Neutrino mass constraint from CMB and its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters

We show that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data of WMAP can give subelectronvolt limit on the neutrino mass: m_nu < 0.63 eV (95% CL). We also investigate its degeneracy with other cosmological parameters. In particular, we show the Hubble constant derived from the WMAP data decreases considerably when the neutrino mass is a few times 0.1 eV.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, prepared for the TAUP2007 Proceeding

Measuring the Topology of the Universe

Observations of microwave background fluctuations can yield information not only about the geometry of the universe, but potentially about the topology of the universe. If the universe is negatively curved, then the characteristic scale for the topology of the universe is the curvature radius. Thus, if we are seeing the effects of the geometry of the universe, we can hope to soon see signatures of the topology of the universe. The cleanest signature of the topology of the universe is written on the microwave sky: there should be thousands of pairs of matched circles. These circles can be used to determine the precise topology and volume of the universe. Since we see hundreds of slices through the fundamental domain of the universe, we can use the microwave observations to reconstruct the initial conditions of the entire universe on the scale of a few Megaparsecs.Comment: 11 pages, LaTex, Talk at NAS Cosmology Conference, Irvine, CA, March 199

A strong first order phase transition in the UMSSM

In this work, the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) strength has been investigated within the $U(1)$ extended Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (UMSSM) without introducing any exotic fields. We found that the EWPT could be strongly first order for reasonable values of the lightest Higgs and neutralino masses.Comment: talk presented in PASCOS2010, Valencia, Spain from 19-23 Jul. 201

Searching for Oscillations in the Primordial Power Spectrum: Perturbative Approach (Paper I)

In this first of two papers, we present a new method for searching for oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum. A wide variety of models predict these features in one of two different flavors: logarithmically spaced oscillations and linearly spaced oscillations. The proposed method treats the oscillations as perturbations on top of the scale-invariant power spectrum, allowing us to vary all cosmological parameters. This perturbative approach reduces the computational requirements for the search as the transfer functions and their derivatives can be precomputed. We show that the most significant degeneracy in the analysis is between the distance to last scattering and the overall amplitude at low frequencies. For models with logarithmic oscillations, this degeneracy leads to an uncertainty in the phase. For linear spaced oscillations, it affects the frequency of the oscillations. In this first of two papers, we test our code on simulated Planck-like data, and show we are able to recover fiducial input oscillations with an amplitude of a few times order 10^{-2}. We apply the code to WMAP9-year data and confirm the existence of two intriguing resonant frequencies for log spaced oscillations. For linear spaced oscillations we find a single resonance peak. We use numerical simulations to assess the significance of these features and conclude that the data do not provide compelling evidence for the existence of oscillatory features in the primordial spectrum.Comment: 13 pages, 22 figures. Paper 1 of 2. Fixed typos, added reference

Tuning the stochastic background of gravitational waves using the WMAP data

The cosmological bound of the stochastic background of gravitational waves is analyzed with the aid of the WMAP data, differently from lots of works in literature, where the old COBE data were used. From our analysis, it will result that the WMAP bounds on the energy spectrum and on the characteristic amplitude of the stochastic background of gravitational waves are greater than the COBE ones, but they are also far below frequencies of the earth-based antennas band. At the end of this letter a lower bound for the integration time of a potential detection with advanced LIGO is released and compared with the previous one arising from the old COBE data. Even if the new lower bound is minor than the previous one, it results very long, thus for a possible detection we hope in the LISA interferometer and in a further growth in the sensitivity of advanced projects.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, published in Modern Physics Letters A. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0901.119