Related papers: Cosmic Microwave Background Statistics for a Direc…
Statistical isotropy is often assumed in cosmology and should be tested rigorously against observational data. We construct simple quadratic estimators to reconstruct asymmetry in the primordial power spectrum from CMB temperature and…
Most of the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background relies on the assumption of statistical isotropy. However, given some recent evidence pointing against isotropy, as for instance the observed alignment of different multipoles on large…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
Inflationary cosmology provides a natural mechanism for the generation of primordial perturbations which seed the formation of observed cosmic structure and lead to specific signals of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background…
As a test of the standard inflationary cosmology, which generically predicts nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial curvature fluctuations, we perform Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo analysis to search for possible modulations in the power…
The origin of small deviations from statistical isotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - the so-called CMB anomalies - remains an open question in modern cosmology. In this work, we test statistical isotropy in Planck Data…
The two fundamental assumptions of the standard cosmological model - that the initial fluctuations are statistically isotropic and Gaussian - are rigorously tested using maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from the…
In inflationary models with minimal amount of gravity waves, the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations, $A_S^2(k)$, together with the basic cosmological parameters, completely specify the predictions for the cosmic microwave…
Several early Universe scenarios predict a direction-dependent spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations. This translates into the violation of the statistical isotropy of cosmic microwave background radiation. Previous searches for…
Accurate estimation of cosmological parameters from microwave background anisotropies requires high-accuracy understanding of the cosmological model. Normally, a power-law spectrum of density perturbations is assumed, in which case the…
We examine the constraints cosmological observations can place on any trans-Planckian corrections to the primordial spectrum of perturbations underlying the anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We focus on models of…
The Standard Inflationary model predicts an isotropic distribution of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations. Detection of deviations from statistical isotropy would call for a revision of the physics of the early…
The recent Planck data on the power spectrum of temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background marginally support deviations from the $\Lambda$CDM model at several multipoles. With a view towards current and forthcoming…
We propose and develop a formalism to describe and constrain statistically anisotropic primordial perturbations. Starting from a decomposition of the primordial power spectrum in spherical harmonics, we find how the temperature fluctuations…
It is often assumed that primordial perturbations are statistically isotropic, which implies, among other properties, that their power spectrum is invariant under rotations. In this article, we test this assumption by placing…
We consider the possibility that the primordial curvature perturbation is direction-dependent. To first order this is parameterised by a quadrupolar modulation of the power spectrum and results in statistical anisotropy of the CMB, which…
Polarization induced by cosmological scalar perturbations leads to a typical anisotropy pattern, which can best be analyzed in Fourier domain. This allows one to unambiguously distinguish cosmological signal of polarization from other…
In this work we explore the possibility of variations in the primordial scalar power spectrum around the power-law shape, as predicted by single-field slow-roll inflationary scenarios. We search for the trace of these fluctuations in a…
Full-sky maps of the cosmic microwave background temperature reveal a 7% asymmetry of fluctuation power between two halves of the sky. A common phenomenological model for this asymmetry is an overall dipole modulation of statistically…
Rotational invariance is a well-established feature of low-energy physics. Violations of this symmetry must be extremely small today, but could have been larger in earlier epochs. In this paper we examine the consequences of a small…