Related papers: Large-Angle CMB Suppression and Polarization Predi…
With polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) now detected, and confirmed by several independent experiments, the next goal is to characterise accurately its statistical properties. In these lecture notes we review the physical…
At the largest angular scales the presence of a number of unexpected features has been confirmed by the latest measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Among them are the anomalous alignment of the quadrupole and octopole with…
We present a joint cosmological analysis combining data from the Planck satellite, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope. We construct a unified likelihood that reproduces the measured temperature and polarisation…
We estimate the effect of the experimental uncertainty in the measurement of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on the extraction of cosmological parameters from future CMB surveys. We find that even for an ideal…
We introduce an extension of the standard inflationary paradigm on which the big bang singularity is replaced by an anisotropic bounce. Unlike in the big bang model, cosmological perturbations find an adiabatic regime in the past. We show…
We study the effects on cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies of spatial fluctuations of the fine-structure parameter between causally disconnected regions of the Universe at the time of recombination.…
Recent satellite observations have revealed significant anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, a phenomenon that had previously been detected but received limited attention due to its subtlety. With the advent of…
The first two years of COBE DMR observations of the CMB anisotropy are analyzed and compared with our previously published first year results. The results are consistent, but the addition of the second year of data increases the precision…
The scalar mode temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background has been derived in a spatially closed universe from two different methods. First, by following the photon trajectory after the last scattering and then from the…
We study the auto-correlation function of CMB polarization anisotropies and their cross correlation with temperature fluctuations as probe of the causal structure of the universe. Because polarization is generated at the last scattering…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) contain information which has been pivotal in establishing the current cosmological model. These data can also be used to test well-motivated additions to this model, such as cosmic…
We perform a detailed comparison of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropy with the predictions of quintessence cosmological models of…
WMAP and Planck may have uncovered several anomalies in the full CMB sky that could indicate possible new physics driving the growth of density fluctuations in the early Universe. These include an unusually low power at the largest scales…
We predict the polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons that results from a cosmic bubble collision. The polarization is purely E-mode, symmetric around the axis pointing towards the collision bubble, and has several…
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations and polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. We investigate the statistical isotropy (SI) of the CMB maps…
The advent of high resolution cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments now allows studies on the temperature fluctuations at scales corresponding to few arcminutes and below. Though the reported excess power at $\ell \sim 2000 - 6000$…
Large-scale magnetic fields affect the scalar modes of the geometry whose ultimate effect is to determine the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB in what follows). For the first time, a consistent numerical approach to the…
We develop the formalism necessary to study four-point functions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization fields. We determine the general form of CMB trispectra, with the constraints imposed by the assumption…
In a concordant $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model, large-angle Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy due to linear perturbations in the local universe is not negligible. We explore a possible role of an…
The origin of power asymmetry and other measures of statistical anisotropy on the largest scales of the universe, as manifested in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and large-scale structure data, is a long-standing open question in…