Related papers: Question Isotropy
The Cosmological Principle states that the universe is statistically isotropic and homogeneous on large length scales, typically $\gtrsim 70$Mpc. A detection of significant deviation would help us falsify the simplest models of inflation.…
Temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background offers a test of the fundamental symmetry of spacetime during cosmic inflation. Violation of rotational symmetry yields a distinct signature in the power spectrum of primordial…
Recent findings of the anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation are confusing for standard cosmology. Remarkably, this fact has been predicted several years ago in the framework of our model of the physical world.…
The resonant conversion of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons into axions within large-scale structure induces an anisotropic spectral distortion in CMB temperature maps. Applying state-of-the-art foreground cleaning techniques to…
Primordial quantum fluctuations produced by inflation are conventionally assumed to be statistically homogeneous, a consequence of translational invariance. In this paper we quantify the potentially observable effects of a small violation…
The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe is forcing us to examine the foundational aspects of the standard model of cosmology -- in particular, the fact that dark energy is a direct consequence of the homogeneity assumption. We…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role in cosmology. Besides precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model, observations have also established…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies have and will continue to revolutionize our understanding of cosmology. The recent discovery of the previously predicted acoustic peaks in the power spectrum has established a…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is extended to spacetimes displaying isotropic expansion but anisotropic curvature. The perturbed Einstein equation and Boltzmann equations for massless and massive particles are derived in a general…
We show that the difference between the theoretically expected and measured by WMAP amplitude of the quadrupole fluctuations of CMB can be related to the impact of the anisotropic curvature of the homogeneous universe dominated by the dark…
We discuss the cosmological evolution of matter sources with small anisotropic pressures. This includes electric and magnetic fields, collisionless relativistic particles, gravitons, antisymmetric axion fields in low-energy string…
Precision measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and of the clustering of large-scale structure have supposedly confirmed that the primordial density perturbation has a (nearly) scale-invariant spectrum. However…
The Cosmological Principle in it's various versions states that: (i) the Galaxy does not occupy a particular position, (ii) the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. This statement does not agree with the recent astronomical observations…
Radiation traversing the observable universe provides powerful ways to probe anisotropy of electromagnetic propagation. A controversial recent study claimed a signal of dipole character. Here we test a new and independent data set of 361…
Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contain a wealth of information about the past history of the universe and the present values of cosmological parameters. I ouline some of the theoretical advances of the last few years.…
Phase transitions in the early universe can readily create an observable stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a background necessarily contains anisotropies analogous to those of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
We present the results of a detailed study of how isocurvature axion fluctuations are converted into adiabatic metric perturbations through axion decay, and discuss the constraints on the parameters of pre-big bang cosmology needed for…
The Cosmological Principle, the combined assumptions of cosmological isotropy and homogeneity, underpins the standard model of Big Bang cosmology with which we interpret astronomical observations. A new test of isotropy over the redshift…
The two fundamental assumptions in cosmology are that the Universe is statistically homogeneous and isotropic when averaged on large scales. Given the big implication of these assumptions, there has been a lot of statistical tests carried…
I present a briefly summary of the current status of inflationary models versus topological defects scenarios, as the mechanisms which could have induced the initial density perturbations, which left an imprint on the cosmic microwave…