Global fitting analysis on cosmological models after BICEP2

Understand

Recently, BICEP2 collaboration has released their results on the measurements of the CMB polarizations.

• In the framework of the $\Lambda$CDM with a power law form of the scalar primordial power spectrum, this new measurement on the B-mode puts a tight constraint on tensor/scalar ratio $r=0.2^{+0.07}_{-0.05}~(1\sigma)$, which however is in tension with the Planck limit, $r<0.11$ (95% C.L.).
• In this paper, we consider various extensions of the $\Lambda$CDM model by introducing extra cosmological parameters such as the equation state of dark energy $w$, the curvature of the universe $\Omega_k$, the running of the scalar power spectrum index $\alpha_s$, the sum of the neutrino mass $\Sigma m_{\nu}$, the effective number of neutrinos $N_{eff}$, the tensor power spectrum index $n_{t}$, then perform the global fit to the BICEP2, Planck and also the SN and BAO data.
• Our results show the cosmological parameters $\alpha_s$ and $n_t$ are highly and directly correlated with the tensor/scalar ratio $r$.