Non-Gaussianity from extragalactic point-sources

The population of compact extragalactic sources contribute to the non-Gaussianity at Cosmic Microwave Background frequencies. We study their non-Gaussianity using publicly available full-sky simulations. We introduce a parametrisation to visualise efficiently the bispectrum and we describe the scale and frequency dependences of the bispectrum of radio and IR point-sources. We show that the bispectrum is well fitted by an analytical prescription. We find that the clustering of IR sources enhances their non-Gaussianity by several orders of magnitude, and that their bispectrum peaks in the squeezed triangles. Examining the impact of these sources on primordial non-Gaussianity estimation, we find that radio sources yield an important positive bias to local fNL at low frequencies but this bias is efficiently reduced by masking detectable sources. IR sources produce a negative bias at high frequencies, which is not dimmed by the masking, as their clustering is dominated by faint sources.Comment: 4pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Contribution to the proceedings of the International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology, Goa, December 201

Cosmological Constraints on Horndeski Gravity in Light of GW170817

The discovery of the electromagnetic counterpart to GW170817 severely constrains the tensor mode propagation speed, eliminating a large model space of Horndeski theory. We use the cosmic microwave background data from Planck and the joint analysis of the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck, galaxy clustering data from the SDSS LRG survey, BOSS baryon acoustic oscillation data, and redshift space distortion measurements to place constraints on the remaining Horndeski parameters. We evolve the Horndeski parameters as power laws with both the amplitude and power law index free. We find a 95% CL upper bound on the present-day coefficient of the Hubble friction term in the cosmological propagation of gravitational waves is 2.38, whereas General Relativity gives 2 at all times. While an enhanced friction suppresses the amplitude of the reionization bump of the primordial B-mode power spectrum at $\ell < 10$, our result limits the suppression to be less than 0.8%. This constraint is primarily due to the scalar integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in temperature fluctuations at low multipoles.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures. Version accepted for publication in JCA

Measurement of anisotropies in the large-scale diffuse gamma-ray emission

We have performed the first measurement of the angular power spectrum in the large-scale diffuse emission at energies from 1-50 GeV. We compared results from data and a simulated model in order to identify significant differences in anisotropy properties. We found angular power above the photon noise level in the data at multipoles greater than ~ 100 for energies 1< E <10 GeV. The excess power in the data suggests a contribution from a point source population not present in the model.Comment: Contribution to SciNeGHE 2010, Trieste, Italy, September 2010; 4 pages, 5 figure

Constraints on primordial magnetic fields from the optical depth of the cosmic microwave background

Damping of magnetic fields via ambipolar diffusion and decay of magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) turbulence in the post decoupling era heats the intergalactic medium (IGM). Delayed recombination of hydrogen atoms in the IGM yields an optical depth to scattering of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The optical depth generated at $z\gg 10$ does not affect the "reionization bump" of the CMB polarization power spectrum at low multipoles, but affects the temperature and polarization power spectra at high multipoles. Writing the present-day energy density of fields smoothed over the damping scale at the decoupling epoch as $\rho_{B,0}=B_{0}^2/2$, we constrain $B_0$ as a function of the spectral index, $n_B$. Using the Planck 2013 likelihood code that uses the Planck temperature and lensing data together with the WMAP 9-year polarization data, we find the 95% upper bounds of $B_0<0.63$, 0.39, and 0.18~nG for $n_B=-2.9$, $-2.5$, and $-1.5$, respectively. For these spectral indices, the optical depth is dominated by dissipation of the decaying MHD turbulence that occurs shortly after the decoupling epoch. Our limits are stronger than the previous limits ignoring the effects of the fields on ionization history. Inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons off electrons in the heated IGM distorts the thermal spectrum of CMB. Our limits on $B_0$ imply that the $y$-type distortion from dissipation of fields in the post decoupling era should be smaller than $10^{-9}$, $4\times10^{-9}$, and $10^{-9}$, respectively.Comment: 14 pages, 30 figures, calculations revised and updated, accepted for publication in JCA

Non-Gaussianity from Inflation: Theory and Observations

This is a review of models of inflation and of their predictions for the primordial non-Gaussianity in the density perturbations which are thought to be at the origin of structures in the Universe. Non-Gaussianity emerges as a key observable to discriminate among competing scenarios for the generation of cosmological perturbations and is one of the primary targets of present and future Cosmic Microwave Background satellite missions. We give a detailed presentation of the state-of-the-art of the subject of non-Gaussianity, both from the theoretical and the observational point of view, and provide all the tools necessary to compute at second order in perturbation theory the level of non-Gaussianity in any model of cosmological perturbations. We discuss the new wave of models of inflation, which are firmly rooted in modern particle physics theory and predict a significant amount of non-Gaussianity. The review is addressed to both astrophysicists and particle physicists and contains useful tables which summarize the theoretical and observational results regarding non-Gaussianity.Comment: LaTeX file: 218 pages, 19 figures. Replaced to match the accepted version in Physics Reports. A high-resolution version of Fig. 2 can be downloaded from: http://www.pd.infn.it/~liguori/Non_Gaussianity

