We present the first results from the science demonstration phase for the Hi-GAL survey, the Herschel key program that will map the inner Galactic plane of the Milky Way in 5 bands. We outline our data reduction strategy and present some science highlights on the two observed 2 • × 2 • tiles approximately centered at l = 30 • and l = 59 • . The two regions are extremely rich in intense and highly structured extended emission which shows a widespread organization in filaments. Source SEDs can be built for hundreds of objects in the two fields, and physical parameters can be extracted, for a good fraction of them where the distance could be estimated. The compact sources (which we will call cores' in the following) are found for the most part to be associated with the filaments, and the relationship to the local beam-averaged column density of the filament itself shows that a core seems to appear when a threshold around A V ∼ 1 is exceeded for the regions in the l = 59 • field; a A V value between 5 and 10 is found for the l = 30 • field, likely due to the relatively higher distances of the sources. This outlines an exciting scenario where diffuse clouds first collapse into filaments, which later fragment to cores where the column density has reached a critical level. In spite of core L/M ratios being well in excess of a few for many sources, we find core surface densities between 0.03 and 0.5 g cm −2 . Our results are in good agreement with recent MHD numerical simulations of filaments forming from large-scale converging flows.

We summarize the utility of precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements as probes of the physics of inflation. We focus on the prospects for using CMB measurements to differentiate various inflationary mechanisms. In particular, a de tection of primordial B-mode polarization would demonstrate that inflation occurred at a very high energy scale, and that the inflaton traversed a super-Planckian distance in field space. We explain how such a detection or constraint would illuminate aspects of physics at the Planck scale. Moreover, CMB measurements can constrain the scale-dependence and non-Gaussianity of the primordial fluctuations and limit the possibility of a significant isocurvature contribution. Each such limit provides crucial information on the underlying inflationary dynamics. Finally, we quantify these considerations by presenting forecasts for the sensitivities of a future satellite experiment to the inflationary parameters. 10Reuse of AIP Publishing content is subject to the terms at: https://publishing.aip. Striking advances in observational cosmology over the past two decades have provided us with a consistent account of the form and composition of the universe. Now that key cosmological parameters have been determined to within a few percent, we anticipate a generation of experiments that move beyond adding precision to measurements of what the universe is made of, but instead help us learn why the universe has the form we observe. In particular, during the coming decade, observational cosmology will probe the detailed dynamics of the universe in the earliest instants after the Big Bang, and start to yield clues about the physical laws that governed that epoch. Future experiments will plausibly reveal the dynamics responsible both for the large-scale homogeneity and flatness of the universe, and for the primordial seeds of small-scale inhomogeneities, including our own galaxy.The leading theoretical paradigm for the initial moments of the Big Bang is inflation [1][2][3][4][5][6], a period of rapid accelerated expansion. Inflation sets the initial conditions for conventional Big Bang cosmology by driving the universe towards a homogeneous and spatially flat configuration, which accurately describes the average state of the universe. At the same time, quantum fluctuations in both matter fields and spacetime produce minute inhomogeneities [7][8][9][10][11][12]. The seeds that grow into the galaxies, clusters of galaxies and the temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are thus planted during the first moments of the universe's existence. By measuring the anisotropies in the microwave background and the large scale distribution of galaxies in the sky, we can infer the spectrum of the primordial perturbations laid down during inflation, and thus probe the underlying physics of this era. Any successful inflationary model will deliver a universe that is, on average, spatially flat and homogeneous -and one homogeneous universe looks very much like ano...

Assuming that dark matter is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) species X produced in the early Universe as a cold thermal relic, we study the collider signal of pp or pp →XX + jets and its distinguishability from standard-model background processes associated with jets and missing energy. We assume that the WIMP is the sole particle related to dark matter within reach of the LHC -a "maverick" particle -and that it couples to quarks through a higher dimensional contact interaction. We simulate the WIMP final-state signal XX + jets and dominant standard-model (SM) background processes and find that the dark-matter production process results in higher energies for the colored final state partons than do the standard-model background processes. As a consequence, the detectable signature of maverick dark matter is an excess over standard-model expectations of events consisting of large missing transverse energy, together with large leading jet transverse momentum and scalar sum of the transverse momenta of the jets. Existing Tevatron data and forthcoming LHC data can constrain (or discover!) maverick dark matter.

In an ongoing effort to identify and study high-mass protostellar candidates we have observed in various tracers a sample of 235 sources selected from the IRAS Point Source Catalog, mostly with δ < −30• , with the SEST antenna at millimeter wavelengths. The sample contains 142 Low sources and 93 High, which are believed to be in different evolutionary stages. Both sub-samples have been studied in detail by comparing their physical properties and morphologies. Massive dust clumps have been detected in all but 8 regions, with usually more than one clump per region. The dust emission shows a variety of complex morphologies, sometimes with multiple clumps forming filaments or clusters. The mean clump has a linear size of ∼0.5 pc, a mass of ∼320 M for a dust temperature T d = 30 K, an H 2 density of 9.5 × 10 5 cm −3 , and a surface density of 0.4 g cm −2 . The median values are 0.4 pc, 102 M , 4 × 10 4 cm −3 , and 0.14 g cm −2 , respectively. The mean value of the luminosity-to-mass ratio, L/M 99 L /M , suggests that the sources are in a young, pre-ultracompact Hii phase. We have compared the millimeter continuum maps with images of the mid-IR MSX emission, and have discovered 95 massive millimeter clumps non-MSX emitters, either diffuse or pointlike, that are potential prestellar or precluster cores. The physical properties of these clumps are similar to those of the others, apart from the mass that is ∼3 times lower than for clumps with MSX counterpart. Such a difference could be due to the potential prestellar clumps having a lower dust temperature. The mass spectrum of the clumps with masses above M ∼ 100 M is best fitted with a power-law dN/dM ∝ M −α with α = 2.1, consistent with the Salpeter (1955) stellar IMF, with α = 2.35. On the other hand, the mass function of clumps with masses 10 M < ∼ M < ∼ 120 M is better fitted with a power law of slope α = 1.5, more consistent with the mass function of molecular clouds derived from gas observations.