Related papers: A model-independent test for scale-dependent non-G…
Gaussian cosmic microwave background skies are fully specified by the power spectrum. The conventional method of characterizing non-Gaussian skies is to evaluate higher order moments, the n-point functions and their Fourier transforms. We…
ABRIDGED: We introduce and analyze a method for testing statistical isotropy and Gaussianity and apply it to the WMAP CMB foreground reduced, temperature maps, and cross-channel difference maps. We divide the sky into regions of varying…
We consider contributions to non-Gaussianity of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from remnants of post-inflationary phase transitions in the very early universe. Such signatures can optimistically be used to discover evidence of new…
We compute the fully non-linear Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies on scales larger than the horizon at last-scattering in terms of only the curvature perturbation, providing a generalization of the linear Sachs-Wolfe effect at…
We study the covariance in the angular power spectrum estimates of CMB fluctuations when the primordial fluctuations are non-Gaussian. The non-Gaussian covariance comes from a nonzero connected four-point correlation function -- or the…
Quantum gravity effects are expected to modify the primordial density fluctuations produced during inflation and leave their imprint on the cosmic microwave background observed today. We present a new analysis discussing whether these…
Non-gaussianity in the initial conditions of the universe is one of the most powerful mechanisms to discriminate among the competing theories of the early universe. Measurements using bispectrum of cosmic microwave background anisotropies…
We search the BOOMERanG maps of the anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) for deviations from gaussianity. In this paper we focus on analysis techniques in pixel-space, and compute skewness, kurtosis and Minkowski functionals…
The primordial non-Gaussian parameter fNL has been shown to be scale-dependent in several models of inflation with a variable speed of sound. Starting from a simple ansatz for a scale-dependent amplitude of the primordial curvature…
Measurement of the universe expansion rate through the cosmic chronometers proves to be a novel approach to understanding cosmic history. Although it provides a direct determination of the Hubble parameters at different redshifts, it…
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…
Recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations indicate that the temperature anisotropies arise from quantum fluctuations in the inflationary scenario. In the simplest inflationary models, the distribution of CMB temperature…
We discuss the requirements of good statistics for quantifying non-Gaussianity in the Cosmic Microwave Background. The importance of rotational invariance and statistical independence is stressed, but we show that these are sometimes…
Ever since WMAP announced its first results, different analyses have shown that there is weak evidence for several large-scale anomalies in the CMB data. While the evidence for each anomaly appears to be weak, the fact that there are…
Observations of the microwave background fluctuations suggest a scale-dependent amplitude asymmetry of roughly 2.5 sigma significance. Inflationary explanations for this 'anomaly' require non-Gaussian fluctuations which couple observable…
To efficiently probe primordial non-Gaussianity using Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data, we require theoretical predictions that are factorizable, \textit{i.e.}\ those whose kinematic dependence can be separated. This property does not…
Gaussianity of the cosmological perturbations in the universe is one of the key predictions of standard inflation, but it is violated by other models of structure formation such as topological defects. We present the first test of the…
We present the results of a set of cosmological N-body simulations with standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology but characterized by a scale-dependent primordial non-Gaussianity of the local type featuring a power-law dependence of the $f_{\rm…
We measure the skewness power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies optimized for a detection of the secondary bispectrum generated by the correlation of the CMB lensing potential with integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect…
We approximately compute the bispectrum induced on the CMB temperature by fluctuations in the standard recombination epoch. Of all the second order sources that can induce non-Gaussianity during recombination, we concentrate on those…