Related papers: Giant Rings in the CMB Sky
Since the very first observations, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has revealed on large-scales unexpected features known as anomalies, which challenge the standard $\Lambda$ cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmological model. One…
Quantum mechanical metric fluctuations during an early inflationary phase of the universe leave a characteristic imprint in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The amplitude of this signal depends on the energy scale…
The first and third year data releases from the WMAP provide evidence of an anomalous Cold Spot (CS) at galactic latitude b=-57deg and longitude l=209deg. We have examined the properties of the CS in some detail in order to assess its…
Theories for new particle and early-Universe physics abound with pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone fields that arise when global symmetries are spontaneously broken. The coupling of these fields to the Chern-Simons term of electromagnetism may give…
The Milky Way is surrounded by a hot diffuse circumgalactic medium (CGM) with temperatures of millions of degrees. Recent X-ray observations with the eROSITA satellite discovered a significant temperature asymmetry of this hot CGM, with the…
We present a new technique for constraining the topology of the universe. The method exploits the existence of correlations in the phases of the spherical harmonic coefficients of the CMB temperature pattern associated with matched pairs of…
Recent Planck measurements show some CMB anomalies on large angular scales, which confirms the early observations by WMAP. We show that an inflationary model, in which before the slow-roll inflation the Universe is in a superinflationary…
Initial conditions in cosmology in the form of the microcanonical density matrix of the Universe predict a thermal nature of the primordial CMB power spectrum with a nonzero temperature of the resulting relict temperature distribution. This…
Several unexpected features are observed at large angular scales in the CMB temperature anisotropy measurements by both WMAP and Planck. These include the lack of both variance and correlation, alignment of the lowest multipole moments with…
The lack of power at large angular scales in the CMB temperature anisotropy pattern is a feature known to depend on the size of the Galactic mask. Not only the large scale anisotropy power in the CMB is lower than the best-fit $\Lambda$CDM…
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…
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…
We consider the dynamical evolution of an interstellar cloud that is initially in thermal equilibrium in the warm phase and is then subjected to a sudden increase in the pressure of its surroundings. We find that if the initial plasma beta…
We investigate a framework aiming to provide a common origin for the large-angle anomalies detected in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which are hypothesized as the result of the statistical inhomogeneity developed by different…
Quantum fluctuations during inflation may be responsible for temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Observations of CMB anisotropies can be used to falsify many currently popular models. In this paper we discuss…
We have compared the bulk flow of recent large-scale peculiar velocity surveys (SMAC, SC, Lauer and Postman, Willick, EFAR and Tonry's SNIa sample) to each other, allowing for the errors due to sparse sampling. We conclude that, contrary to…
Tangled, primordial cosmic magnetic fields create small rotational velocity perturbations on the last scattering surface (LSS) of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). Such perturbations can contribute significantly to the CMBR…
According to the most popular scenario, the early Universe should have experienced an accelerated expansion phase, called Cosmological Inflation, after which the standard Big Bang Cosmology would have taken place giving rise to the…
Chandra LETG+HRC-S and XMM-Newton RGS spectra of H-like C and N formed in the corona of the lambda And primary star, a mildly metal-poor G8 III-IV first ascent giant that completed dredge-up ~50 Myr ago, have been used to make a precise…
We argue that the anomalous power asymmetry observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) may have originated in a cosmic bounce preceding inflation. In loop quantum cosmology (LQC) the big bang singularity is generically replaced by a…