Cosmological data and indications for new physics
  Data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the South Pole Telescope
(SPT), combined with the nine-year data release from the WMAP satellite,
provide very precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
angular anisotropies down to very small angular scales. Augmented with
measurements from Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations surveys and determinations of
the Hubble constant, we investigate whether there are indications for new
physics beyond a Harrison-Zel'dovich model for primordial perturbations and the
standard number of relativistic degrees of freedom at primordial recombination.
All combinations of datasets point to physics beyond the minimal
Harrison-Zel'dovich model in the form of either a scalar spectral index
different from unity or additional relativistic degrees of freedom at
recombination (e.g., additional light neutrinos). Beyond that, the extended
datasets including either ACT or SPT provide very different indications: while
the extended-ACT (eACT) dataset is perfectly consistent with the predictions of
standard slow-roll inflation, the extended-SPT (eSPT) dataset prefers a
non-power-law scalar spectral index with a very large variation with scale of
the spectral index. Both eACT and eSPT favor additional light degrees of
freedom. eACT is consistent with zero neutrino masses, while eSPT favors
nonzero neutrino masses at more than 95% confidence.
