We study if the discrepancy between the local and cosmological measurements of the Hubble constant $H_0$ can be reformulated as a tension in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) monopole temperature $T_0$. The latter is customarily fixed to the FIRAS best-fit value in CMB data analyses. Although this value was confirmed by several independent experiments, it is interesting to see how much parameter constraints depend on this prior. We first provide a detailed pedagogical description of the $T_0$ effects on cosmological observables. We show that the recombination history and transfer functions do not depend on $T_0$, provided they are parametrized by the energy scale rather than redshift, and at fixed dark matter and baryon densities per CMB photon. Thus, $T_0$ is only a property of the observer, quantifying the amount of expansion between key cosmological events and today. As a consequence, the sole effect of $T_0$ on small-scale primary CMB anisotropies is through the angular diameter distance to the epoch of last scattering, resulting in a near-perfect degeneracy between $T_0$ and $H_0$. This geometric degeneracy is partially lifted by the late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect and CMB lensing. Still, Planck data alone is consistent with a broad region in the $H_0-T_0$ plane, implying that removing the FIRAS prior on $T_0$ can make Planck and SH0ES less discrepant, without introducing new physics beyond $Λ$CDM. One may break the degeneracy by combining Planck with SH0ES, yielding an independent measurement of $T_0$, which happens to be in $3σ$ tension with FIRAS. Therefore, the Hubble tension indeed can be recast into the $T_0$ tension. The agreement with FIRAS is restored when combining Planck with the baryon acoustic oscillation data instead of SH0ES. Thus, the tension between SH0ES and cosmological measurements of $H_0$ persists even if we discard the FIRAS $T_0$ prior.
Deviations from the blackbody spectral energy distribution of the CMB are a precise probe of physical processes active both in the early universe (such as those connected to particle decays and inflation) and at later times (e.g. reionization and astrophysical emissions). Limited progress has been made in the characterization of these spectral distortions after the pioneering measurements of the FIRAS instrument on the COBE satellite in the early 1990s, which mainly targeted the measurement of their average amplitude across the sky. Since at present no follow-up mission is scheduled to update …
Conventional interpretation of the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole is that all of it is produced by local peculiar motions. Alternative explanations requiring part of the dipole to be primordial have received support from measurements of large-scale bulk flows. A test of the two hypothesis is whether other cosmic dipoles produced by collapsed structures later than last scattering coincide with the CMB dipole. One background is the cosmic infrared background (CIB) whose absolute spectrum was measured to ~30% by the COBE satellite. Over the 100 to 500 μm wavelength range its sp…
The quantity $T_0$, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) monopole, is an often neglected seventh parameter of the standard cosmological model. As well as its variation affecting the physics of the CMB, the measurement of $T_0$ is also used to calibrate the anisotropies, via the orbital dipole. We point out that it is easy to misestimate the effect of $T_0$ because the CMB anisotropies are conventionally provided in temperature units. In fact the anisotropies are most naturally described as dimensionless and we argue for restoring the convention of working with $ΔT/T$ rather than $ΔT$. As a fr…
We review aspects of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortions which do not appear to have been fully explored in the literature. In particular, implications of recent evidences of heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM) by feedback from active galactic nuclei are investigated. Taking also into account the IGM heating associated to structure formation, we argue that values of the y parameter of several*10^(-6), i.e. a factor of a few below the COBE/FIRAS upper limit, are to be expected. The Compton scattering by the re-ionized plasma also re-processes primordial distortions, add…
The FIRAS data are independently recalibrated using the WMAP data to obtain a CMB temperature of 2.7260 +/- 0.0013. Measurements of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background are reviewed. The determination from the measurements from the literature is cosmic microwave background temperature of 2.72548 +/- 0.00057 K.
Although both early and late-time modifications of the $Λ$CDM model have been proposed to address the Hubble tension, compelling arguments suggest that for a solution to be successful it needs to modify the expansion history of the universe prior to recombination. This greatly increases the importance of precise CMB observations, and in this letter we make the argument for CMB spectral distortions, highlighting their potential role in constraining models that introduce significant shifts in the standard $Λ$CDM parameters, such as the scalar spectral index, in attempt to solve the Hubble tensio…
The measurements of COBE/FIRAS have shown that the CMB spectrum is extremely close to a perfect blackbody. There are, however, a number of processes in the early Universe that should create spectral distortions at a level which is within reach of present day technology. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of recent theoretical and experimental developments, explaining why future measurements of the CMB spectrum will open up an unexplored window to early-universe and particle physics with possible non-standard surprises but also several guaranteed signals awaiting us.