Improved constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5-yr data

We present new constraints on the non-linear coupling parameter fnl with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data. We use an updated method based on the spherical Mexican hat wavelet (SMHW) which provides improved constraints on the fnl parameter. This paper is a continuation of a previous work by Curto et al. where several third order statistics based on the SMHW were considered. In this paper, we use all the possible third order statistics computed from the wavelet coefficient maps evaluated at 12 angular scales. The scales are logarithmically distributed from 6.9 arcmin to 500 arcmin. Our analysis indicates that fnl is constrained to -18 < fnl < +80 at 95% confidence level (CL) for the combined V+W WMAP map. This value has been corrected by the presence of undetected point sources, which adds a positive contribution of Delta_fnl = 6 +- 5. Our result excludes at ~99% CL the best-fitting value fnl=87 reported by Yadav & Wandelt. We have also constrained fnl for the Q, V and W frequency bands separately, finding compatibility with zero at 95 % CL for the Q and V bands but not for the W band. We have performed some further tests to understand the cause of this deviation which indicate that systematics associated to the W radiometers could be responsible for this result. Finally we have performed a Galactic North-South analysis for fnl. We have not found any asymmetry, i.e. the best-fitting fnl for the northern pixels is compatible with the best-fitting fnl for the southern pixels.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap

Measuring patchy reionisation with kSZ2^2-21 cm correlations

We study cross-correlations of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (kSZ) and 21 cm signals during the epoch of reionisation (EoR) to measure the effects of patchy reionisation. Since the kSZ effect is proportional to the line-of-sight velocity, the kSZ-21 cm cross correlation suffers from cancellation at small angular scales. We thus focus on the correlation between the kSZ-squared field (kSZ$^2$) and 21 cm signals. When the global ionisation fraction is low ($x_e\lesssim 0.7$), the kSZ$^2$ fluctuation is dominated by rare ionised bubbles which leads to an anti-correlation with the 21 cm signal. When $0.8\lesssim x_e<1$, the correlation is dominated by small pockets of neutral regions, leading to a positive correlation. However, at very high redshifts when $x_e<0.15$, the spin temperature fluctuations change the sign of the correlation from negative to positive, as weakly ionised regions can have strong 21 cm signals in this case. To extract this correlation, we find that Wiener filtering is effective in removing large signals from the primary CMB anisotropy. The expected signal-to-noise ratios for a $\sim$10-hour integration of upcoming Square Kilometer Array data cross-correlated with maps from the current generation of CMB observatories with 3.4~$\mu$K arcmin noise and 1.7~arcmin beam over 100~deg$^2$ are 51, 60, and 37 for $x_e=0.2$, 0.5, and 0.9, respectively.Comment: 7pages, 7 figure

The Power Spectrum of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

(Abridged) The hot gas in the IGM produces anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. The SZ effect is a powerful probe of large-scale structure in the universe and must be carefully subtracted from measurements of the primary CMB anisotropies. We use moving-mesh hydrodynamical simulations to study the 3-dimensional statistics of the gas, and compute the mean comptonization parameter and the angular power spectrum of the SZ fluctuations, for different cosmologies. We compare these results with predictions using the Press-Schechter formalism. We find that the two methods agree approximately, but differ in details. We discuss this discrepancy, and show that resolution limits the reliability of our results to the 200<l<2000 range. For cluster- normalized CDM models, the SZ power spectrum is comparable to the primordial power spectrum around l=2000. We show that groups and filaments (kT<5 keV) contribute about 50% of the SZ power spectrum at l=500. About half of the SZ power spectrum on these scales is produced at redshifts z<0.1, and can thus be detected and removed using existing catalogs of galaxies and X-ray clusters. We discuss the implications of these results for the future MAP and Planck Surveyor missions.Comment: 21 revtex pages, including 2 tables and 12 figures. To appear in PRD. Minor revisions to match accepted version. Also available at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~refre

Effects of Velocity-Dependent Dark Matter Annihilation on the Energy Spectrum of the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background

We calculate the effects of velocity-dependent dark matter annihilation cross sections on the intensity of the extragalactic gamma-ray background. Our formalism does not assume a locally thermal distribution of dark matter particles in phase space, and is valid for arbitrary velocity-dependent annihilation. As concrete examples, we calculate the effects of p-wave annihilation (with the $v$-weighted cross section of $\sigma v=a+bv^2$) on the mean intensity of extragalactic gamma rays produced in cosmological dark matter halos. This velocity variation makes the shape of the energy spectrum harder, but this change in the shape is too small to see unless b/a\agt 10^6. While we find no such models in the parameter space of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), we show that it is possible to find b/a\agt 10^6 in the extension MSSM$\otimes U(1)_{B-L}$. However, we find that the most dominant effect of the p-wave annihilation is the suppression of the amplitude of the gamma-ray background. A non-zero $b$ at the dark matter freeze-out epoch requires a smaller value of $a$ in order for the relic density constraint to be satisfied, suppressing the amplitude by a factor as low as $10^{-6}$ for a thermal relic. Non-thermal relics will have weaker amplitude suppression. As another velocity-dependent effect, we calculate the spectrum for s-wave annihilation into fermions enhanced by the attractive Sommerfeld effect. Resonances associated with this effect result in significantly enhanced intensities, with a slightly softer energy spectrum.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure