Browsing by Subject "cosmology"

The nature of dark matter (DM) is one of the outstanding problems of modern physics. The existence of dark matter implies physics beyond the Standard Model (SM), as the SM doesn’t contain any viable DM candidates. Dark matter manifests itself through various cosmological and astrophysical observations of the rotational speeds of galaxies, structure formation, measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and gravitational lensing of galaxy clusters. An attractive explanation of the observed dark matter density is provided by the WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) paradigm. In the following thesis I explore this idea within the well motivated Higgs portal framework. In particular, I explore three options for dark matter composition: a scalar field and U(1) and SU(2) hidden gauge Fields. I find that the WIMP paradigm is still consistent with the data. Even though it finds itself under pressure from direct detection experiments, it is not yet in crisis. Simple and well motivated WIMP models can fit the observed DM density without violating the collider and direct DM detection constraints.

As a full-grown science, cosmology is relatively young. Even though man has pondered the existence and structure of the universe throughout his history, the lack of actual observational data has prevented analytical research. Observational cosmology can be seen to have born in the 1920’s when Edwin Hubble discovered that the galaxies surrounding us are receding in all directions. This led to the conclusion that the universe around us is itself actually expanding. Expansion occurring isotropically in all directions indicates that the universe was once much denser and hotter. So hot that the matter in it has been completely ionized plasma. The decrease in temperature caused by the expansion is calculated to have caused the neutralizing of the plasma, recombination, over thirteen billion years ago. The instant is cosmologically remarkable, since light that until that moment scattered frequently from the charged particles now began to propagate freely. Initially at three thousand Kelvin temperature, the radiation has cooled down due to expansion and is now observed as the three Kelvin cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). First observations of the existence of the CMB date back to 1965. Since the background radiation has traveled its long journey relatively unchanged, its study can yield direct information on the conditions of the early universe. Theoretically it was expected, well before observational confirmation in 1992, that the CMB should have a structure that reflects those inhomogeneities, that have now undergone their ten billion years of evolution, to become the large scale structure we observe: galaxies, galaxy clusters and the evermore larger entities. In this thesis we examine, how the effects of two cosmological parameters, the matter and baryon densities of the universe, manifest in the pre-recombination dynamics and how these effects are reflected in the structure of the observed CMB anisotropy. Baryons are the “ordinary” matter all around us, protons and neutrons. The concept of “matter” is extended to include the unknown dark matter, the existence of which is only known through its gravitational effects. We will review the equations that are necessary to track the evolution of the primordial perturbations. By a computer program based on those equations we display how the early universe dynamics change with the values of the density parameters. Finally we will show how these effects are reflected in the angular power spectrum that describes the structure of the microwave background.