Satellite design parameters for detecting coherence in the microwave sky
Abstract
Recently it has been realized that observations of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can reveal very interesting information about the degree of coherence exhibited by the perturbations at early times. This fact should allow sufficiently detailed observations to clearly differentiate among several competing models of structure formation. We study the mission parameters required for a satellite to address the issue of coherence. Our results emphasize the importance of a small beamwidth, and support the cases for the PSI, FIRE and COBRAS/SAMBA satellite proposals (in increasing order of resolving power). Design parameters for a fourth proposal, MAP, have not been made available.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9602040,
title = {Satellite design parameters for detecting coherence in the microwave sky},
author = {Andreas Albrecht and Benjamin D. Wandelt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9602040},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
uuencoded gzipped tarred Latex and PostScript files, 9 pages, 5 figures. Minor improvements have been made to the style. Latex and postscript versions also available at http://euclid.tp.ph/Papers/index.html