Sci-Bytes> Hot Paper in Physics
Week of February 13, 2011
E. Komatsu, et al., "Five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations: Cosmological interpretation," Astronomical Journal Supplement Series, 180(2): 330-76, February 2009.
[Author's affiliations: 14 U.S., U.K., and Canadian institutions]
From the Abstract: "The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 5-year data provide stringent limits on deviations from the minimal, six-parameter, cold dark matter model. We report these limits and use them to constrain the physics of cosmic inflation via Gaussianity, adiabaticity, the power spectrum of primordial fluctuations, gravitational waves, and spatial curvature. We also constrain models of dark energy via its equation of state, parity-violating interaction, and neutrino properties, such as mass and the number of species. We detect no convincing deviations from the minimal model....We obtain tight, simultaneous limits on the (constant) equation of state of dark energy and the spatial curvature of the universe: -0.14 < 1 + w(0) < 0.12 (95% CL) and -0.0179 < Omega(k) < 0.0081 (95% CL). We provide a set of "WMAP distance priors," to test a variety of dark energy models with spatial curvature. We test a time-dependent w with a present value constrained as -0.33 < 1 + w(0) < 0.21 (95% CL). Temperature and dark matter fluctuations are found to obey the adiabatic relation to within 8.9% and 2.1% for the axion-type and curvaton-type dark matter, respectively. The power spectra of TB and EB correlations constrain a parity-violating interaction, which rotates the polarization angle and converts E to B. The polarization angle could not be rotated more than -5 degrees.9 < Delta alpha < 2 degrees.4 (95% CL) between the decoupling and the present epoch. We find the limit on the total mass of massive neutrinos of Sigma m(v) < 0.67 eV (95% CL), which is free from the uncertainty in the normalization of the large-scale structure data. The number of relativistic degrees of freedom (dof), expressed in units of the effective number of neutrino species, is constrained as N-eff = 4.4 +/- 1.5 (68%), consistent with the standard value of 3.04. Finally, quantitative limits on physically-motivated primordial non-Gaussianity parameters are -9 < f(NL)(local) < 111 (95% CL) and -151 < f(NL)(equil) < 253 (95% CL) for the local and equilateral models, respectively."
This 2009 report from Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series was cited 101 times in current journal articles indexed by Clarivate during September-October 2010. With the latest tally, this report now extends its run as the most-cited physics paper published in the last two years (excluding reviews) to nine consecutive bimonthly periods. Prior to the most recent two-month count, citations to the paper have accrued as follows:
July-August 2010: 143 citations
May-June 2010: 173
March-April 2010: 144
January-February 2010: 126
November-December 2009: 132
September-October 2009: 156
July-August 2009: 138
May-June 2009: 143
March-April 2009: 48
January-February 2009: 3
Total citations to date: 1,307
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