Related papers: Cosmic Microwave Background Mini-review
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…
An introduction to topological defects in cosmology is given. We discuss their possible relevance for structure formation. Especial emphasis is given on the signature of topological defects in the spectrum of anisotropies in the cosmic…
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…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provides a remarkable window onto the early universe, revealing its composition and structure. In these lectures we review and discuss the physics underlying the main features of the CMB.
This work presents a summary of major cosmological results from the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite mission. The results include a precise measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation intensity, discovery and…
We derive updated Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) constraints on annihilating dark matter, and present forecasts for upcoming CMB surveys. We show that the addition of recent temperature, polarization, and lensing data from ground-based…
We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction…
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"…
The 2.725 K cosmic microwave background has played a key role in the development of modern cosmology by providing a solid observational foundation for constraining possible theories of what happened at very large redshifts and theoretical…
Most of the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background relies on the assumption of statistical isotropy. However, given some recent evidence pointing against isotropy, as for instance the observed alignment of different multipoles on large…
Cosmic microwave background anisotropies provide a vast amount of information on both structure formation in the universe and the background dynamics and geometry. The full physical content and detailed structure of anisotropies can be…
While the major contribution to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies are the sought-after primordial fluctuations produced at the surface of last scattering, other effects produce secondary fluctuations at lower redshifts.…
Weak lensing distortion of the background cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization patterns by the foreground density fluctuations is well studied in the literature. We discuss the gravitational lensing modification to…
The measurements of CMB anisotropy have opened up a window for probing the global topology of the universe on length scales comparable to and beyond the Hubble radius. For compact topologies, the two main effects on the CMB are: (1) the…
This set of lectures provides an overview of the basic theory and phenomenology of the cosmic microwave background. Topics include a brief historical review; the physics of temperature and polarization fluctuations; acoustic oscillations of…
We review the current status of experimental data for spectral distortions and angular anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background, as well as discussing the relevant physical processes. This is one of a number of new articles in…
Analysis of the Planck 2018 data set indicates that the statistical properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies are in excellent agreement with previous studies using the 2013 and 2015 data releases. In…
We examine the extent to which galactic and extragalactic foregrounds can hamper the detection of primordial Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. We limit our discussion to intermediate angular scales, $10^{\prime}\lsim \theta…
An enormous amount of observations on Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has been collected in the last decade, and much more data are expected in the near future from planned or operating satellite missions. These datasets are a…
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 3-year data confirm the ellipticity of anisotropies of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps, found previously for Boomerang and WMAP 1-year high sensitivity maps. The low noise level of the WMAP…