Related papers: Large scale CMB anomalies from thawing cosmic stri…
Several unexpected features have been observed in the microwave sky at large angular scales, both by WMAP an by Planck. Among those features is a lack of both variance and correlation on the largest angular scales, alignment of the lowest…
We investigate whether non-adiabatic perturbations from inflation could produce an asymmetric distribution of temperature anisotropies on large angular scales in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We use a generalised non-linear $\delta…
We study diffusion damping of acoustic waves in the photon-baryon fluid due to cosmic strings, and calculate the induced $\mu$- and $y$-type spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background. For cosmic strings with tension within…
We explore the microwave anisotropies at large angular scales produced by the emission from cold and large dust grains, expected to exist in the outer parts of the Solar System, using a simple toy model for this diuse emission. Its…
We demonstrate that string motivated inflation ending via tachyonic instability leaves a detectable imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation by virtue of the excitation of non-Gaussian gravitational fluctuations. The…
We report on a current investigation of the anisotropy pattern induced by cosmic strings on the cosmic microwave background radiation (MBR). We have numerically evolved a network of cosmic strings from a redshift of $Z = 100$ to the present…
While observations indicate that the predominant source of cosmic inhomogeneities are adiabatic perturbations, there are a variety of candidates to provide auxiliary trace effects, including inflation-generated primordial tensors and cosmic…
In the light of the recent results concerning CMB observations and GW detection we address the question of whether it is possible, in a self-consistent inflationary framework, to simultaneously generate a spectrum of scalar metric…
We explore a model of the early universe in which the inflationary epoch is preceded by a cosmic bounce, and argue that this scenario provides a common origin to several of the anomalous features that have been observed at large angular…
We propose that several of the anomalies that have been observed at large angular scales in the CMB have a common origin in a cosmic bounce that took place before the inflationary era. The bounce introduces a new physical scale in the…
Data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are discriminating between different models of inflation, disfavoring simple monomial potentials whilst being consistent with models whose predictions resemble those of the Starobinsky $R + R^2$…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy (spatial inhomogeneity) data provide the tightest constraints on the Hubble constant, matter density, spatial curvature, and dark energy dynamics. Other data, sensitive to the evolution of only…
We confront the predicted effects of hybrid inflationary models on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with three years of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Using model selection, we compare the ability of a simple…
Recent tentative findings of non-Gaussian structure in the COBE-DMR dataset have triggered renewed attention to candidate models from which such intrinsic signature could arise. In the framework of slow roll inflation with built-in non…
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe and Planck missions will provide low noise maps of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These maps will allow measurement of the power spectrum of the CMB with measurement noise below…
We show that adiabatic, super-Hubble, and almost scale invariant density fluctuations are produced by cosmic strings in a contracting universe. An essential point is that isocurvature perturbations produced by topological defects such as…
The recently detected polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) holds the potential for revealing the physics of inflation and gravitationally mapping the large-scale structure of the universe, if so called B-mode signals below…
Using analytical methods and Monte Carlo simulations, we analyze new statistics designed to detect isolated step-like discontinuities which are coherent over large areas of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) pixel maps. Such coherent…
We propose a multi-scale edge-detection algorithm to search for the Gott-Kaiser-Stebbins imprints of a cosmic string (CS) network on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. Curvelet decomposition and extended Canny algorithm are…
The standard inflationary model presents a simple scenario within which the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness of the universe appear as natural outcomes and, in addition, fluctuations in the energy density are originated during the…