Related papers: A Test of the Copernican Principle
Upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys will soon make the first detection of the polarized Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, the linear polarization generated by the scattering of CMB photons on the free electrons present in collapsed…
We perform a detailed comparison of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropy with the predictions of quintessence cosmological models of…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is encoded with exactly the same cosmic information as the CMB's temperature anistropy. However, polarization has the additional promise of accurately probing the reionization…
The Milky Way can act as a large-scale weak gravitational lens of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We study this effect using a photon ray-tracing code and a Galactic mass distribution with disk, bulge and halo components. For an…
Cosmological structures grow differently in theories of gravity which are modified as compared to Einstein's General relativity (GR). Cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuation patterns at the last scattering surface are lensed by these…
This paper presents a novel approach to constrain the $\mu$- and y- distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) using the COBE/FIRAS data. The analysis draws from the concept of blackbody radiation inversion (BRI), a mathematical…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)is a powerful observational tool at hand for modern cosmology. It allows to break the degeneracy of fundamental cosmological parameters one cannot obtain using only anisotropy data…
First, we establish which measures of large-scale perturbations are least afflicted by gauge artifacts and directly map the apparent evolution of inhomogeneities to local interactions of cosmological species. Considering nonlinear and…
Most of the cosmological information extracted from the CMB has been obtained through the power spectrum, however there is much more to be learnt from the statistical distribution of the temperature random field. We review some recent…
This Science White Paper, prepared in response to the ESA Voyage 2050 call for long-term mission planning, aims to describe the various science possibilities that can be realized with an L-class space observatory that is dedicated to the…
The near-isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is considered to be the strongest indication for the homogeneity and isotropy of the universe, a cornerstone of most cosmological analysis. We derive new theorems which extend the…
We use Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations together with the Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) weak lensing results to derive constraints on a range of cosmological parameters. This particular choice of observations is motivated…
Every cosmology lecturer these days is confronted with teaching the modern cosmological standard model $\Lambda$CDM, and there are many approaches to do this. However, the danger is imminent that it is presented to students as something set…
Although the new era of high precision cosmology of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation improves our knowledge to understand the infant as well as the presentday Universe, it also leads us to question the main assumption of the…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to search for parity-violating processes like that predicted by a Chern-Simons coupling to a light pseudoscalar field. Such an interaction rotates $E$ modes into $B$…
The study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a rapidly maturing field. In remarkable advances in the past two years, experiments have begun to probe the detailed structure of the CMB angular spectrum thereby providing insight into…
The last years have been an exciting period for the field of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) research. With recent CMB balloon-borne and ground-based experiments we are entering a new era of 'precision' cosmology that enables us to…
We evaluate the ability of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments to measure the power spectrum of large scale structure using quadratic estimators of the weak lensing deflection field. We calculate the sensitivity of upcoming…
The properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation must be different in flat, positively and negatively curved universes. This fact leads to a direct way of determining the geometry of the universe. The signature of the…
If the voids that we see today in the distribution of galaxies existed at recombination, they will leave an imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). On the other hand, if these voids formed much later, their effect on the CMB will…