Related papers: A Cosmic Microwave Background feature consistent w…
The potential role of cosmic topological defects has raised interest in the astrophysical community for many years now. In this set of notes, we give an introduction to the subject of cosmic topological defects and some of their possible…
Deviations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) frequency spectrum from a pure blackbody tell an exciting story about the thermal history of our Universe. In this paper we illustrate how well future CMB measurements might decipher this…
We investigate the global texture model of structure formation in cosmogonies with non-zero cosmological constant for different values of the Hubble parameter. We find that the absence of significant acoustic peaks and little power on large…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relic radiation of the Big Bang and as such it contains a wealth of cosmological information. Statistical analyses of the CMB, in conjunction with other cosmological observables, represent some of…
The Universe is the grandest conceivable scale on which the human mind can strive to understand nature. The amazing aspect of cosmology, the branch of science that attempts to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe, is that it…
The cosmic microwave background radiation defines a preferred cosmic rest frame, and inflationary cosmological theories predict that the microwave background temperature fluctuations should be statistically isotropic in this rest frame. For…
Recent cosmic microwave background data in temperature and polarization have reached high precision in estimating all the parameters that describe the current so-called standard cosmological model. Recent results about the integrated…
I explain the origin and evolution of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and argue that upcoming experiments will measure cosmological and fundamental parameters very accurately. Most of the paper focuses on present data,…
Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…
An extremely large void and a cosmic texture are two possible explanations for the cold spot seen in the cosmic microwave background. We investigate how well these two hypotheses can be tested with weak lensing of 21-cm fluctuations from…
We consider a perfectly homogeneous, isotropic and spatially flat universe which undergoes a sudden phase transition producing topological defects. We assume that these defects form a coherent network which scales like the background…
We consider a universe with a non-classical stringy topology that has fixed points. We concentrate on the simplest example, an orbifold point, and study its observable imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that an…
A milestone of modern cosmology was the prediction and serendipitous discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the radiation left over after decoupling from matter in the early evolutionary stages of the Universe. A prediction of…
Analyses of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation maps made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have revealed anomalies not predicted by the standard inflationary cosmology. In particular, the power of the…
Variations in $\Omega$, the total density of the Universe, leave a clear and distinctive imprint on the power spectrum of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This signature is virtually independent of other…
Observations of the Cosmic Microwave background have provided many of the most powerful constraints we have on cosmology and events in the early universe. The spectrum and isotropy of CBR have long been a pillar of Big Bang models. The…
In addition to its spectrum and temperature anisotropy, the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background is also expected to exhibit a low level of polarization. The spatial power spectrum of the polarization can provide details about the formation of…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
In this talk, I review some recent work on cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in an open universe. I emphasize that the observed CMB anisotropies are still consistent with a low value of $\Omega$, and I address the question of…
Suggestions have been made that the microwave background observed by COBE and WMAP and dubbed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) may have an origin within our own Galaxy or Earth. To consider the signal that may be correlated with Earth, a…