Related papers: Large scale vector modes and the first CMB tempera…
We investigate the impact of peculiar velocity effects due to the motion of the solar system relative to the microwave background (CMB) on high resolution CMB experiments. It is well known that on the largest angular scales the combined…
We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction…
Various effects produced by vector perturbations (vortical peculiar velocity fields) of a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background are considered. In the presence of this type of perturbations, the polarization vector rotates. A formula…
Several unexpected features have been observed in the microwave sky at large angular scales, both by WMAP an by Planck. Among those features is a lack of both variance and correlation on the largest angular scales, alignment of the lowest…
The low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy possess some strange properties like the alignment of the quadrupole and the octopole, and the extreme planarity or the extreme sphericity of some multipoles,…
We have studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) map looking for features beyond cosmological isotropy. We began by tiling the CMB variance map (which are produced by different smoothing scales) with stripes of different sizes along…
The recently re-discovered multipole vector approach to understanding the harmonic decomposition of the cosmic microwave background traces its roots to Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Taking Maxwell's directional derivative…
We examine all-sky cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps on large angular scales to compare their consistency with two scenarios: the standard inflationary quantum picture, and a distribution constrained to have a universal…
The B-mode polarization spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) may be the smoking gun of not only the primordial tensor mode but also of the primordial vector mode. If there exist nonzero vector-mode metric perturbations in the…
We analyze the behavior of linear perturbations in vector inflation. In contrast to the scalar field inflation, the linearized theory with vector fields contains couplings between scalar, vector and tensor modes. The perturbations decouple…
Several unexpected features are observed at large angular scales in the CMB temperature anisotropy measurements by both WMAP and Planck. These include the lack of both variance and correlation, alignment of the lowest multipole moments with…
In Luparello et al. 2023, a new and hitherto unknown CMB foreground was detected. A systematic decrease in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperatures around nearby large spiral galaxies points to an unknown interaction with CMB photons…
A number of scalar field models proposed as alternatives to the standard inflationary scenario involve contracting phases which precede the universe's present phase of expansion. An important question concerning such models is whether there…
We propose that several of the anomalies that have been observed at large angular scales in the CMB have a common origin in a cosmic bounce that took place before the inflationary era. The bounce introduces a new physical scale in the…
The motion of our solar system relative to the CMB rest frame leads to subtle distortions in the observed CMB sky map due to the aberration effect. Usually the corresponding peculiar velocity is determined from the CMB dipole but neglecting…
Several statistical anomalies in the CMB temperature anisotropies seem to defy the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic universe. In particular, a dipole modulation has been detected both in WMAP and Planck data. We adapt the…
We discuss how an extended foreground of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can account for the anomalies in the low multipoles of the CMB anisotropies. The distortion needed to account for the anomalies is consistent with a cold spot…
We present a method for the computation of the variance of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps on azimuthally symmetric patches using a fast convolution approach. As an example of the application of the method, we show…
At the largest angular scales the presence of a number of unexpected features has been confirmed by the latest measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Among them are the anomalous alignment of the quadrupole and octopole with…
The damping of primordial perturbations at small scales gives rise to distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Here, the dependence of the distortion on the different types of cosmological initial conditions is explored,…