No Arabic abstract
We investigate the potential of the galaxy power spectrum to constrain compensated isocurvature perturbations (CIPs), primordial fluctuations in the baryon density that are compensated by fluctuations in CDM density to ensure an unperturbed total matter density. We show that CIPs contribute to the galaxy overdensity at linear order, and if they are close to scale-invariant, their effects are nearly perfectly degenerate with the local PNG parameter $f_{rm nl}$ if they correlate with the adiabatic perturbations. This degeneracy can however be broken by analyzing multiple galaxy samples with different bias parameters, or by taking CMB priors on $f_{rm nl}$ into account. Parametrizing the amplitude of the CIP power spectrum as $P_{sigmasigma} = A^2P_{mathcal{R}mathcal{R}}$ (where $P_{mathcal{R}mathcal{R}}$ is the adiabatic power spectrum) we find, for a number of fiducial galaxy samples in a simplified forecast setup, that constraints on $A$, relative to those on $f_{rm nl}$, of order $sigma_{A}/sigma_{f_{rm nl}} approx 1-2$ are achievable for CIPs correlated with adiabatic perturbations, and $sigma_{A}/sigma_{f_{rm nl}} approx 5$ for the uncorrelated case. These values are independent of survey volume, and suggest that current galaxy data are already able to improve significantly on the tightest existing constraints on CIPs from the CMB. Future galaxy surveys that aim to achieve $sigma_{f_{rm nl}} sim 1$ have the potential to place even stronger bounds on CIPs.
A compensated isocurvature perturbation consists of an overdensity (or underdensity) in the cold dark matter which is completely cancelled out by a corresponding underdensity (or overdensity) in the baryons. Such a configuration may be generated by a curvaton model of inflation if the cold dark matter is created before curvaton decay and the baryon number is created by the curvaton decay (or vice-versa). Compensated isocurvature perturbations, at the level producible by the curvaton model, have no observable effect on cosmic microwave background anisotropies or on galaxy surveys. They can be detected through their effect on the distribution of neutral hydrogen between redshifts 30 to 300 using 21 cm absorption observations. However, to obtain a good signal to noise ratio, very large observing arrays are needed. We estimate that a fast Fourier transform telescope would need a total collecting area of about 20 square kilometers to detect a curvaton generated compensated isocurvature perturbation at more than 5 sigma significance.
Compensated isocurvature perturbations (CIPs) are opposite spatial fluctuations in the baryon and dark matter density. They can be generated for example in the curvaton model in the early Universe but are difficult to observe because their gravitational imprint nearly cancels. We therefore propose a new measurement method by searching for a spatial modulation of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale that CIPs induce. We find that for a Euclid-like survey the sensitivity is marginally better than the WMAP cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraint, which exploits the CIP-induced modulation of the CMB sound horizon. For a cosmic-variance limited BAO survey using emission-line galaxies up to $zsim7$ the sensitivity is between stage 3 and stage 4 CMB experiments. These results include using CIP-galaxy cross-correlations, which improves the sensitivity by a factor of $sim2-3$ for correlated CIPs. The method could be further improved with an optimal estimator, similarly to the CMB, and could provide a useful cross-check of other CIP probes. Finally, if CIPs exist, they can bias cosmological measurements made assuming no CIPs. In particular, they can act as a super-sample fluctuation of the baryon density and bias measurements of the BAO scale. For modern BAO surveys, the largest 2$sigma$ CIP fluctuation allowed by Plancks 95% bound could bias BAO measurements of $H(z)$ by 2.2%, partially reducing the tension with the local $H_0$ measurements from 3.1$sigma$ to 2.3$sigma$.
If the hemispherical power asymmetry observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on large angular scales is attributable to a superhorizon curvaton fluctuation, then the simplest model predicts that the primordial density fluctuations should be similarly asymmetric on all smaller scales. The distribution of high-redshift quasars was recently used to constrain the power asymmetry on scales k ~ 1.5h/Mpc, and the upper bound on the amplitude of the asymmetry was found to be a factor of six smaller than the amplitude of the asymmetry in the CMB. We show that it is not possible to generate an asymmetry with this scale dependence by changing the relative contributions of the inflaton and curvaton to the adiabatic power spectrum. Instead, we consider curvaton scenarios in which the curvaton decays after dark matter freezes out, thus generating isocurvature perturbations. If there is a superhorizon fluctuation in the curvaton field, then the rms amplitude of these perturbations will be asymmetric, and the asymmetry will be most apparent on large angular scales in the CMB. We find that it is only possible to generate the observed asymmetry in the CMB while satisfying the quasar constraint if the curvatons contribution to the total dark matter density is small, but nonzero. The model also requires that the majority of the primordial power comes from fluctuations in the inflaton field. Future observations and analyses of the CMB will test this model because the power asymmetry generated by this model has a specific spectrum, and the model requires that the current upper bounds on isocurvature power are nearly saturated.
We perform a joint analysis of the power spectrum and the bispectrum of the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies to improve the constraints on isocurvature modes. We construct joint likelihoods, both for the existing Planck data, and to make forecasts for the future LiteBIRD and CMB-S4 experiments. We assume a general two-field inflation model with five free parameters, leading to one isocurvature mode (which can be CDM density, neutrino density or neutrino velocity) arbitrarily correlated with the adiabatic mode. We theoretically assess in which cases (of detecting and/or fixing parameters) improvements can be expected, to guide our subsequent numerical analyses. We find that for Planck, which detected neither isocurvature modes nor primordial non-Gaussianity, the joint analysis does not improve the constraints in the general case. However, if we fix additional parameters in the model, the improvements can be highly significant depending on the chosen parameter values. For LiteBIRD+CMB-S4 we study in which regions of parameter space compatible with the Planck results the joint analysis will improve the constraints or the significance of a detection. We find that, while for CDM isocurvature this region is very small, for the neutrino isocurvature modes it is much larger. In particular for neutrino velocity it can be about half of the Planck-allowed region, where the joint analysis reduces the isocurvature error bars by up to 70%. In addition the joint analysis can also improve the error bars of some of the standard cosmological parameters, by up to 30% for $theta_{MC}$ for example, by breaking the degeneracies with the correlation parameter between adiabatic and isocurvature modes.
We study non-Gaussian properties of the isocurvature perturbations in the dark radiation, which consists of the active neutrinos and extra light species, if exist. We first derive expressions for the bispectra of primordial perturbations which are mixtures of curvature and dark radiation isocurvature perturbations. We also discuss CMB bispectra produced in our model and forecast CMB constraints on the nonlinearity parameters based on the Fisher matrix analysis. Some concrete particle physics motivated models are presented in which large isocurvature perturbations in extra light species and/or the neutrino density isocurvature perturbations as well as their non-Gaussianities may be generated. Thus detections of non-Gaussianity in the dark radiation isocurvature perturbation will give us an opportunity to identify the origin of extra light species and lepton asymmetry.