No Arabic abstract
We use cosmological observations in the post-Planck era to derive limits on thermally produced cosmological axions. In the early universe such axions contribute to the radiation density and later to the hot dark matter fraction. We find an upper limit m_a < 0.67 eV at 95% C.L. after marginalising over the unknown neutrino masses, using CMB temperature and polarisation data from Planck and WMAP respectively, the halo matter power spectrum extracted from SDSS-DR7, and the local Hubble expansion rate H_0 released by the Carnegie Hubble Program based on a recalibration of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project sample. Leaving out the local H_0 measurement relaxes the limit somewhat to 0.86 eV, while Planck+WMAP alone constrain the axion mass to 1.01 eV, the first time an upper limit on m_a has been obtained from CMB data alone. Our axion limit is therefore not very sensitive to the tension between the Planck-inferred H_0 and the locally measured value. This is in contrast with the upper limit on the neutrino mass sum, which we find here to range from 0.27 eV at 95% C.L. combining all of the aforementioned observations, to 0.84 eV from CMB data alone.
The Planck collaboration has recently published maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation with the highest precision. In the standard flat $Lambda$CDM framework, Planck data show that the Hubble constant $H_0$ is in tension with that measured by the several direct probes on $H_0$. In this paper, we perform a global analysis from the current observational data in the general dark energy models and find that resolving this tension on $H_0$ requires the dark energy model with its equation of state (EoS) $w eq-1$. Firstly, assuming the $w$ to be a constant, the Planck data favor $w < -1$ at about $2,sigma$ confidence level when combining with the supernovae SNLS compilation. And consequently the value derived on $H_0$, $H_0=71.3pm2.0$ ${rm km,s^{-1},Mpc^{-1}}$ (68% C.L.), is consistent with that from direct $H_0$ probes. We then investigate the dark energy model with a time-evolving $w$, and obtain the 68% C.L. constraints $w_0=-0.81pm0.19$ and $w_a=-1.9pm1.1$ from the Planck data and the SNLS compilation. Current data still slightly favor the Quintom dark energy scenario with EoS across the cosmological constant boundary $wequiv-1$.
We consider the case of very low reheating scenarios ($T_{rm RH}simmathcal{O}({rm MeV})$) with a better calculation of the production of the relic neutrino background (with three-flavor oscillations). At 95% confidence level, a lower bound on the reheating temperature $T_{rm RH}>4.1$ MeV is obtained from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, while $T_{rm RH}>4.3$ MeV from Planck data for very light ($sum m_i = 0.06$ eV) neutrinos. If neutrino masses are allowed to vary, Planck data yield $T_{rm RH}>4.7$ MeV, the most stringent bound on the reheating temperature to date. Neutrino masses as large as 1 eV are possible for very low reheating temperatures.
We present new constraints on the relativistic neutrino effective number N_eff and on the Cosmic Microwave Background power spectrum lensing amplitude A_L from the recent Planck 2013 data release. Including observations of the CMB large angular scale polarization from the WMAP satellite, we obtain the bounds N_eff = 3.71 +/- 0.40 and A_L = 1.25 +/- 0.13 at 68% c.l.. The Planck dataset alone is therefore suggesting the presence of a dark radiation component at 91.1% c.l. and hinting for a higher power spectrum lensing amplitude at 94.3% c.l.. We discuss the agreement of these results with the previous constraints obtained from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the South Pole Telescope (SPT). Considering the constraints on the cosmological parameters, we found a very good agreement with the previous WMAP+SPT analysis but a tension with the WMAP+ACT results, with the only exception of the lensing amplitude.
Recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) results from the Planck satellite, combined with previous CMB data and Hubble constant measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope, provide a constraint on the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom of Neff=3.62^{+0.50}_{-0.48} at 95% CL. These new measurements provide a unique opportunity to place limits on models containing relativistic species at the decoupling epoch. Here we review the bounds or the allowed parameter regions in sterile neutrino models, hadronic axion models as well as on extended dark sectors with additional light species based on the latest Planck CMB observations.
Axion-like particles are dark matter candidates motivated by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism and also occur in effective field theories where their masses and photon couplings are independent. We estimate the dispersion of circularly polarized photons in a background of oscillating axion-like particles (ALPs) with the standard $g_{agamma},a,F_{mu u}tilde F^{mu u}/4$ coupling to photons. This leads to birefringence or rotation of linear polarization by ALP dark matter. Cosmic microwave background (CMB) birefringence limits $Delta alpha lesssim (1.0)^circ$ enable us to constrain the axion-photon coupling $g_{agamma} lesssim 10^{-17}-10^{-12},{rm GeV}^{-1}$, for ultra-light ALP masses $m_a sim 10^{-27} - 10^{-24}$ eV. This improves upon previous axion-photon coupling limits by up to four orders of magnitude. Future CMB observations could tighten limits by another one to two orders.