Spectroscopic studies of high-redshift objects combined with increasingly precise data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are beginning to place strong bounds on the epoch of hydrogen reionization. Parameter estimation from current CMB data continues, however, to be subject to several degeneracies. Here, we focus on those degeneracies in CMB parameter forecasts related to the optical dept...

By decomposing the damping tail of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies into a series of transfer functions representing individual physical e†ects, we provide ingredients that will aid in the reconstruction of the cosmological model from small-scale CMB anisotropy data. We accurately calibrate the model-independent e†ects of di†usion and reionization damping, which provide potentiall...

There are two places in cosmology where the mass of neutrinos would play a significant role. One is leptogenesis in the early universe, and the other is the evolution of mass density fluctuations that are explored with cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations and the formation of cosmic structure. There is one more place where the presence of neutrinos is generally important — primordial ...

When the perturbations forming the acoustic peaks of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) reentered the horizon and interacted gravitationally with all the matter, neutrinos presumably comprised 41% of the universe energy. CMB experiments have reached a capacity to probe this background of relic neutrinos. I review the neutrino imprints on CMB anisotropy and polarization at the onset of the ac...

We show how observations of temperature fluctuations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to extract information related to the large scale structure, including dark matter distribution, pressure and halo velocities involving the line of sight, transverse and rotational components. The frequency spectrum can be used to separate the SZ effect from thermal fluctuations. The measuremen...

When the perturbations forming the acoustic peaks of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) reentered the horizon and interacted gravitationally with all the matter, neutrinos presumably comprised 41% of the universe energy. CMB experiments have reached a capacity to probe this background of relic neutrinos. I review the neutrino impact on the CMB at the onset of the acoustic oscillations. The d...

We confront the predicted effects of hybrid inflationary models on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with three years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Using model selection, we compare the ability of a simple flat power-law ΛCDM model to describe the data to that of hybrid inflationary models involving global or local cosmic strings, or global textures. We find t...

We study contributions to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) bispectrum from non-Gaussianity induced by secondary anisotropies during reionization. Large-scale structure in the reionized epoch both gravitational lenses CMB photons and produces Doppler shifts in their temperature from scattering off electrons in infall. The resulting correlation is potentially observable through the CMB bispe...

It has been suggested by a number of authors that the 2.7K cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation might have arisen from the radiation from Population III objects thermalized by conducting cosmic graphite/iron needle-shaped dust. Due to lack of an accurate solution to the absorption properties of exceedingly elongated grains, in existing literature which studies the CMB thermalizing proces...

■ Abstract In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will become increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our primary focus is on new CMB tests of inflation. We explain how the inflationary predictions for the geometry of the Universe and primordial density...