Related papers: Bayesian inference on the sphere beyond statistica…
The natural approach to a spectral analysis of data distributed on the sky employs spherical harmonic decomposition. A common problem encountered in practical astronomy is the lack of full sky coverage in the available data. For example,…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to search for parity-violating processes like that predicted by a Chern-Simons coupling to a light pseudoscalar field. Such an interaction rotates $E$ modes into $B$…
We question the global universe isotropy by probing the alignment of local structures in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. The original method proposed relies on a steerable wavelet decomposition of the CMB signal on the…
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. We investigate the Statistical Isotropy (SI) of the CMB anisotropy maps…
Detection of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is one of the frontiers of observational cosmology. Because they are an order of magnitude fainter than E-modes, it is quite a challenge to detect B-modes.…
The Cosmological Principle states that the universe is statistically isotropic and homogeneous on large length scales, typically $\gtrsim 70$Mpc. A detection of significant deviation would help us falsify the simplest models of inflation.…
The present spatial distribution of galaxies in the Universe is non-Gaussian, with 40% skewness in 50 Mpc/h spheres, and remarkably little is known about the information encoded in it about cosmological parameters beyond the power spectrum.…
Deep learning has emerged as a transformative methodology in modern cosmology, providing powerful tools to extract meaningful physical information from complex astronomical datasets. This paper implements a novel Bayesian graph deep…
We investigate the properties of the (complex) coefficients obtained in a spherical harmonic representation of temperature maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We study the effect of the coefficient phase only, as well as the…
Beam asymmetries result in statistically-anisotropic cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. Typically, they are studied for their effects on the CMB power spectrum, however they more closely mimic anisotropic effects such as gravitational…
We propose a novel representation of cosmic microwave anisotropy maps, where each multipole order l is represented by l unit vectors pointing in directions on the sky and an overall magnitude. These "multipole vectors and scalars" transform…
We present a new blind formulation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) inference problem. The approach relies on a phenomenological model of the multi-frequency microwave sky without the need for physical models of the individual…
We review the evidence behind recent claims of spatial variation in the fine structure constant deriving from observations of ionic absorption lines in the light from distant quasars. To this end we expand upon previous non-Bayesian…
In this work we present a method to extract the signal induced by the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It makes use of the Linear Covariance-Based filter introduced by Barreiro et al., and…
Evidences for late-time acceleration of the Universe are provided by multiple probes, such as Type Ia supernovae, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large-scale structure (LSS). In this work, we focus on the integrated Sachs--Wolfe…
We measure the angular bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation anisotropy from the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometer (DMR) four-year sky maps. The angular bispectrum is the harmonic transform of the three-point…
The Cosmological Principle, that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on sufficiently large scales, underpins the standard model of cosmology. However, a recent analysis of 1.36 million infrared-selected quasars has identified a…
In the near future, observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies will provide accurate determinations of many fundamental cosmological parameters. In this paper, we analyse degeneracies among cosmological parameters to…
Since WMAP and Planck some anomalous features appeared in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) large-angle anisotropy, the so-called anomalies. One of these is the hemispherical power asymmetry, i.e. a difference in the average power on…
We introduce a new mathematical tool (a direction-dependent probe) to analyse the randomness of purported isotropic Gaussian random fields on the sphere. We apply the probe to assess the full-sky cosmic microwave background (CMB)…