Related papers: The CMB cold spot: texture, cluster or void?
We use a WISE-2MASS-Pan-STARRS1 galaxy catalog to search for a supervoid in the direction of the Cosmic Microwave Background Cold Spot. We obtain photometric redshifts using our multicolor data set to create a tomographic map of the galaxy…
The Hubble constant estimated from the combined analysis of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and X-ray observations of galaxy clusters is systematically lower than those from other methods by 10-15 percent. We examine the origin of the…
Recent results of the ESA Planck satellite have confirmed the existence of some anomalies in the statistical distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. One of the most intriguing anomalies is the Cold Spot, firstly…
We propose a "feature-scattering" mechanism to explain the cosmic microwave background cold spot seen from WMAP and Planck maps. If there are hidden features in the potential of multi-field inflation, the inflationary trajectory can be…
A recent stacking analysis of Planck HFI data of galaxy clusters (Hurier 2016) allowed to derive the cluster temperatures by using the relativistic corrections to the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE). However, the temperatures of…
We use the analytical model recently introduced in Ref. \cite{lp92}, to investigate the statistics of temperature fluctuations on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), induced by topological defects. The cases of cosmic strings and…
In the present work, we study the largest structures of the CMB temperature measured by Planck in terms of the most prominent peaks on the sky, which, in particular, are located in the southern galactic hemisphere. Besides these large-scale…
The first and third year data releases from the WMAP provide evidence of an anomalous Cold Spot (CS) at galactic latitude b=-57deg and longitude l=209deg. We have examined the properties of the CS in some detail in order to assess its…
We introduce the numbers of hot and cold spots, $n_h$ and $n_c$, of excursion sets of the CMB temperature anisotropy maps as statistical observables that can discriminate different non-Gaussian models. We numerically compute them from…
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…
The "Cold Spot" in the CMB sky could be due to the presence of an anomalous huge spherical underdense region - a "Void" - of a few hundreds Mpc/h radius. Such a structure would have an impact on the CMB two-point (power spectrum) and…
The detection of a "Cold Spot" in the CMB sky could be explained by the presence of an anomalously large spherical underdense region (with radius of a few hundreds Mpc/h) located between us and the Last Scattering Surface. Modeling such an…
Single-field inflation, arguably the simplest and most compelling paradigm for the origin of our Universe, is strongly supported by the recent results of the Planck satellite and the BICEP2 experiment. The results from Planck, however, also…
The Cold Spot on the Cosmic Microwave Background could arise due to a supervoid at low redshift through the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. We imaged the region with MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope and present galaxy counts in…
Measurement of the acoustic peaks of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies has been instrumental in deciding the geometry and content of the universe. Acoustic peak positions vary in different parts of the sky due…
The hot gas in clusters of galaxies creates a distinctive spectral distortion in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) via the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. To first order, the shape of the spectral distortion is fixed, but relativistic…
CMB photons passing through a collapsing texture knot receive an energy shift, creating characteristic cold and hot spots on the sky. We calculate the anisotropy pattern produced by collapsing texture knots of arbitrary shape. The texture…
The Cosmic Microwave Background provides our most ancient image of the Universe and our best tool for studying its early evolution. Theories of high energy physics predict the formation of various types of topological defects in the very…
We reassess the evidence that WMAP temperature maps contain a statistically significant "cold spot" by repeating the analysis using simple circular top-hat (disk) weights, as well as Gaussian weights of varying width. Contrary to previous…
The fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) intensity due to the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect are the sum of a thermal and a kinetic contribution. Separating the two components to measure the peculiar velocity of galaxy…