Related papers: CMBPol Mission Concept Study: A Mission to Map our…
The CMB polarization promises to unveil the dawn of time measuring the gravitational wave background emitted by the Inflation. The CMB signal is faint, however, and easily contaminated by the Galactic foreground emission, accurate…
This review describes the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 and its impact on cosmology in the 50 years that followed. This discovery has established the Big Bang model of the Universe and the analysis of its…
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) is an invaluable probe of the conditions of the early universe. Recent measurements of its spatial anisotropy have allowed accurate determinations of several fundamental cosmological…
Inflation as the leading paradigm depicting the very early universe physics could leave imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Using currently available CMB observations, we give the tightest constraints on inflation…
I discuss how parameters describing inflation in the very early universe may be related to primordial perturbation spectra. Precision observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) such as those provided by the WMAP…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a snapshot of the early Universe when matter began to become structured and has been the focus of several recent observational campaigns. In this Perspective, we discuss the results from these…
The temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a window back to the physics of the early universe. They encode the nature of the initial fluctuations and so can reveal much about the…
We report on our knowledge of Galactic foregrounds, as well as on how a CMB satellite mission aiming at detecting a primordial B-mode signal (CMBPol) will contribute to improving it. We review the observational and analysis techniques used…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of…
Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background by large-scale structure in the late universe is both a source of cosmological information and a potential contaminant of primordial gravity waves. Because lensing imprints growth of…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a precious window on fundamental physics at very high energy scales, possibly including quantum gravity, GUTs and supersymmetry. The CMB has already enabled defect-based rivals to inflation to…
The DASI discovery of CMB polarization, confirmed by WMAP, has opened a new chapter in cosmology. Most of the useful information about inflationary gravitational waves and reionization is on large angular scales where Galactic foreground…
Recent results from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments verify several of the predictions of inflation, while ruling out a number of alternative structure-formation scenarios. Given the successes of the theory, the obvious next…
We explore a model of the early universe in which the inflationary epoch is preceded by a cosmic bounce, and argue that this scenario provides a common origin to several of the anomalous features that have been observed at large angular…
The recently detected polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) holds the potential for revealing the physics of inflation and gravitationally mapping the large-scale structure of the universe, if so called B-mode signals below…
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a unique opportunity for a direct study of the primordial cosmic plasma at redshift z ~1000. The angular power spectra of temperature and polarisation fluctuations are…
We summarize existing constraints on the epoch of reionization and discuss the observational probes that are sensitive to the process. We focus on the role large scale polarization can play. Polarization probes the integrated optical depth…
We forecast the scientific capabilities to improve our understanding of cosmic inflation of CORE, a proposed CMB space satellite submitted in response to the ESA fifth call for a medium-size mission opportunity. The CORE satellite will map…
We discuss upcoming opportunities with cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations during the post-WMAP era. The curl-modes of CMB polarization probe inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs). While a significant source of confusion is…