Recent measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by the Planck Collaboration have produced arguably the most powerful observational evidence in support of the standard model of cosmology, i.e. the spatially flat $Λ$CDM paradigm. In this work, we perform model selection tests to examine whether the base CMB temperature and large scale polarization anisotropy data from Planck 2015 (P15) prefer any of eight commonly used one-parameter model extensions with respect to flat $Λ$CDM. We find a clear preference for models with free curvature, $Ω_\mathrm{K}$, or free amplitude of the CMB le…
The observed discrepancy of the Hubble parameter measurements in the local universe with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data may indicate a new physics. It is vital to test the alternative models that reconcile the Hubble tension with other cosmological observations in this direction. The CMB lensing is a crucial observation that relates the early universe perturbations to the matter's late-time distribution. In this work, we study the prediction of the ü$Λ$CDM as a solution for $H_0$ tension for CMB lensing and the low- and high-$\ell$'s temperature (TT) power spectrum internal inconsi…
We investigate the Minimal Theory of Massive Gravity (MTMG) in the light of different observational data sets which are in tension within the $Λ$CDM cosmology. In particular, we analyze MTMG model, for the first time, with the Planck-CMB data, and how these precise measurements affect the free parameters of the theory. The MTMG model can affect the CMB power spectrum at large angular scales and cause a suppression on the amplitude of the matter power spectrum. We find that on adding Planck-CMB data, the graviton has a small, positive, but non-zero mass at 68\% confidence level, and from this p…
Future precision measurements of CMB polarizations can shed new light on the problem so called Hubble tension. The Hubble tension comes from the difference of the evolutions of the Hubble parameter which are determined with two different distance ladders. The standard distance ladder with the observation of Cepheid variables and type Ia supernovae gives larger values of the Hubble constant, and the inverse distance ladder with the observation of the baryon acoustic oscillations both in the CMB and in the clustering of galaxies gives smaller values of the Hubble constant. These different evolut…
Recent studies have presented evidence for tension between the constraints on Omega_m and sigma_8 from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and measurements of large-scale structure (LSS). This tension can potentially be resolved by appealing to extensions of the standard model of cosmology and/or untreated systematic errors in the modelling of LSS, of which baryonic physics has been frequently suggested. We revisit this tension using, for the first time, carefully-calibrated cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, which thus capture the back reaction of the baryons on the total matter distr…
Despite the great observational success of the standard cosmological model some discrepancies in the inferred parameter constraints have manifested among a number of cosmological data sets. These include a tension between the expansion rate of our Cosmos as inferred from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and as found from local measurements, the preference for an enhanced amplitude of CMB lensing, a somewhat low quadrupole moment of the CMB fluctuations as well as a preference for a lower amplitude of matter fluctuations in large-scale structure surveys than inferred from the CMB. We analy…
The precise measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy angular power spectra made by the Planck satellite show an anomalous value for the lensing amplitude, defined by the parameter $A_{lens}$, at more than $2$ standard deviations. In this paper, after discussing the current status of the anomaly, we quantify the potential of future CMB measurements in confirming/falsifying the $A_{lens}$ tension. We find that a space-based experiment as LiteBIRD could falsify the current $A_{lens}$ tension at the level of $5$ standard deviations. Similar constraints can be achieved by a Stage-III …
The measurement of present-day temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), $T_0 = 2.72548 \pm 0.00057$ K (1$σ$), made by the Far-InfraRed Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS), is one of the most precise measurements ever made in Cosmology. On the other hand, estimates of the Hubble Constant, $H_0$, obtained from measurements of the CMB temperature fluctuations assuming the standard $Λ$CDM model exhibit a large ($4.1σ$) tension when compared with low-redshift, model-independent observations. Recently, some authors argued that a slightly change in $T_0$ could alleviate or solve the $H_0$…
We study the global agreement between the most recent observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropies angular power spectra released by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Planck satellite in various cosmological models that differ by the inclusion of different combinations of additional parameters. By using the Suspiciousness statistic, we show that the global "CMB tension" between the two experiments, quantified at the Gaussian equivalent level of $\sim 2.5\,σ$ within the baseline $Λ$CDM, is reduced at the level of $1.8σ$ when the effective numbe…
