Abstract: New measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by the Planck mission have greatly increased our knowledge about the universe. Dark radiation, a weakly interacting component of radiation, is one of the important ingredients in our cosmological model which is testable by Planck and other observational probes. At the moment, the possible existence of dark radiation is an unsolved question. For instance, the discrepancy between the value of the Hubble constant, H-0, inferred from the Planck data and local measurements of H-0 can to some extent be alleviated by enlarging the minimal ACDM model to include additional relativistic degrees of freedom. From a fundamental physics point of view, dark radiation is no less interesting. Indeed, it could well be one of the most accessible windows to physics beyond the standard model, for example, sterile neutrinos. Here, we review the most recent cosmological results including a complete investigation of the dark radiation sector in order to provide an overview of models that are still compatible with new cosmological observations. Furthermore, we update the cosmological constraints on neutrino physics and dark radiation properties focusing on tensions between data sets and degeneracies among parameters that can degrade our information or mimic the existence of extra species.

Abstract: Inflation predicts primordial scalar perturbations with a nearly scale-invariant spectrum and a spectral index approximately unity [the Harrison-Zel'dovich (HZ) spectrum]. The first important step for inflationary cosmology is to check the consistency of the HZ primordial spectrum with current observations. Recent analyses have claimed that a HZ primordial spectrum is excluded at more than 99% c. l. Here we show that the HZ spectrum is only marginally disfavored if one considers a more general reionization scenario. Data from the Planck mission will settle the issue.

Abstract: Using some of the latest cosmological data sets publicly available, we derive the strongest bounds in the literature on the sum of the three active neutrino masses, M-nu, within the assumption of a background flat Lambda CDM cosmology. In the most conservative scheme, combining Planck cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) data, as well as the up-to-date constraint on the optical depth to reionization (tau), the tightest 95% confidence level upper bound we find is M-nu < 0.151 eV. The addition of Planck high-l polarization data, which, however, might still be contaminated by systematics, further tightens the bound to M-nu < 0.118 eV. A proper model comparison treatment shows that the two aforementioned combinations disfavor the inverted hierarchy at similar to 64% C.L. and similar to 71% C.L., respectively. In addition, we compare the constraining power of measurements of the full- shape galaxy power spectrum versus the BAO signature, from the BOSS survey. Even though the latest BOSS full-shape measurements cover a larger volume and benefit from smaller error bars compared to previous similar measurements, the analysis method commonly adopted results in their constraining power still being less powerful than that of the extracted BAO signal. Our work uses only cosmological data; imposing the constraint M-nu > 0.06 eV from oscillations data would raise the quoted upper bounds by O(0.1 sigma) and would not affect our conclusions.

Abstract: Recent cosmic microwave background measurements at high multipoles from the South Pole Telescope and from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope seem to disagree in their conclusions for the neutrino and dark radiation properties. In this paper we set new bounds on the dark radiation and neutrino properties in different cosmological scenarios combining the ACT and SPT data with the nine-year data release of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP-9), baryon acoustic oscillation data, Hubble Telescope measurements of the Hubble constant, and supernovae Ia luminosity distance data. In the standard three massive neutrino case, the two high multipole probes give similar results if baryon acoustic oscillation data are removed from the analyses and Hubble Telescope measurements are also exploited. A similar result is obtained within a standard cosmology with N-eff massless neutrinos, although in this case the agreement between these two measurements is also improved when considering simultaneously baryon acoustic oscillation data and Hubble Space Telescope measurements. In the N-eff massive neutrino case the two high multipole probes give very different results regardless of the external data sets used in the combined analyses. When considering extended cosmological scenarios with a dark energy equation of state or with a running of the scalar spectral index, the evidence for neutrino masses found for the South Pole Telescope in the three neutrino scenario disappears for all the data combinations explored here. Again, adding Hubble Telescope data seems to improve the agreement between the two high multipole cosmic microwave background measurements considered here. In the case in which a dark radiation background with unknown clustering properties is also considered, SPT data seem to exclude the standard value for the dark radiation viscosity c(vis)(2) = 1/3 at the 2 sigma C.L., finding evidence for massive neutrinos only when combining SPT data with baryon acoustic oscillation measurements.

Abstract: We examine the impact of a nonminimal coupling of the inflaton to the Ricci scalar, 1/2 xi R phi(2), on the inflationary predictions. Such a nonminimal coupling is expected to be present in the inflaton Lagrangian on fairly general grounds. As a case study, we focus on the simplest inflationary model governed by the potential V proportional to phi(2), using the latest combined 2015 analysis of Planck and the BICEP2/Keck Array. We find that the presence of a coupling xi is favored at a significance of 99% C.L., assuming that nature has chosen the potential V proportional to phi(2) to generate the primordial perturbations and a number of e-foldings N = 60. Within the context of the same scenario, we find that the value of xi is different from zero at the 2 sigma level. When considering the cross-correlation polarization spectra from the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck, a value of r = 0.038(-0.030)(+0.039) is predicted in this particular nonminimally coupled scenario. Future cosmological observations may therefore test these values of r and verify or falsify the nonminimally coupled model explored here.