Related papers: Testing inflationary consistency relations by the …
Recent microwave polarization measurements from the BICEP2 experiment may reveal a long-sought signature of inflation. However, these new results appear inconsistent with the best-fit model from the Planck satellite. We suggest a…
CMB polarization provides a unique window into cosmological inflation; the amplitude of the B-mode polarization from last scattering is uniquely sensitive to the energetics of inflation. However, numerous systematic effects arising from…
CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) polarization observations test many aspects of cosmological models. Effective pseudoscalar-photon interaction(s) would induce a rotation of linear polarization of electromagnetic wave propagating with…
We present a new and especially powerful signature of cosmic strings and other topological or non-topological defects in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that even if defects contribute 1% or less in the…
Gravitational lensing information from the two and higher point statistics of the CMB temperature and polarization fields are intrinsically correlated because they are lensed by the same realization of structure between last scattering and…
We introduce the real space correlation function of $B$-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a probe of superhorizon tensor perturbations created by inflation. By causality, any non-inflationary mechanism for…
The next generation of Cosmic Microwave Background experiments will produce cosmic variance limited observations over a large fraction of sky and for a large range of multipoles. In this work we discuss different consistency tests that can…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of…
The observational status of inflation after the Planck 2013 and 2015 results and the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck joint analysis is discussed. These pedagogical lecture notes are intended to serve as a technical guide filling the gap…
The conventional $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model supplemented by the inflation concept describes the Universe very well. However, there are still a few concerns: new Planck data impose constraints on the shape of the inflaton potential,…
In this paper, we investigate some consequences of multiple-field inflation for the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). We derive expressions for the amplitudes, the spectral indices and the derivatives of the indices of the CMB…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
Inflationary cosmology has proved to be the most successful at predicting the properties of the anisotropies observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this essay we show that quantum field renormalization significantly…
Observers have demonstrated that it is now feasible to measure the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature at high redshifts. We explore the possible constraints on cosmology which might ultimately be derived from such measurements.…
We confront the predicted effects of hybrid inflationary models on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with three years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Using model selection, we compare the ability of a simple…
We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…
A detection of the primordial gravitational wave background is considered to be the ``smoking-gun '' evidence for inflation. While super-horizon waves are probed with cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization, the relic background will…
Measuring spectral distortions (SDs) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will provide new constraints on previously unexplored scales of the primordial power spectrum, allowing us to extend the probed parameter space by several orders…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is encoded with exactly the same cosmic information as the CMB's temperature anistropy. However, polarization has the additional promise of accurately probing the reionization…