Related papers: The CMB cold spot: texture, cluster or void?

[Abridged] We study the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect associated with superclusters of galaxies using the MareNostrum Universe SPH simulation. We consider superclusters similar to the Corona Borealis Supercluster…

The discrepancy between the amplitudes of matter fluctuations inferred from Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) cluster number counts, the primary temperature, and the polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) measured by the…

The hot electrons in the intra-cluster medium produce a spectral distorsion of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) black body emission, the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (tSZ). This characteristic spectral distorsion is now commonly…

As an alternative explanation of the dimming of distant supernovae it has recently been advocated that we live in a special place in the Universe near the centre of a large void described by a Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) metric. The…

The non-Gaussian cold spot detected in wavelet space in the WMAP 1-year data, is detected again in the coadded WMAP 3-year data at the same position (b = -57, l = 209) and size in the sky (around 10 degrees). The present analysis is based…

We present an extensive frequentist analysis of the one-point statistics (number, mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis) and two-point correlation functions determined for the local extrema of the cosmic microwave background temperature…

The full sky measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies by $\textit{WMAP}$ and $\textit{Planck}$ have highlighted the presence of several unexpected isotropy-breaking features on the largest angular…

We present high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of the degree and direction of polarisation imprinted on the CMB by the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in the the line of sight to massive galaxy clusters. We focus on two contributions which…

The magnification of distant sources by mass clumps at lower ($z \leq 1$) redshifts is calculated analytically. The clumps are initially assumed to be galaxy group isothermal spheres with properties inferred from an extensive survey. The…

We propose an improved methodology to constrain spatial variations of the fine structure constant using clusters of galaxies. We use the {\it Planck} 2013 data to measure the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect at the location of 618 X-ray…

We discuss the real-space moments of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) due to weak gravitational lensing by intervening large-scale structure. We show that if the probability distribution function of…

The measurement of angular diameter distance to galaxy clusters, through combined Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect data with X-ray emission observations, is now a well-known probe of cosmology. Using a combination of SZ data and a map of the…

We predict the polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons that results from a cosmic bubble collision. The polarization is purely E-mode, symmetric around the axis pointing towards the collision bubble, and has several…

WMAP's detection of high electron-scattering optical depth suggests substantial star formation at high redshift z~17 +/- 5. On the other hand, the recovered sigma_8 ~ 0.84 +/-0.04 disfavors a cluster Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) origin for the…

Study of the primary anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can be used to determine the cosmological parameters to a very high precision. The power spectrum of the secondary CMB anisotropies due to the thermal…

The observed relationship between X-ray luminosity and temperature of the diffuse intercluster medium clearly shows the effect of nongravitational heating on the formation of galaxy clusters. Quasar feedback into the intergalactic medium…

One of the most powerful tools to probe the existence of cosmic defects in the early universe is through the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. It is well known that computations with causal sources are more involved than the…

The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect is a spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) resulting from inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons with electrons in the medium of galaxy clusters. The spectrum of the tSZ…

The strong dependence of the mass variance parameter, sigma_8, on the adopted cluster mass-temperature relation is explored. A recently compiled X-ray cluster catalog and various mass-temperature relations are used to derive the…

Galaxy cluster surveys based on the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) mapping are expected from ongoing experiments. Such surveys are anticipated to provide a significant amount of information relevant to cosmology from the number counts…