In this paper, the CMB/BAO measurements which cover the 13 redshift data in the regime $0.106 \leq z \leq 2.34$ are given out. The CMB/BAO samples are based on the BAO distance ratios $r_{s}(z_d)/D_{V}(z)$ and the CMB acoustic scales $l_{A}$. It could give out the accelerating behaviors of the $Λ$CDM, $w$CDM and o$Λ$CDM models. As the direction of the degeneracy of $Ω_{m0}-w$ and $Ω_{m0}-Ω_{k0}$ are different for the CMB/BAO and BAO data, the CMB/BAO data show ability of breaking parameter degeneracy. Our tightest constraining results is from the BAO+Planck/BAO+$Ω_{b}h^2$+$Ω_{m}h^2$ data which…
With the recent increase in precision of our cosmological datasets, measurements of $Λ$CDM model parameter provided by high- and low-redshift observations started to be in tension, i.e., the obtained values of such parameters were shown to be significantly different in a statistical sense. In~this work we tackle the tension on the value of the Hubble parameter, $H_0$, and the weighted amplitude of matter fluctuations, $S_8$, obtained from local or low-redshift measurements and from cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations. We combine the main approaches previously used in the literature …
We apply a recently developed method to directly measure the gravitational lensing power spectrum from CMB power spectra to the Planck satellite data. This method allows us to analyze the tension between the temperature power spectrum and lens reconstruction in a model independent way. Even when allowing for arbitrary variations in the lensing power spectrum, the tension remains at the 2.4$σ$ level. By separating the lensing and unlensed high redshift information in the CMB power spectra, we also show that under $Λ$CDM the two are in tension at a similar level whereas the unlensed information …
Since the measurements of COBE/FIRAS in the mid-90's we know that the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is extremely close to that of a perfect blackbody at an average temperature T0~2.726K. However, a number of early-universe processes are expected to create CMB spectral distortions - departures of the average CMB energy spectrum from a blackbody - at a level that is within reach of present-day technology. This provides strong motivation to study the physics of CMB spectral distortions and ask what these small signals might be able to tell us about the Universe we live …
It is possible to explain the discrepancy (tension) between the local measurement of the cosmological parameter $H_0$ (the Hubble constant) and its value derived from the Planck-mission measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by considering contamination of the CMB by emission from some medium surrounding distant extragalactic sources (a distant foreground), such as extremely cold coarse-grain (grey) dust. As any other foreground, it would alter the CMB power spectrum and contribute to the dispersion of CMB temperature fluctuations. By generating random samples of CMB with differ…
In the early Universe, energy stored in small-scale density perturbations is quickly dissipated by Silk-damping, a process that inevitably generates mu- and y-type spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These spectral distortions depend on the shape and amplitude of the primordial power spectrum at wavenumbers k < 10^4 Mpc^{-1}. Here we study constraints on the primordial power spectrum derived from COBE/FIRAS and forecasted for PIXIE. We show that measurements of mu and y impose strong bounds on the integrated small-scale power, and we demonstrate how to compute these …
In the inhomogeneous Universe, the cosmological conversion of dark photons into ordinary photons (and vice versa) may happen at a great number of resonance redshifts. This alters the CMB observed energy spectrum and degree of small-scale anisotropies. We utilize results from the EAGLE simulation to obtain the conversion probability along random line-of-sights to quantify these effects. We then apply our results to the case where dark photons are sourced by dark matter decay and their high-redshift conversion into ordinary photons modify the global 21 cm signal expected from the cosmic dawn era…
Since the publication of the results of the Planck satellite mission in 2013, the local and early universes have been considered to be in tension in respect of the determination of amplitude of the matter density spatial fluctuations ($σ_8$) and the amount of matter present in the universe ($Ω_m$). This tension can be seen as a lack of massive galaxy clusters in the local universe compared to the prediction inferred from Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) best-fitting cosmology. In the present analysis, we perform the first detection of the cross-correlation between X-rays and CMB weak-l…
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral distortions (SDs) will open a new window on the very early universe, providing new information complementary to that gathered from CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies. In this paper, we study their synergy as a function of the characteristics of the considered experiments. In particular, we examine a wide range of sensitivities for possible SD measurements, spanning from FIRAS up to noise levels 1000 times better than PIXIE, and study their constraining power when combined with current or future CMB anisotropy experiments…
