Related papers: The axis of evil - a polarization perspective
BICEP1 is a millimeter-wavelength telescope designed specifically to measure the inflationary B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) at degree angular scales. We present results from an analysis of the data acquired…
[Abridged] We have produced a cleaned map of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 3-year data using an improved foreground subtraction technique. We perform an internal linear combination (ILC) to subtract the Galactic foreground…
The first observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from NASA's \emph{Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe} (WMAP) led to finding `alignment' anomalies not expected from fluctuations in the isotropic cosmological model. We study…
We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg$^2$ of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using…
We confirm at the $5.7\sigma$ level previous studies reporting Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperatures being significantly lower around nearby spiral galaxies than expected in the $\Lambda$CDM model. Results from our earlier work was…
Observations of the polarization of the cosmic microwave backround (CMB) have the potential to place much tighter constraints on cosmological parameters than observations of the fluctuations in temperature alone. We discuss using CMB…
As the next step toward an improved large scale Galactic magnetic field model, we present a simple comparison of polarised synchrotron and thermal dust emission on the Galactic plane. We find that the field configuration in our previous…
The polarization of the CMB offers a potentially valuable probe of the physics of the early universe, specifically of the velocity of the photon-baryon fluid on the last scattering surface. Here we discuss qualitatively the correlations…
We explicate the origin of the temperature quadrupole in the adiabatic dark energy model and explore the mechanism by which scale invariant isocurvature dark energy perturbations can lead to its sharp suppression. The model requires…
As ever-more sensitive experiments are made in the quest for primordial CMB B Modes, the number of potentially significant astrophysical contaminants becomes larger as well. Thermal emission from interplanetary dust, for example, has been…
Inspired by a dipole asymmetric template for the CMB temperature map in the primordial scalar fluctuations observed by Planck at a large scale, we examine the contribution of a similar template for power asymmetry in modifying the linear…
We study the topology generated by the temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, as quantified by the number of components and holes, formally given by the Betti numbers, in the growing excursion sets. We…
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 introduce a pixel space method to detect dipole modulation or hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization. The method relies on the use of squared total polarized flux whose ensemble average picks…
We investigate large-angle scale temperature anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data and model the large-angle anomalies as the effect of the CMB quadrupole anisotropies…
The BICEP3 CMB Polarimeter is a small-aperture refracting telescope located at the South Pole and is specifically designed to search for the possible signature of inflationary gravitational waves in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).…
The scattering of temperature anisotropy quadrupole by free electrons in galaxy clusters leads to a now well-known polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations. Using multi-frequency polarization data, one can…
We revisit the alignments of the largest structures observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the seven and nine-year WMAP and first-year Planck data releases. The observed alignments -- the quadrupole with the octopole and…
Recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data confirm the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) quadrupole anomaly. We further elaborate our previous proposal that the quadrupole power can be naturally suppressed in axis-symmetric…
The statistical properties of the temperature anisotropies and polarization of the of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation offer a powerful probe of the physics of the early universe. In recent works a statistical procedure based…