Related papers: Question Isotropy
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenge---a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe. I then discuss the motivations…
All cosmological observations to date are consistent with adiabatic, Gaussian and nearly scale invariant initial conditions. These findings provide strong evidence for a particular symmetry breaking pattern in the very early universe (with…
We investigate the imprint of nonlinear matter condensations on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in an $\Omega=1$, Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model universe. Temperature anisotropies are obtained by numerically evolving matter…
We question the global universe isotropy by probing the alignment of local structures in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. The original method proposed relies on a steerable wavelet decomposition of the CMB signal on the…
I will review some results of observational cosmology which critically cast doubt upon the foundations of the standard cosmology: 1) The redshifts of the galaxies are due to the expansion of the Universe; 2) The cosmic microwave background…
We analyse the cosmological evolution of a generalised axion-like field that drives the late-time acceleration of the Universe. This model can exhibit tracking behaviour, which alleviates the coincidence problem. The cosmological…
We revise the statistical properties of the primordial cosmological density anisotropies that, at the time of matter radiation equality, seeded the gravitational development of large scale structures in the, otherwise, homogeneous and…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…
We consider the hypothesis that nonlocal, omnidirectional, causally-coherent quantum entanglement of inflationary horizons may account for some well-known measured anomalies of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy on large angular…
In the near future, observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies will provide accurate determinations of many fundamental cosmological parameters. In this paper, we analyse degeneracies among cosmological parameters to…
Cosmology and astroparticle physics give strongest possible evidence for the incompleteness of the Standard Model of particle physics. Leaving aside misterious dark energy, which may or may not be just the cosmological constant, two…
We review how the various large-scale data constrain cosmological parameters and, consequently, theories for the origin of large-scale structure in the Universe. We discuss the form of the power spectrum implied by the correlation data of…
A recent study of the rotation of the plane of polarization of light from 160 cosmological sources claims to find significant evidence for cosmological anisotropy. We point out methodological weaknesses of that study, and reanalyze the same…
Inflationary cosmology has, in the last few years,received a strong dose of support from observations. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field…
Homogeneity is a crucial, but poorly tested, assumption in cosmology. We introduce a new approach which allows us to place limits on the presence of localized structures within essentially our entire observable volume, using cosmic…
On the largest scales, the universe appears to be almost homogeneous and isotropic, adhering to the cosmological principle. In contrast, on smaller scales inhomogeneities and anisotropy become increasingly prominent, reflecting the origin,…
We generalize the model of solid inflation to an anisotropic cosmic solid. Barring fine tunings, the observed isotropy of the cosmological background and of the scalar two-point function isolate the icosahedral group as the only possible…
We demonstrate how to constrain the degree of absolute alignment of the total angular momenta of LIGO-Virgo binary black holes, looking for a special direction in space that would break isotropy. We also allow for inhomogeneities in the…
Gauge bosons associated to new gauge symmetries under which the standard model particles are not charged are predicted in many extensions of the standard model of particles and interactions. We show that under very general conditions, the…
The breakdown of statistical homogeneity and isotropy of cosmic perturbations is a generic feature of ultra large scale structure of the cosmos, in particular, of non trivial cosmic topology. The statistical isotropy (SI) of the Cosmic…