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We review the constraints given by the linear matter power spectra data on cosmological and bias parameters, comparing the data from the PSCz survey (Hamilton et al., 2000) and from the matter power spectrum infered by the study of Lyman…
We investigate the hemispherical power asymmetry observed in the CMBR by attributing it to an early inhomogeneous phase of cosmic expansion. Unlike the conventional assumption of a perfectly isotropic and homogeneous pre-inflationary…
WMAP observations have accurately determined the position of the first two peaks and dips in the CMB temperature power spectrum. These encode information on the ratio of the distance to the last scattering surface to the sound horizon at…
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 introduce new symmetry-based methods to test for isotropy in cosmic microwave background radiation. Each angular multipole is factored into unique products of power eigenvectors, related multipoles and singular values that provide 2 new…
We review, compare and extend recent studies searching for evidence for a preferred cosmological axis. We start from the Union2 SnIa dataset and use the hemisphere comparison method to search for a preferred axis in the data. We find that…
We use a global pixel based estimator to identify the axis of the residual Maximum Temperature Asymmetry (MTA) (after the dipole subtraction) of the WMAP 7 year Internal Linear Combination (ILC) CMB temperature sky map. The estimator is…
Some peculiar features found in the angular distribution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) deserve further investigation. Among these peculiar features, is the quadrant…
There have recently been several claims of an asymmetric distribution of large scale fluctuations in the WMAP data. I review some recent results from a test of isotropy of the power spectrum at all scales and show how the power is…
We compute the covariance expected between the spherical harmonic coefficients $a_{\ell m}$ of the cosmic microwave temperature anisotropy if the universe had a compact topology. For fundamental cell size smaller than the distance to the…
(Abridged) The 7-year WMAP data and improved astrophysical data rigorously test the standard cosmological model and its extensions. By combining WMAP with the latest distance measurements from BAO and H0 measurement, we determine the…
We analyze a cosmological model featuring an interaction between dark energy and dark matter in light of the measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background released by three independent experiments: the most recent data by the Planck…
We examine previous claims for a preferred axis at $(b,l)\approx (60,-100)$ in the cosmic radiation anisotropy, by generalizing the concept of multipole planarity to any shape preference (a concept we define mathematically). Contrary to…
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…
We test the tenet of statistical isotropy of the standard cosmological model via a homology analysis of the cosmic microwave background temperature maps. Examining small sectors of the normalized maps, we find that the results exhibit a…
In this paper we present a parameter estimation analysis of the polarization and temperature power spectra from the second and third season of observations with the QUaD experiment. QUaD has for the first time detected multiple acoustic…
I discuss whether the standard cosmological models fit the WMAP data well enough to justify parameter estimation with standard assumptions. The observed quadrupole is low (but has significant foreground uncertainty) and drives weak evidence…
We study the directional dependence of the angular two-point correlation function in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We propose two new statistics, one which measures the correlation of each point in the sky with a ring of…
Recent data from the WMAP, ACT and SPT experiments provide precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background temperature power spectrum over a wide range of angular scales. The combination of these observations is well fit by the…
The two fundamental assumptions of the standard cosmological model - that the initial fluctuations are statistically isotropic and Gaussian - are rigorously tested using maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from the…