Solving the discrepancy among the light elements abundances and WMAP

Within the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and cosmic microwave background (CMB) framework, the baryon density measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) or the primordial D abundance is much higher than the one measured by the ⁴He or ⁷Li abundances. To solve the discrepancy, we propose a scenario in which additional baryons appear after BBN. We show that simply adding the baryons cannot be a solution but the existence of a large lepton asymmetry before BBN makes the scenario successful. These extra baryons and leptons, in addition to the initial baryons which exist before the BBN, can be all produced from Q-balls.     

Anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background: Theoretical foundations

The analysis of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has become an extremely valuable tool for cosmology. There is even hope that planned CMB anisotropy experiments may revolutionize cosmology. Together with determinations of the CMB spectrum, they represent the first precise cosmological measurements. The value of CMB anisotropies lies in large part in the simplicity of the theoretical analysis. Fluctuations in the CMB can be determined almost fully within linear cosmological perturbation theory and are not severely influenced by complicated nonlinear physics. In this contribution the different physical processes causing or influencing anisotropies in the CMB are discussed: the geometry perturbations at and after last scattering, the acoustic oscillations in the baryon-photon plasma prior to recombination, and the diffusion damping during the process of recombination. The perturbations due to the fluctuating gravitational field, the so-called Sachs-Wolfe contribution, is described in a very general form using the Weyl tensor of the perturbed geometry.     

Large angular scale CMB anisotropy from an excited initial mode

According to inflationary cosmology, the CMB anisotropy gives an opportunity to test predictions of new physics hypotheses. The initial state of quantum fluctuations is one of the important options at high energy scale, as it can affect observables such as the CMB power spectrum. In this study a quasi-de Sitter inflationary background with approximate de Sitter mode function built over the Bunch-Davies mode is applied to investigate the scale-dependency of the CMB anisotropy. The recent Planck constraint on spectral index motivated us to examine the effect of a new excited mode function(instead of pure de Sitter mode) on the CMB anisotropy at large angular scales. In so doing, it is found that the angular scale-invariance in the CMB temperature fluctuations is broken and in the limit 200 a tiny deviation appears. Also, it is shown that the power spectrum of CMB anisotropy is dependent on a free parameter with mass dimension H M* Mp and on the slow-roll parameter.     

The current status of observational cosmology

Observational cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in recent years. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation. The transition to precision cosmology has been spear-headed by measurements of the anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) over the past decade. Observations of the large scale structure in the distribution of galaxies, high red-shift supernova, have provided the required complementary information. We review the current status of cosmological parameter estimates from joint analysis of CMB anisotropy and large scale structure (LSS) data. We also sound a note of caution on overstating the successes achieved thus far.     

What do we learn from the CMB observations?

We give an account, at nonexpert and quantitative level, of physics behind the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization and their peculiar features. We discuss, in particular, how cosmological parameters are determined from the CMB measurements and their combinations with other observations. We emphasize that CMB is the major source of information on the primordial density perturbations and, possibly, gravitational waves, and discuss the implication for our understanding of the extremely early Universe.     

Signatures of a hidden cosmic microwave background

If there is a light Abelian gauge boson gamma' in the hidden sector its kinetic mixing with the photon can produce a hidden cosmic microwave background (HCMB). For meV masses, resonant oscillations gamma<-->gamma' happen after big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) but before CMB decoupling, increasing the effective number of neutrinos Nnu(eff) and the baryon to photon ratio, and distorting the CMB blackbody spectrum. The agreement between BBN and CMB data provides new constraints. However, including Lyman-alpha data, Nnu(eff) > 3 is preferred. It is tempting to attribute this effect to the HCMB. The interesting parameter range will be tested in upcoming laboratory experiments.     

Cosmological baryon generation at low temperatures

Mechanisms for generating the net baryon number of the universe which do not involve grand unification are considered. Detailed calculations in a simple extension of the standard SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) model are used to show that physics at temperatures of order 1 TeV can account for the observed baryon to entropy ratio. Some comments regarding alternatives to this simple model and some speculations concerning the implications for cosmology are offered.     

Topological defects and cosmology

Many particle physics models of matter admit solutions corresponding to stable or long-lived topological defects. In the context of standard cosmology it is then unavoidable that such defects will form during phase transitions in the very early Universe. Certain types of defects lead to disastrous consequences for cosmology, others may play a useful role, as possible seeds for the formation of structure in the Universe, or in mediating baryon number violating processes. In all cases, topological defects lead to a fruitful interplay between particle physics and cosmology.     

