ISW effect as probe of features in the expansion history of the Universe

Abstract

In this paper, using and implementing a new line of sight CMB code, called CMBAns [1], that allows us to modify H(z) for any given feature at any redshift we study the effect of changes in the expansion history of the Universe on the CMB power spectrum. Motivated by the detailed analytical calculations of the effects of the changes in H(z) on ISW plateau and CMB low multipoles, we study two phenomenological parametric form of the expansion history using WMAP data and through MCMC analysis. Our MCMC analysis shows that the standard ΛCDM cosmological model is consistent with the CMB data allowing the expansion history of the Universe vary around this model at different redshifts. However, our analysis also shows that a decaying dark energy model proposed in [2] has in fact a marginally better fit than the standard cosmological constant model to CMB data. Concordance of our studies here with the previous analysis showing that Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) and supernovae data (SN Ia) also prefer mildly this decaying dark energy model to ΛCDM, makes this finding interesting and worth further investigation.