We show that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization data gathered by the BOOMERanG 2003 flight and WMAP provide an opportunity to investigate {\it in-vacuo} birefringence, of a type expected in some quantum pictures of space-time, with a sensitivity that extends even beyond the desired Planck-scale energy. In order to render this constraint more transparent we rely on a well studied phenomenological model of quantum-gravity-induced birefringence, in which one easily establishes that effects introduced at the Planck scale would amount to values of a dimensionless parameter, denoted by $ξ$, with respect to the Planck energy which are roughly of order 1. By combining BOOMERanG and WMAP data we estimate $ξ\simeq -0.110 \pm 0.076$ at the 68% c.l. Moreover, we forecast on the sensitivity to $ξ$ achievable by future CMB polarization experiments (PLANCK, Spider, EPIC), which, in the absence of systematics, will be at the 1-$σ$ confidence of $8.5 \times 10^{-4}$ (PLANCK), $6.1 \times 10^{-3}$ (Spider), and $1.0 \times 10^{-5}$ (EPIC) respectively. The cosmic variance-limited sensitivity from CMB is $6.1\times 10^{-6}$.
We perform a comprehensive study of the signatures of Lorentz violation in electrodynamics on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. In the framework of the minimal Standard Model Extension (SME), we consider effects generated by renormalizable operators, both CPT-odd and CPT-even. These operators are responsible for sourcing, respectively, cosmic birefringence and circular polarization. We propagate jointly the effects of all the relevant Lorentz-violating parameters to CMB observables and provide constraints with the most recent CMB datasets. We bound the CPT-even coefficient to…
The cosmic expansion is computed for various dynamical vacuum models $Λ(H)$ and confronted to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) power spectrum from Planck. We also combined CMB in a joint analysis with other probes in order to place constraints on the cosmological parameters of the dynamical vacuum models. We find that all $Λ(H)$ models are very efficient and in very good agreement with the data. Considering that the interaction term of the dark sector is given in terms of matter and radiation densities, we find that the corresponding $Λ(H)$ model shows a small but non-zero deviation from …
We present a new Planck CMB lensing-CMB temperature cross-correlation likelihood that can be used to constrain cosmology via the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. CMB lensing is an excellent tracer of ISW, and we use the latest PR4 Planck data maps and lensing reconstruction to produce the first public Planck likelihood to constrain this signal. We demonstrate the likelihood by constraining the CMB background temperature from Planck data alone, where the ISW-lensing cross-correlation is a powerful way to break the geometric degeneracy, substantially improving constraints from the CMB and le…
We use six tilted spatially-flat and untilted non-flat dark energy cosmological models in analyses of South Pole Telescope polarization (SPTpol) cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, alone and in combination with Planck 2015 CMB data and non-CMB data, namely, the Pantheon Type Ia supernovae apparent magnitudes, a collection of baryon acoustic oscillation data points, Hubble parameter measurements, and growth rates. Although the cosmological models that best-fit the Planck CMB and non-CMB data do not provide good fits to the SPTpol data, with the $χ^2$'s exceeding the expected value, given th…
In the standard model of cosmology, Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky is expected to show no symmetry preferences. Following our previous studies, we explore the presence of any particular parity preference in the latest full-mission CMB temperature maps from ESA's Planck probe. Specifically, in this work, we will probe (a)symmetry in power between even and odd multipoles of CMB via it's angular power spectrum from Planck 2015 data. Further we also assess any specific preference for mirror parity (a)symmetry, by analysing the power contained in $l+m$=even or odd mode combinations.
Precise measurements of the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) angular power spectrum (APS) at small angles have stimulated accurate statistical analyses of the lensing amplitude parameter $A_{L}$. To confirm if it satisfies the value expected by the flat-$Λ$CDM concordance model, i.e. $A_{L} = 1$, we investigate the spectrum difference obtained as: the difference of the measured Planck CMB APS and the Planck best-fit $Λ$CDM APS model. To know if this residual spectrum corresponds to statistical noise or if it has a hiden signature that can be accounted for with a larger lensing amplitud…
We present the results of the quest for ring-type structures on the maps observed by the Planck satellite. The results show that the vicinity of one radius (γ = 0.14 radians) of the rings is distinguished. Twisting the circles into deformed ellipses gives a pronounced drop of significance with the increase of twisting.
