Related papers: The axis of evil - a polarization perspective
We introduce a new formalism to describe the polarization signal of galaxy clusters on the whole sky. We show that a sparsely sampled, half-sky map of the cluster polarization signal at $z\sim 1$ would allow to better characterize the very…
Polarized Galactic synchrotron emission is an undesirable foreground for cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments observing at frequencies $< 150$ GHz. We perform a combined analysis of observational data at 1.4, 2.3, 23, 30 and 33 GHz…
Understanding the statistical properties of synchrotron emission from our Galaxy is valuable from the perspective of observations targeting signals of cosmological origin, as well as for understanding physical processes in our Galaxy. In…
We have analyzed the available polarization surveys of the Galactic emission to estimate to what extent it may be a serious hindrance to forthcoming experiments aimed at detecting the polarized component of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)…
In this article we propose a novel test for statistical anisotropy of the CMB. The test is based on the fact, that the Galactic foregrounds have a remarcably strong symmetry with respect to their antipodal points and with respect to the…
Planets can emit polarized thermal radiation, just like brown dwarfs. We present calculated thermal polarization signals from hot exoplanets, using an advanced radiative transfer code that fully includes all orders of scattering by gaseous…
We study the polarization-polarization and polarization-temperature correlations in standard adiabatic scenarios for structure formation. Temperature anisotropies due to gravitational potential wells and oscillations in the…
In a concordant $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model, large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy due to linear perturbations in the local universe is not negligible. We explore a possible role of an…
The main goals of this study is to use the information from both WMAP intensity and polarization data to do a separation of the Galactic components, with a focus on the synchrotron and anomalous emissions. Our analysis is made at 23 GHz…
We test anisotropic dark energy models with the 7-year WMAP temperature observations data. In the presence of imperfect sources, due to large-scale gradients or anisotropies in the dark energy field, the CMB sky will be distorted…
The Planck mission detected a positive correlation between the intensity ($T$) and $B$-mode polarization of the Galactic thermal dust emission. The $TB$ correlation is a parity-odd signal, whose statistical mean vanishes in models with…
New physics in the early Universe could lead to parity-violation in the late Universe, sourcing statistics whose sign changes under point reflection. The best constraints on such phenomena have come from the Planck temperature fluctuations;…
The WMAP cold spot was found by applying spherical wavelets to the first year WMAP data. An excess of kurtosis of the wavelet coefficient was observed at angular scales of around 5 degrees. This excess was shown to be inconsistent with…
We use a simple model to investigate the effect of polarized Galactic foreground emission on the ability of planned CMB missions to detect and model CMB polarization. Emission from likely polarized sources (synchrotron and spinning dust)…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) are of great importance for cosmology. In previous work we had developed a pipeline for map-making independently of the WMAP team.…
We study the spectral and morphological characteristics of the diffuse Galactic emission in the WMAP temperature data using a template-based multi-linear regression, and obtain the following results. 1. We confirm previous observations of a…
We study inhomogeneities in the distribution of the excursion sets in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature maps obtained by the three years survey of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). At temperature thresholds…
We study the auto-correlation function of CMB polarization anisotropies and their cross correlation with temperature fluctuations as probe of the causal structure of the universe. Because polarization is generated at the last scattering…
Given an arbitrary function, we may construct symmetric and antisymmetric functions under a certain operation. Since statistical isotropy and homogeneity of our Universe has been a fundamental assumption of modern cosmology, we do not…
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,…