Evidence for dark energy from the cosmic microwave background alone using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope lensing measurements

For the first time, measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) alone favor cosmologies with w = -1 dark energy over models without dark energy at a 3.2-sigma level. We demonstrate this by combining the CMB lensing deflection power spectrum from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope with temperature and polarization power spectra from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The lensing data break the geometric degeneracy of different cosmological models with similar CMB temperature power spectra. Our CMB-only measurement of the dark energy density Ω(Λ) confirms other measurements from supernovae, galaxy clusters, and baryon acoustic oscillations, and demonstrates the power of CMB lensing as a new cosmological tool.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>(1) eV sterile neutrino in <Emphasis Type="Italic">f</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">R</Emphasis>) gravity

We refer [1] to the role of an additional O(1) eV sterile neutrino in modified gravity models. We find parameter constraints in particular f(R) gravity model using following up-to-dated cosmological data: measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy, the CMB lensing potential, the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), the cluster mass function and the Hubble constant. It was obtained for the sterile neutrino mass 0.47 eV < m _ν,sterile < 1 eV (2σ) assuming that the sterile neutrinos are thermalized and the active neutrinos are massless, not significantly larger than in the standard cosmology model within the same data set: 0.45 eV < m _ν,sterile < 0.92 eV (2σ). But, if the mass of sterile neutrino is fixed and equals ≈ 1.5 eV according to various anomalies in neutrino oscillation experiments, f(R) gravity is much more consistent with observation data than the CDM model.     

Narrowing the window for millicharged particles by CMB anisotropy

We calculate the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectrum in models with millicharged particles of electric charge q～10^?6?10^?1 in units of electron charge. We find that a large region of the parameter space for the millicharged particles exists where their effect on the CMB spectrum is similar to the effect of baryons. Using WMAP data on the CMB anisotropy and assuming the Big Bang nucleosynthesis value for the baryon abundance, we find that only a small fraction of cold dark matter, Ω_mcp<0.007 (at 95% CL), may consist of millicharged particles with the parameters (charge and mass) from this region. This bound significantly narrows the allowed range of the parameters of millicharged particles. In models without paraphotons, millicharged particles are now excluded as a dark matter candidate. We also speculate that recent observation of 511-keV γ rays from the Galactic bulge may be an indication that a (small) fraction of cold dark matter is comprised of millicharged particles.     

Is the evidence for dark energy secure?

Several kinds of astronomical observations, interpreted in the framework of the standard Friedmann–Robertson–Walker cosmology, have indicated that our universe is dominated by a Cosmological Constant. The dimming of distant Type Ia supernovae suggests that the expansion rate is accelerating, as if driven by vacuum energy, and this has been indirectly substantiated through studies of angular anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and of spatial correlations in the large-scale structure (LSS) of galaxies. However there is no compelling direct evidence yet for (the dynamical effects of) dark energy. The precision CMB data can be equally well fitted without dark energy if the spectrum of primordial density fluctuations is not quite scale-free and if the Hubble constant is lower globally than its locally measured value. The LSS data can also be satisfactorily fitted if there is a small component of hot dark matter, as would be provided by neutrinos of mass ∼0.5 eV. Although such an Einstein–de Sitter model cannot explain the SNe Ia Hubble diagram or the position of the “baryon acoustic oscillation” peak in the autocorrelation function of galaxies, it may be possible to do so, e.g. in an inhomogeneous Lemaitre–Tolman–Bondi cosmology where we are located in a void which is expanding faster than the average. Such alternatives may seem contrived but this must be weighed against our lack of any fundamental understanding of the inferred tiny energy scale of the dark energy. It may well be an artifact of an oversimplified cosmological model, rather than having physical reality.     

Cosmological parameters

There is some consensus emerging on the values of the basic parameters of classical cosmology. The baryon number density estimated from the light element abundance or X-ray gas in galaxy clusters tends towards 5% of closure density; the dark matter content based on a number of independent methods appears to be somewhat less than half the closure density; Hubble constant obtained from local measurements, gravitational lens or Sunyaev Zeldovich method are all probably centred around 60 km/sec/Mpc and the age of the Universe is generally agree to be around 14 Gyr — all specified with bearable error bars. The supernova projects and CMBR anisotropy together favour a finite cosmological constant, and gravitational lens statistics support the same conclusion.     

