Related papers: A search for concentric rings with unusual varianc…
The angular distribution of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) in sky shows a dipole asymmetry, ascribed to the observer's motion (peculiar velocity of the solar system!), relative to the local comoving coordinates. The…
Recent results of the ESA Planck satellite have confirmed the existence of some anomalies in the statistical distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. One of the most intriguing anomalies is the Cold Spot, firstly…
In the present work, we study the largest structures of the CMB temperature measured by Planck in terms of the most prominent peaks on the sky, which, in particular, are located in the southern galactic hemisphere. Besides these large-scale…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB), carrying the inhomogeneous information of the very early universe, is of great significance for understanding the origin and evolution of our universe. However, observational CMB maps contain serious…
We develop a model for correlations of cosmic microwave background anisotropy on the largest angular scales, based on standard causal geometrical relationships in slow-roll inflation. Unlike standard models based on quantized field modes,…
In this work we investigate the standard deviation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature gradient field as a signature for a multiply connected nature of the Universe. CMB simulations of a spatially infinite universe model…
Several statistical anomalies in the CMB temperature anisotropies seem to defy the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic universe. In particular, a dipole modulation has been detected both in WMAP and Planck data. We adapt the…
Circular polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) offers a promising probe of the parity-violating physics of the early universe. In this paper, we propose a novel method to constrain the primordial circular polarization of…
Cosmological Birefringence (CB), a rotation of the polarization plane of radiation coming to us from distant astrophysical sources, may reveal parity violation in either the electromagnetic or gravitational sectors of the fundamental…
It is well known that our motion with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame introduces a large dipolar CMB anisotropy, with an amplitude ~beta=v/c~10^{-3}. In addition it should lead to a small breaking of statistical…
In a recent preprint ("CCC-predicted low-variance circles in the CMB sky and LCDM"), Gurzadyan and Penrose (2011) claim for the second time to find evidence for pre-Big Bang activity in the form of concentric circles of low variance in the…
Planck's Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization observations are the premier dataset for constraining cosmological models. Cosmic variance limited temperature at large and intermediate scales today dominates the…
Both WMAP and Planck data show a significant odd-multipole preference in the large scales of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. If this pattern originates from cosmological effects, then it can be considered a…
We use a high-accuracy computational code to investigate the precision with which cosmological parameters could be reconstructed by future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, in particular the two satellite missions MAP and…
Scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation in galaxy clusters induces a polarization signal proportional to the CMB quadrupole anisotropy at the cluster's location and look-back time. A survey of such remote quadrupole…
We investigate recent claims for a detection of "Hawking points" (positions on the sky with unusually large temperature gradients between rings) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps at the 99.98% confidence level. We…
Anomalies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) refer to features that have been observed, mostly at large angular scales, and which show some tension with the statistical predictions of the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. In this work, we…
Analyses of recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations have provided increasing indications for the existence of large scale anisotropy in the universe. Given the far reaching consequences of such an anisotropy for our…
We find a unique direction in the CMB sky around which giant rings have an anomalous mean temperature profile. This direction is in very close alignment with the afore measured anomalously large bulk flow direction. Using Monte Carlo…
The Cold Spot, with an unusually cold region surrounded by a hot ring, is a statistically significant anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) sky. In this work we assess whether different sets of multiple subvoids based on the…