Related papers: Unavoidable CMB spectral features and blackbody ph…
Following the pioneering observations with COBE in the early 1990s, studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have focused on temperature and polarization anisotropies. CMB spectral distortions - tiny departures of the CMB energy…
Departures of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) frequency spectrum from a blackbody - commonly referred to as spectral distortions - encode information about the thermal history of the early Universe (redshift z < few x 10^6). While the…
The measurements of COBE/FIRAS have shown that the CMB spectrum is extremely close to a perfect blackbody. There are, however, a number of processes in the early Universe that should create spectral distortions at a level which is within…
The frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relatively untapped source of data which can allow us to peer beyond the surface of last scattering. Small deviations away from a perfect blackbody shape will encode…
Departures of the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from a perfect blackbody probe a fundamental property of the universe -- its thermal history. Current upper limits, dating back some 25 years, limit such spectral…
Since the measurements of COBE/FIRAS in the mid-90's we know that the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is extremely close to that of a perfect blackbody at an average temperature T0~2.726K. However, a number of…
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into account a very large variety of processes, still finding potentially measurable…
Voyage 2050 White Paper highlighting the unique science opportunities using spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). CMB spectral distortions probe many processes throughout the history of the Universe. Precision…
Spectral distortions of the CMB have recently experienced an increased interest. One of the inevitable distortion signals of our cosmological concordance model is created by the cosmological recombination process, just a little before…
The blackbody spectrum of CMB was created in the blackbody photosphere at redshifts z>2x10^6. At these early times, the Universe was dense and hot enough that complete thermal equilibrium between baryonic matter (electrons and ions) and…
Ever refined cosmological measurements have established the $\Lambda$CDM concordance model, with the key cosmological parameters being determined to percent-level precision today. This allows us to make explicit predictions for the spectral…
Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…
This work presents a detailed analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation intensity observations. The CMB is a relic of the Big Bang and its study greatly enhances our knowledge of cosmology. This work has led to new values for…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) traveled the cosmos long before it reached our telescopes today. Consequently, it is one of the best probes of fundamental processes in the early Universe that we could hope to observe. The cosmological…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a relict of the early universe. Its perfect 2.725K blackbody spectrum demonstrates that the universe underwent a hot, ionized early phase; its anisotropy (about 80 \mu K rms) provides strong evidence…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which permeates the entire Universe, is the radiation left over from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. On very large scales, the CMB radiation field is smooth and isotropic, but the existence of…
The damping of primordial perturbations at small scales gives rise to distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Here, the dependence of the distortion on the different types of cosmological initial conditions is explored,…
The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a powerful tool for constraining standard and non-standard physics in the primordial Universe. Previous studies mainly highlight spectral distortions (mu-, y- and r-type)…
The energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) allows constraining episodes of energy release in the early Universe. In this paper we revisit and refine the computations of the cosmological thermalization problem. For this…
A cosmological model, in which the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a thermal radiation of intergalactic dust instead of a relic radiation of the Big Bang, is revived and revisited. The model suggests that a virtually transparent local…