The excellent measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations by Planck allow us to tightly constrain the amplitude of matter fluctuations at redshift $\sim 1100$ in the $Λ$-cold dark matter ($Λ$CDM) model. This amplitude can be extrapolated to the present epoch, yielding constraints on the value of the $σ_8$ parameter. On the other hand, the abundance of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) clusters detected by Planck, with masses inferred using a hydrostatic equilibrium assumption, leads to a significantly lower value of the same parameter. This discrepancy is often dubbed the $σ_8$ ten…
The Hubble tension that the standard $Λ$CDM model is suffering from can be resolved with pre-recombination early dark energy. We present the first constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ in corresponding Hubble-tension-free cosmologies using the most recent BICEP/Keck cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization data. We find, combining BICEP/Keck with Planck18 CMB and baryon acoustic oscillation data, that the models with larger Hubble constant $H_0$ will have tighter upper bound on $r$, and resolution $H_0\sim73$ km/s/Mpc of the Hubble tension tightens the upper bound to $r<0.0…
The Hubble constant ($H_0$) estimated from the local Cepheid-supernova (SN) distance ladder is in 3-$σ$ tension with the value extrapolated from cosmic microwave background (CMB) data assuming the standard cosmological model. Whether this tension represents new physics or systematic effects is the subject of intense debate. Here, we investigate how new, independent $H_0$ estimates can arbitrate this tension, assessing whether the measurements are consistent with being derived from the same model using the posterior predictive distribution (PPD). We show that, with existing data, the inverse di…
Non-Planckian (NP) spectral modifications of the CMB radiation spectrum can be produced due to the existence of a non-zero value of the plasma frequency at the recombination epoch. We present here an analysis of NP effects on the radio cosmological background and we derive, for the first time, predictions of their amplitude on three different observables: the CMB spectrum, the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect in cosmic structures, and the 21-cm background temperature brightness change. We find that NP effect can manifest in the CMB spectrum at $ν\simlt 400$ MHz as a drastic cut-off in the CMB in…
The standard cosmological paradigm narrates a reassuring story of a universe currently dominated by an enigmatic dark energy component. Disquietingly, its universal explaining power has recently been challenged by, above all, the $\sim4σ$ tension in the values of the Hubble constant. Another, less studied anomaly is the repeated observation of integrated Sachs-Wolfe imprints $\sim5\times$ stronger than expected in the $Λ$CDM model from R>100 $Mpc/h$ super-structures. Here we show that the inhomogeneous AvERA model of emerging curvature is capable of telling a plausible albeit radically differe…
The angular power spectra of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies reconstructed from Planck data seem to present too much gravitational lensing distortion. This is quantified by the control parameter $A_L$ that should be compatible with unity for a standard cosmology. With the Class Boltzmann solver and the profile-likelihood method, for this parameter we measure a 2.6$σ$ shift from 1 using the Planck public likelihoods. We show that, owing to strong correlations with the reionization optical depth $τ$ and the primordial perturbation amplitude $A_s$, a $\sim2σ$ tensio…
We investigate the $H_0$ tension in a range of extended model frameworks beyond the standard $Λ$CDM without the data from cosmic microwave background (CMB). Specifically, we adopt the data from baryon acoustic oscillation, big bang nucleosynthesis and type Ia supernovae as indirect measurements of $H_0$ to study the tension. We show that the estimated value of $H_0$ from indirect measurements is overall lower than that from direct local ones regardless of the data sets and a range of extended models to be analyzed, which indicates that, although the significance of the tension varies depending…
The well-known tensions on the cosmological parameters $H_0$ and $σ_8$ within the $Λ$CDM cosmology shown by the Planck-CMB and LSS data are possibly due to the systematics in the data or our ignorance of some new physics beyond the $Λ$CDM model. In this letter, we focus on the second possibility, and investigate a minimal extension of the $Λ$CDM model by allowing a coupling between its dark sector components (dark energy and dark matter). We analyze this scenario with Planck-CMB, KiDS and HST data, and find that the $H_0$ and $σ_8$ tensions disappear at 68\% CL. In the joint analyzes with Plan…
We analyze the claimed tension between redshift space distorsions measurements of $f(z)σ_8(z)$ and the predictions of standard $Λ$CDM (Planck 2015 and 2018) cosmology. We consider a dataset consisting of 17 data points extending up to redshift $z=1.52$ and corrected for the Alcock-Paczynski effect. Thus, calculating the evolution of the growth factor in a $w$CDM cosmology, we find that the tension for the best fit parameters $w$, $Ω_m$ and $σ_8$ with respect to the Planck 2018 $Λ$CDM parameters is below $2σ$ in all the marginalized confidence regions.