We present a new approach to component separation in multifrequency CMB experiments by formulating the problem as that of partitioning the sky into pixel clusters such that within each pixel cluster the foregrounds have similar spectrum, using only the information available in the data. Only spectral information is used for partitioning, allowing spatially far away pixels to belong to the same cluster if their foreground properties are close. We then apply a modified internal linear combination method to each pixel cluster. Since the foregrounds have similar spectrum within each cluster, the n…
We reconstruct the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lensing potential on the latest Planck CMB PR4 (NPIPE) maps, which include slightly more data than the 2018 PR3 release, and implement quadratic estimators using more optimal filtering. We increase the reconstruction signal to noise by almost $20\%$, constraining the amplitude of the CMB-marginalized lensing power spectrum in units of the Planck 2018 best-fit to $1.004 \pm 0.024$ ($68\%$ limits), which is the tightest constraint on the CMB lensing power spectrum to date. For a base $Λ$CDM cosmology we find $σ_8 Ω_m^{0.25} = 0.599\pm 0.016$ f…
We present constraints on the patchy reionization by measuring the trispectrum of the Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. The patchy reionization leads to anisotropies in the CMB optical depth, and the statistics of the observed CMB anisotropies is altered. We estimate the trispectrum of the CMB temperature anisotropies to constrain spatial variation of the optical depth. We show that the measured trispectrum is consistent with that from the standard lensed CMB simulation at $2σ$. While no evidence of the patchy reionization is found in the Planck 2015 tempe…
In this article we compare a variety of well known dynamical dark energy models using the cosmic microwave background measurements from the 2018 Planck legacy and 2015 Planck data releases, the baryon acoustic oscillations measurements and the local measurements of $H_0$ obtained by the SH0ES (Supernovae, $H_0$, for the Equation of State of Dark energy) collaboration analysing the Hubble Space Telescope data. We discuss the alleviation of $H_0$ tension, that is obtained at the price of a phantom-like dark energy equation of state. We perform a Bayesian evidence analysis to quantify the improve…
The lack of power anomaly is an intriguing feature at the largest angular scales of the CMB anisotropy temperature pattern, whose statistical significance is not strong enough to claim any new physics beyond the standard cosmological model. We revisit the former statement by also considering polarisation data. We propose a new one-dimensional estimator which takes jointly into account the information contained in the TT, TE and EE CMB spectra. By employing this estimator on Planck 2015 low-$\ell$ data, we find that a random $Λ$CDM realisation is statistically accepted at the level of $3.68 \%$…
Using the latest observational data from Planck-CMB and its combination with the pre-reconstructed full-shape (FS) galaxy power spectrum measurements from the BOSS DR12 sample and eBOSS LRG DR16 sample, we report the observational constraints on the cosmic neutrino properties given by the extended $Λ$CDM scenario: $Λ$CDM + $N_{\rm eff}$ + $\sum m_ν$ + $c^2_{\rm eff}$ + $c^2_{\rm vis}$ + $ξ_ν$, and its particular case $Λ$CDM + $c^2_{\rm eff}$ + $c^2_{\rm vis}$ + $ξ_ν$, where $N_{\rm eff}$, $\sum m_ν$, $c^2_{\rm eff}$, $c^2_{\rm vis}$, $ξ_ν$ are the effective number of species, the total neutrin…
We present a new cosmological analysis of the galaxy clusters in the Planck MMF3 cosmology sample with a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing calibration of the cluster masses. As demonstrated by Planck, galaxy clusters detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect offer a powerful way to constrain cosmological parameters such as $Ω_{\mathrm{m}}$ and $σ_8$. Determining the absolute cluster mass scale is, however, difficult, and some recent calibrations have yielded cosmological constraints in apparent tension with constraints in the $Λ$CDM model derived from the power spectra of the pri…
We investigate two new observational perspectives in the context of torsional gravitational modification of general relativity, i.e., the $f(T)$ gravity: i) We use Pantheon data of type Ia supernovae motivated by a time variation of the Newton's constant on the supernovae distance modulus relation, and find that a joint analysis with Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), i.e., Pantheon+BAO+BBN, provides constraints on the effective free parameter of the theory to be well compatible with the $Λ$CDM prediction; ii) We present the framework of $f(T)$ gravity at th…
Residual foreground contamination by thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect from galaxy clusters in cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps propagates into the reconstructed CMB lensing field, and thus biases the intrinsic cross-correlation between CMB lensing and large-scale structure (LSS). Through stacking analysis, we show that residual tSZ contamination causes an increment of lensing convergence in the central part of the clusters and a decrement of lensing convergence in the cluster outskirts. We quantify the impact of residual tSZ contamination on cross-correlations between the Planck 20…
We present angular power spectra and cosmological parameter constraints derived from the Planck PR4 (NPIPE) maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background. NPIPE, released by the Planck Collaboration in 2020, is a new processing pipeline for producing calibrated frequency maps from Planck data. We have created new versions of the CamSpec likelihood using these maps and applied them to constrain LCDM and single-parameter extensions. We find excellent consistency between NPIPE and the Planck 2018 maps at the parameter level, showing that the Planck cosmology is robust to substantial changes in the mapm…
A number of recent, low-redshift, lensing measurements hint at a universe in which the amplitude of lensing is lower than that predicted from the $Λ$CDM model fit to the data of the Planck CMB mission. Here we use the auto- and cross-correlation signal of unWISE galaxies and Planck CMB lensing maps to infer cosmological parameters at low redshift. In particular, we consider three unWISE samples (denoted as "blue", "green" and "red") at median redshifts $z \sim 0.6$, $1.1$ and 1.5, which fully cover the Dark Energy dominated era. Our cross-correlation measurements, with combined significance $S…
We present a CMB large-scale polarization dataset obtained by combining WMAP Ka, Q and V with Planck 70 GHz maps. We employ the legacy frequency maps released by the WMAP and Planck collaborations and perform our own Galactic foreground mitigation technique, which relies on Planck 353 GHz for polarized dust and on Planck 30 GHz and WMAP K for polarized synchrotron. We derive a single, optimally-noise-weighted, low-residual-foreground map and the accompanying noise covariance matrix. These are shown, through $χ^2$ analysis, to be robust over an ample collection of Galactic masks. We use this da…
JWST high redshift galaxy observations predict a higher star formation efficiency than the standard cosmology does, which poses a new tension to $Λ$CDM. We find that the situation is worse than expected. The true situation is that the Planck CMB measurement has a strong tension with JWST high redshift galaxy observations. Specifically, we make a trial to alleviate this tension by considering alternative cosmological models including dark matter-baryon interaction, $f(R)$ gravity and dynamical dark energy. Within current cosmological constraints from Planck-2018 CMB data, we find that these mod…
We investigate the extent to which foreground cleaned CMB maps can be used to estimate the cosmological parameters at small scales. We use the SMICA method, a blind separation technique which works directly at the spectral level. In this work we focus on the small scales of the CMB angular power spectrum, which are chiefly affected by noise and extragalactic foregrounds, such as point sources. We adapt SMICA to use only cross-spectra between data maps, thus avoiding the noise bias. In this study, performed both on simulations and on Planck 2015 data, we fit for extragalactic point sources by m…
