A physical interpretation of Hubble's law and the cosmological redshift from the perspective of a static observer

We derive explicit and exact expressions for the physical velocity of a free particle comoving with the Hubble flow as measured by a static observer, and for the frequency shift of light emitted by a comoving source and received, again, by a static observer. The expressions make it clear that an interpretation of the redshift as a kind of Doppler effect only makes sense when the distance between the observer and the source vanishes exactly.Comment: 5 pages, added references; accepted for publication in General Relativity and Gravitatio

Revised WMAP constraints on neutrino masses and other extensions of the minimal Λ\LambdaCDM model

Recently, two issues concerning the three-year WMAP likelihood code were pointed out. On large angular scales ($l \lesssim 30$), a sub-optimal likelihood approximation resulted in a small power excess. On small angular scales ($l \gtrsim 300$), over-subtraction of unresolved point sources produced a small power deficit. For a minimal six-parameter cosmological model, these two effects conspired to decrease the value of $n_s$ by $\sim 0.7 \sigma$. In this paper, we study the change in preferred parameter ranges for more extensive cosmological models, including running of $n_s$, massive neutrinos, curvature, and the equation of state for dark energy. We also include large-scale structure and supernova data in our analysis. We find that the parameter ranges for $\alpha_s$, $\Omega_k$ and $w$ are not much altered by the modified analysis. For massive neutrinos the upper limit on the sum of the neutrino masses decreases from $M_\nu < 1.90$eV to $M_\nu < 1.57$eV when using the modified WMAP code and WMAP data only. We also find that the shift of $n_s$ to higher values is quite robust to these extensions of the minimal cosmological model.Comment: 7 pages. Matching version published in Physical Review D. Figures changed, references added, additional comment

Effects of the Generalized Uncertainty Principle on the Inflation Parameters

We investigate the effects of the generalized uncertainty principle on the inflationary dynamics of the early universe in both standard and braneworld viewpoint. We choose the Randall-Sundrum II model as our underlying braneworld scenario. We find that the quantum gravitational effects lead to a spectral index which is not scale invariant. Also, the amplitude of density fluctuations is reduced by increasing the strength of quantum gravitational corrections. However, the tensor-to-scalar ratio increases by incorporation of these quantum gravity effects. We outline possible manifestations of these quantum gravity effects in the recent and future observations.Comment: 11 pages, revised version with new references, Accepted for publication in IJMP

Last CPT-Invariant Hope for LSND Neutrino Oscillations

It is shown that the 99% confidence limits from the analyses of the data of cosmological and neutrino experiments imply a small marginally allowed region in the space of the neutrino oscillation parameters of 3+1 four-neutrino mixing schemes. This region can be confirmed or falsified by experiments in the near future.Comment: 6 pages, added predictions for neutrinoless double beta decay and tritium experiment