Related papers: Parity in the CMB: Space Oddity
We discuss all-sky convolution of the instrument beam with the sky signal in polarimetry experiments, such as the Planck mission which will map the temperature anisotropy and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). To account…
The presence of astrophysical emissions between the last scattering surface and our vantage point requires us to apply a foreground mask on CMB sky map, leading to large cut around the Galactic equator and numerous holes. Since many CMB…
We propose two efficient numerical methods of evaluating the luminosity distance in the spatially flat {\Lambda}CDM universe. The first method is based on the Carlson symmetric form of elliptic integrals, which is highly accurate and can…
We review the methodology for measurements of two point functions of the cosmological observables, both power spectra and correlation functions. For pseudo-$C_\ell$ estimators, we will argue that the window weighted overdensity field can…
The angular two-point correlation function of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as inferred from nearly all-sky maps, is very close to zero on large angular scales. A statistic invented to quantify this feature,…
This paper reviews the application of a novel methodology for analysing the isotropy of the universe by probing the alignment of local structures in the CMB. The strength of the proposed methodology relies on the steerable wavelet filtering…
We discuss the effects of finite sky coverage and the uncertainty in extracting information about the power spectrum from experiments on small angular scales. In general the cosmic variance is enhanced by a factor of $4\pi/A$, where $A$ is…
Most analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background spherical harmonic coefficients a_lm has focused on estimating the power spectrum C_l=<|a_lm|^2> rather than the coefficients themselves. We present a minimum-variance method for measuring a_lm…
We review the orientation of e+e- \to q\bar q g events in terms of the polar and azimuthal angles of the event plane w.r.t. the electron beam direction. The asymmetry of the azimuthal-angle distribution is, like the left-right…
Parity-violating extensions of Maxwell electromagnetism induce a rotation of the linear polarization plane of photons during propagation. This effect, known as cosmic birefringence, impacts on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)…
Strong foreground contamination in high resolution CMB data requires masking which introduces statistical anisotropies and renders a full maximum likelihood analysis numerically intractable. Standard analysis methods like the pseudo-C_l…
Accurate covariance matrices are required for a reliable estimation of cosmological parameters from pseudo-power spectrum estimators. In this work, we focus on the analytical calculation of covariance matrices. We consider the case of…
We describe a sampling method to estimate the polarized CMB signal from observed maps of the sky. We use a Metropolis-within-Gibbs algorithm to estimate the polarized CMB map, containing Q and U Stokes parameters at each pixel, and its…
Asymmetric beams can create significant bias in estimates of the power spectra from CMB experiments. With the temperature power spectrum many orders of magnitude stronger than the B-mode power spectrum any systematic error that couples 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…
An important, and potentially detectable, signature of a non-trivial topology for the universe is the presence of so called circles-in-the-sky in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Recent searches, confined to antipodal and nearly…
It is shown here how prior estimates on the local shape of the universe can be used to reduce, to a small region, the full parameter space for the search of circles in the sky. This is the first step towards the development of efficient…
The cosmic dipole anomaly, currently detected at a significance exceeding 5$\sigma$ in several independent survey poses a significant challenge to the standard model of cosmology. The Ellis & Baldwin formula provides a theoretical link…
We have studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) map looking for features beyond cosmological isotropy. We began by tiling the CMB variance map (which are produced by different smoothing scales) with stripes of different sizes along…
Weak lensing of the CMB changes the unlensed temperature anisotropy and polarization power spectra. Accounting for the lensing effect will be crucial to obtain accurate parameter constraints from sensitive CMB observations. Methods for…