easily taken into account.Induced emission due to the presence of soft CMB photons slightly increases the two-photon decay rate of the 2s level of hydrogen defining the rate of cosmological recombination. This correspondingly changes the degree of ionization, the visibility function and the resulting primordial temperature anisotropies and polarization of the CMB on the percent level. These changes exceed the precision of the widely used Cmbfast and Camb codes by more than one order of magnitude and can be easily taken into account.

Lines in the cosmic microwave background spectrum from the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination

The main goal of this work is to calculate the contributions of bound-bound transitions of helium to the cosmological recombination spectrum. We show that helium in the early Universe causes unique features to appear in the total cosmological recombination spectrum. These may provide a unique observational possibility to determine the relative abundance of primordial helium, well before the formation of first stars. We include the effect of the tiny fraction of neutral hydrogen atoms on the dynamics of Heii → Hei recombination at redshifts z ∼ 2500. As discussed recently, this process significantly accelerates Heii → Hei recombination, resulting in rather narrow and distinct features in the associated recombination spectrum. In addition this process induces some emission within the hydrogen Lyman-α line, before the actual epoch of hydrogen recombination around z ∼ 1100−1500. We also show that some of the fine-structure transitions of neutral helium appear in absorption, again leaving unique traces in the cosmic microwave background blackbody spectrum, which may allow confirmation of our understanding of the early Universe and of detailed atomic physics.

The Pesky Power Asymmetry

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218(Dated: March 27, 2013)Physical models for the hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background(CMB) reported by the Planck Collaboration must satisfy CMB constraints to the homogeneityof the Universe and quasar constraints to power asymmetries. We survey a variety of modelsfor the power asymmetry and show that consistent models include a modulated scale-dependentisocurvature contribution to the matter power spectrum or a modulation of the reionization opticaldepth, gravitational-wave amplitude, or scalar spectral index. We propose further tests to distinguishbetween the di erent scenarios.

Features and New Physical Scales in Primordial Observables: Theory and Observation

All cosmological observations to date are consistent with adiabatic, Gaussian and nearly scale invariant initial conditions. These findings provide strong evidence for a particular symmetry breaking pattern in the very early universe (with a close to vanishing order parameter, ϵ), widely accepted as conforming to the predictions of the simplest realizations of the inflationary paradigm. However, given that our observations are only privy to perturbations, in inferring something about the background that gave rise to them, it should be clear that many different underlying constructions project onto the same set of cosmological observables. Features in the primordial correlation functions, if present, would offer a unique and discriminating window onto the parent theory in which the mechanism that generated the initial conditions is embedded. In certain contexts, simple linear response theory allows us to infer new characteristic scales from the presence of features that can break the aforementioned degeneracies among different background models, and in some cases can even offer a limited spectroscopy of the heavier degrees of freedom that couple to the inflaton. In this review, we offer a pedagogical survey of the diverse, theoretically well-grounded mechanisms which can imprint features into primordial correlation functions in addition to reviewing the techniques one can employ to probe observations. These observations include cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies and spectral distortions as well as the matter two and three point functions as inferred from large-scale structure (LSS) and potentially, 21 cm surveys.

Could the cosmological recombination spectrum help us understand annihilating dark matter

In this paper, we explore the potential effects of dark matter (DM) annihilations on the cosmological recombination spectrum. With this example, we want to demonstrate that the cosmological recombination spectrum in principle is sensitive to details related to possible extra energy release during recombination. We restrict ourselves to DM models which produce a negligible primordial distortion of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) energy spectrum (usually characterized as μ- and y-type distortions). However, since during the epoch of cosmological recombination (z ∼ 1000) a large fraction of the deposited energy can directly go into ionizations and excitations of neutral atoms, both the cosmological recombination spectrum and ionization history can still be affected significantly. We compute the modifications to the cosmological recombination spectrum using our multilevel H I and He I recombination code, showing that additional photons are created due to uncompensated loops of transitions which are induced by DM annihilations. As we illustrate here, the results depend on the detailed branching of the deposited energy into heating, ionizations and excitations. This dependence in principle should allow us to shed light on the nature of the underlying annihilating DM model (or more generally speaking, the mechanism leading to energy injection) when measuring the cosmological recombination spectrum. However, for current upper limits on the potential DM annihilation rate during recombination the cosmological recombination spectrum is only affected at the level of a few per cent. Nevertheless, we argue here that the cosmological recombination spectrum would provide another independent and very direct way of checking for the presence of sources of extra ionizing or exciting photons at high redshifts. This would open a new window to possible (non-standard) processes occurring before, during and between the three epochs of recombination.