Invisibles Journal Club: New Light Species and the CMB

por Matthew Walters (John Hopkins University)

martes 23 abr. 2013 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Madrid

Sala Seminarios IFIC (Edf. Institutos de Investigación)

Webinar from Barcelona: I will discuss recent work done in collaboration with Christopher Brust and David E. Kaplan. Specifically, I will consider the effects of new light species on the Cosmic Microwave Background within the framework of effective field theory. These effects are parameterized in terms of the relativistic degrees of freedom present at recombination. After reviewing the relevant details of early universe thermodynamics, I will provide a map between the parameters of any particular theory and the predicted effective number of degrees of freedom. I will then use this map to interpret the recent results from the Planck satellite, presenting new constraints on the parameter space of several models containing new light species.