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Bouncing models of cosmology, as they arise, e.g., in loop quantum cosmology, can be followed by an inflationary phase and generate close-to-scale-invariant fluctuation spectra as observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). However, they are typically not Gaussian and also generate a bispectrum. These models can help to mitigate the large-scale anomalies of the CMB by considering substantial non-Gaussianities on very large scales, which decay exponentially on subhorizon scales. It was therefore thought that this non-Gaussianity would not be visible in observations, which can only probe subhorizon scales. We show that bouncing models with parameters such that they can significantly mitigate the large-scale anomalies of the CMB are excluded by the Planck data with high significance of, depending on the specific model, 5.4, 6.4, or 14 standard deviations.

In this Letter we study the impact on cosmological parameter estimation, from present and future surveys, due to lensing corrections on cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization anisotropies beyond leading order. In particular, we show how post-Born corrections, large-scale structure effects, and the correction due to the change in the polarization direction between the emission at the source and the detection at the observer are non-negligible in the determination of the polarization spectra. They have to be taken into account for an accurate estimation of cosmological parameters sensitive to or even based on these spectra. We study in detail the impact of higher order lensing on the determination of the tensor-to-scalar ratio r and on the estimation of the effective number of relativistic species N_{eff}. We find that neglecting higher order lensing terms can lead to misinterpreting these corrections as a primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio of about O(10^{-3}). Furthermore, it leads to a shift of the parameter N_{eff} by nearly 2σ considering the level of accuracy aimed by future S4 surveys.

The large-scale homogeneity and isotropy of the Universe is generally thought to imply a well-defined background cosmological model. It may not. Smoothing over structure adds in an extra contribution, transferring power from small scales up to large. Second-order perturbation theory implies that the effect is small, but suggests that formally the perturbation series may not converge. The amplitude of the effect is actually determined by the ratio of the Hubble scales at matter-radiation equality and today-which are entirely unrelated. This implies that a universe with significantly lower temperature today could have significant backreaction from more power on small scales, and so provides the ideal testing ground for understanding backreaction. We investigate this using two different N-body numerical simulations-a 3D Newtonian and a 1D simulation which includes all relevant relativistic effects. We show that while perturbation theory predicts an increasing backreaction as more initial small-scale power is added, in fact the virialization of structure saturates the backreaction effect at the same level independently of the equality scale. This implies that backreaction is a small effect independently of initial conditions. Nevertheless, it may still contribute at the percent level to certain cosmological observables and therefore it cannot be neglected in precision cosmology.

Local measurements of the Hubble expansion rate are affected by structures like galaxy clusters or voids. Here we present a fully relativistic treatment of this effect, studying how clustering modifies the mean distance- (modulus-)redshift relation and its dispersion in a standard cold dark matter universe with a cosmological constant. The best estimates of the local expansion rate stem from supernova observations at small redshifts (0.01

If the B-mode signal in the cosmic microwave background polarization seen by the BICEP2 experiment is confirmed, it has dramatic implications for models of inflation. The result is also in tension with Planck limits on standard inflationary models. It is, therefore, important to investigate whether this signal can arise from alternative sources. If so, this could lessen the pressure on inflationary models and the tension with Planck data. We investigate whether vector and tensor modes from primordial magnetic fields can explain the signal. We find that, in principle, magnetic fields generated during inflation can indeed produce the required B mode, for a suitable range of energy scales of inflation. In this case, the primordial gravitational wave amplitude is negligible, so that there is no tension with Planck and no problems posed for current inflationary models. However, the simplest magnetic model is in tension with Planck limits on non-Gaussianity in the trispectrum. It may be possible to fine tune the magnetogenesis model so that this non-Gaussianity is suppressed. Alternatively, a weaker magnetic field can pass the non-Gaussianity constraints and allow the primordial tensor mode to be reduced to r ≃ 0.09, thus removing the tension with Planck data and alleviating the problems with simple inflationary models.

In braneworld cosmology the expanding Universe is realized as a brane moving through a warped higher-dimensional spacetime. Like a moving mirror causes the creation of photons out of vacuum fluctuations, a moving brane leads to graviton production. We show that, very generically, Kaluza-Klein (KK) particles scale like stiff matter with the expansion of the Universe and can therefore not represent the dark matter in a warped braneworld. We present results for the production of massless and KK gravitons for bouncing branes in five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. We find that for a realistic bounce the back reaction from the generated gravitons will be most likely relevant. This Letter summarizes the main results and conclusions from numerical simulations which are presented in detail in a long paper [M. Ruser and R. Durrer, arXiv:0704.0790].

We demonstrate that if k-essence can solve the coincidence problem and play the role of dark energy in the Universe, the fluctuations of the field have to propagate superluminally at some stage. We argue that this implies that successful k-essence models violate causality. It is not possible to define a time ordered succession of events in a Lorentz invariant way. Therefore, k-essence cannot arise as a low energy effective field theory of a causal, consistent high energy theory.

We show that the dipole of the luminosity distance is a useful observational tool which allows us to determine the Hubble parameter as a function of redshift H(z). We determine the number of supernovae needed to achieve a given precision for H(z) and to distinguish between different models for dark energy. We analyze a sample of nearby supernovae and find a dipole consistent with the cosmic microwave background at a significance of more than 2alpha.

In the light of the recent high quality data of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, several estimations of cosmological parameters have been published. We study to what extent these estimations depend on assumptions about the initial conditions of the cosmological perturbations, which are usually supposed to be adiabatic. We show that, for more generic initial conditions, not only the best fit values are very different but the allowed parameter range enlarges dramatically. This raises the question which cosmological information (matter content of the Universe vs physics of inflation) can be reliably extracted from these data.