Related papers: Diffuse microwave emission of the interstellar med…
A formalism for describing an all-sky map of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background is presented. The polarization pattern on the sky can be decomposed into two geometrically distinct components. One of these components is not…
Following the detection of polarized diffuse Galactic emission in 1962 a number of surveys were undertaken at low frequencies in the following years resulting in important insights on the local magnetic field, polarization of the giant…
We discuss statistical and physical properties of cosmic microwave background polarization, both in Fourier and in real space. The latter allows for a more intuitive understanding of some of the geometric signatures. We present expressions…
In addition to its spectrum and temperature anisotropy, the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background is also expected to exhibit a low level of polarization. The spatial power spectrum of the polarization can provide details about the formation of…
We evaluate the expected level of foreground contamination to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarised radiation, focusing on the diffuse emission from our own Galaxy. In particular, we perform a first attempt to simulate an all sky…
We review the present knowledge of the diffuse Galactic synchrotron emission in polarisation. At microwave frequencies, we assess the expected contamination to the CMB polarisation angular power spectrum, for $E$ and $B$ modes, as expected…
We briefly review our work about the polarized foreground contamination of the Cosmic Microwave Background maps. We start by summarizing the main properties of the polarized cosmological signal, resulting in "electric" (E) and "magnetic"…
Using the Archeops and WMAP data we perform a study of the anti-center Galactic diffuse emissions - thermal dust, synchrotron, free-free and anomalous emission - at degree scales. The high frequency data are used to infer the thermal dust…
We discuss the degree to which radio propagation measurements diagnose conditions in the ionized gas of the interstellar medium (ISM). The "signal generators" of the radio waves of interest are extragalactic radio sources (quasars and radio…
We aim to present a tutorial on the detection, parameter estimation and statistical analysis of compact sources (far galaxies, galaxy clusters and Galactic dense emission regions) in cosmic microwave background observations. The topic is of…
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…
Observations of cosmic microwave background polarisation, essential for probing a potential phase of inflation in the early universe, suffer from contamination by polarised emission from the Galactic interstellar medium. This work combines…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
The WMAP team has produced a foreground map that can account for most of the low-frequency Galactic microwave emission in the WMAP maps, tentatively interpreting it as synchrotron emission. Finkbeiner and collaborators have challenged these…
Electrons densities in different locations of our galaxy are obtained in pulsar astronomy by dividing the dispersion measure (DM) by the distance of the pulsar to Earth. The properties of the interstellar plasma are related to its heating.…
This article gives an overview of the constitution, physical conditions and observables of dust in the interstellar medium of nearby galaxies. We first review the macroscopic, spatial distribution of dust in these objects, and its…
Much recent work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has focussed on the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies and particularly on the recovery of cosmological parameters from acoustic peaks in the power spectrum. However,…
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…
A period of inflation in the early universe produces a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational waves over a huge range in wavelength. If the amplitude of this gravitational wave background is large enough to be detectable with…
We investigate the nature of the diffuse Galactic emission in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) temperature anisotropy data. Substantial dust-correlated emission is observed at all WMAP frequencies, far exceeding the expected…