Exploring bouncing cosmologies with cosmological surveys

From recent observational data two significant directions have been made in the field of theoretical cosmology recently.First,we are now able to make use of present observations,such as the Planck and BICEP2 data,to examine theoretical predictions from the standard inflationaryΛCDM which were made decades of years ago.Second,we can search for new cosmological signatures as a way to explore physics beyond the standard cosmic paradigm.In particular,a subset of early universe models admit a nonsingular bouncing solution that attempts to address the issue of the big bang singularity.These models have achieved a series of considerable developments in recent years,in particular in their perturbative frameworks,which made brand-new predictions of cosmological signatures that could be visible in current and forthcoming observations.Herein we present two representative paradigms of early universe physics.The first is the reputed new matter(or matter-ekpyrotic)bounce scenario in which the universe starts with a matter-dominated contraction phase and transitions into an ekpyrotic phase.In the setting of this paradigm,we have proposed some possible mechanisms of generating a red tilt for primordial curvature perturbations and confront the general predictions with recent cosmological observations.The second is the matter-bounce inflation scenario which can be viewed as an extension of inflationary cosmology with a matter contraction before inflation.We present a class of possible model constructions and review the implications on the current CMB experiments.Lastly a review of significant achievements of these paradigms beyond the inflationaryΛCDM model is made,which is expected to shed new light on the future direction of observational cosmology.     

Intriguing aspects in baryon production at relativistic heavy-ion collider

We review experimental results on baryon production at mid-rapidity in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC. Outstanding physics issues include the mechanism for baryon-anti-baryon production from thermally equilibrated partons, the dynamics of baryon number transport and the evolution dynamics of baryons during hadronic expansion before the final freeze-out. We highlight recent measurements on the production of protons, lambdas and their anti-particles in terms of these physics issues. We propose a physical mechanism of topological baryon formation through gluon junction hadronization and future measurements, which can test this hypothesis experimentally.     

第一讲微波背景辐射的各向异性、偏振及宇宙电离的历史

文章对微波背景辐射的各向异性、偏振及宇宙电离的历史给出了评述性介绍．从大爆炸理论的预言，到观测的发现，到其各向异性及偏振的探测，微波背景辐射(CMB)向人们揭示了丰富的宇宙学信息．文章在对基本理论作了简单介绍后，着重讲述了最新的CMB的观测结果及其物理意义．特别对微波背景各向异性探测器(Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe，WMAP)的偏振观测及其对宇宙重新电离的限制给出了较详细的叙述．     

Gravitino dark matter in split supersymmetry with bilinear R-parity violation

In Split-SUSY with BRpV we show that the Gravitino DM solution is consistent with experimental evidence as regards its relic density and life time. We arrive at this conclusion by performing a complete numerical and algebraic study of the parameter space, including constraints from the recently determined Higgs mass, updated neutrino physics, and BBN constraints on NLSP decays. The Higgs mass requires a relatively low Split-SUSY mass scale, which is naturally smaller than usual values for reheating temperature, allowing the use of the standard expression for the relic density. We include restrictions from neutrino physics with three generations, and we notice that the gravitino decay width depends on the atmospheric neutrino mass scale. We calculate the neutralino decay rate and find it consistent with BBN. We mention some implications on indirect DM searches.     

A survey of dark matter and related topics in cosmology

This article presents an extensive review of the status of the search of the dark matter. The first eight sections are devoted to topics in dark matter and its experimental searches, and the rest to selected topics in astrophysics and cosmology, which are intended to supply some of the needed background for students in particle physics. Sections 9 and 13 are introductory cosmology. The three astrophysical topics, Big Bang nucleosynthesis Section 10, Boltzmann transport equation and freeze out of massive particles Section 11, and CMB anisotropy Section 12 can all be studied in analytical approaches when reasonable approximations are made. Their original analytically forms, to which this article follows very closely, were given by particle physicists. Dark matter is an evolving subject requiring timely update to stay current. Hence a review of such a subject matter would undoubtedly have something wanting when it appears in print. It is hoped that this review can form a humble basis for those graduate students who would like to pursue the subject of dark matter. The reader can use the extensive table of contents to see in some details the materials covered in the article.     

SEWDarkM

A number of observed phenomena in high energy physics and cosmology lack their resolution within the Standard Model of particle physics. These puzzles include neutrino oscillations, baryon asymmetry of the Universe, existence of Dark Matter and inflation. We discuss the suggestion, based on the νMSM (an extension of the Standard Model by three light singlet fermions) that all these problems can be solved by new physics which exists only below the electroweak scale. We describe the formalism which allows to compute from first principles of quantum field theory and statistical physics the abundance of dark matter in this theory. Predictions of the νMSM are compared with results of different cosmological and astrophysical observations.