Related papers: Polarized Spots in Anisotropic Open Universes
Motivated by the large-scale asymmetry observed in the cosmic microwave background sky, we consider a specific class of anisotropic cosmological models -- Bianchi type VII_h -- and compare them to the WMAP first-year data on large angular…
The properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarisation anisotropies measured by a static, off-centered observer located in a local spherically symmetric void, are described. In particular in this paper we…
We present a formalism for analyzing a full-sky temperature and polarization map of the cosmic microwave background. Temperature maps are analyzed by expanding over the set of spherical harmonics to give multipole moments of the two-point…
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mapped the distribution of temperature and polarization over the entire sky in five microwave frequency bands. These full-sky maps were used to obtain measurements of temperature and…
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…
Rapid progress has been made in observations of the temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). These observations have enabled cosmologists to characterize the state of the universe at recombination, and…
Since the first detection by the DASI experiment in 2002, measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have grown into an important role in testing our understanding of conditions in the early universe and…
We report the detection of polarized anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation with the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI), located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole research station. Observations in all four Stokes…
The presence of a dipolar statistical anisotropy in the spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations was reported by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and has recently been confirmed in the Planck 2013 analysis…
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 cosmic microwave background polarization is rich of cosmological information complementary to those from temperature anisotropies. Linear polarization can be decomposed uniquely in two components of opposite parities, called E and B.…
We test the statistical isotropy and Gaussianity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies using observations made by the Planck satellite. Our results are based mainly on the full Planck mission for temperature, but also…
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations and polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. We investigate the statistical isotropy (SI) of the CMB maps…
We present a brief review of the polarization properties of the cosmic microwave background in dark matter models for structure formation. Quite independently of the model parameters, the polarization level is expected to be $\sim 10%$ of…
We develop an analytic method and approximations to compute the polarization induced in the cosmic microwave background radiation on a wide range of angular scales by anisotropic Thomson scattering in presence of adiabatic scalar…
The properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps carry valuable cosmological information. Here we report the results of the analysis hot and cold CMB anisotropy spots in the BOOMERanG 150 GHz map in terms of number, area,…
Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…
We present a new framework for testing the isotropy of the Universe using cosmic microwave background data, building on the nested-sampling ANICOSMO code. Uniquely, we are able to constrain the scalar, vector and tensor degrees of freedom…
Full-sky CMB maps from the 2015 Planck release allow us to detect departures from global isotropy on the largest scales. We present the first searches using CMB polarization for correlations induced by a non-trivial topology with a…
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies have revealed a dipolar asymmetry in power at the largest scales, in apparent contradiction with the statistical isotropy of standard cosmological models. The…