We perform a Fisher matrix calculation of the predicted uncertainties on estimates of the cosmic string tension Gmu from upcoming observational data (namely, cosmic microwave background power spectra from the Planck satellite and an idealized future polarization experiment). We employ simulations that are more general than others commonly used in the literature, leaving the mean velocity of strings, correlation length of the string network, and "wiggliness" (which parametrizes smaller-scale structure along the strings) as free parameters that can be observationally measured. In a new code, Str…
The existence of ultralight axion (ULA) with mass $\mathcal{O}( 10^{-26}\text{eV})$ is not favored by the CMB observations in the standard $Λ$CDM model. We show that the inclusion of early dark energy (EDE) will lift the CMB-lockdown on such ULA, and possibly other forms of dark matter beyond cold dark matter. By performing Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis, it is found that, as opposed to $Λ$CDM, the AdS-EDE cosmology (with an Anti-de Sitter phase around recombination) now allows the existence of axion with mass $10^{-26}$ eV and predicts $6\%$ of the matter in our Universe to be such ULA, wh…
We examine the internal consistency of the Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy power spectrum. We show that tension exists between cosmological constant cold dark matter (LCDM) model parameters inferred from multipoles l<1000 (roughly those accessible to Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe), and from l>=1000, particularly the CDM density, Omega_ch^2, which is discrepant at 2.5 sigma for a Planck-motivated prior on the optical depth, tau=0.07+/-0.02. We find some parameter tensions to be larger than previously reported because of inaccuracy in the code used by …
Planck-2015 data seem to favour a large value of the lensing amplitude parameter, $A_{\rm L}=1.22\pm0.10$, in CMB spectra. This result is in $2σ$ tension with the lensing reconstruction result, $A_{\rm L}^{ϕϕ}=0.95\pm0.04$. In this paper, we simulate several CMB anisotropy and CMB lensing spectra based on Planck-2015 best-fit cosmological parameter values and Planck blue book beam and noise specifications. We analyse several modified gravity models within the effective field theory framework against these simulations and find that models whose effective Newton constant is enhanced can modulate…
In a previous communication we showed that a joint analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data and the current measurement of the local expansion rate favours a model with a scale invariant spectrum (HZ) over the minimal $Λ$CDM scenario provided that the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom, $N_{eff}$, is taken as a free parameter. Such a result is basically obtained due to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) value of the Hubble constant, $H_0 = 73.24 \pm 1.74$ $\rm{km.s^{-1}.Mpc^{-1}}$ (68\% C.L.), as the CMB data alone discard the HZ+$N_{eff}$ model. Although such a model …
By focusing on the simple $w\neq-1$ extension to $Λ$CDM, we assess which epoch(s) possibly source the $H_0$-tension. We consider Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data in three possible ways: $i)$ complete CMB data; $ii)$ excluding the $l<30$ temperature and polarization likelihoods; $iii)$ imposing early universe priors, that disentangle early and late time physics. Through a joint analysis with low-redshift supernovae type-Ia and gravitationally lensed time delay datasets, {and neglecting galaxy clustering Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) data}, we find that the inclusion of early univers…
We apply a tension metric $Q_\textrm{UDM}$, the update difference in mean parameters, to understand the source of the difference in the measured Hubble constant $H_0$ inferred with cosmic microwave background lensing measurements from the Planck satellite ($H_0=67.9^{+1.1}_{-1.3}\, \mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$) and from the South Pole Telescope ($H_0=72.0^{+2.1}_{-2.5}\, \mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$) when both are combined with baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements with priors on the baryon density (BBN). $Q_\textrm{UDM}$ isolates the relevant parameter directions for tension or concordance where the two…
