Related papers: An Introduction to the Planck Mission
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 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…
The metallicity evolution and ionization history of the universe must leave its imprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background through resonant scattering of CMB photons by atoms, ions and molecules. These transitions partially erase original…
One of the most spectacular scientific breakthroughs in past decades was using measurements of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to test precisely our understanding of the history and composition of the Universe.…
Although the new era of high precision cosmology of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation improves our knowledge to understand the infant as well as the presentday Universe, it also leads us to question the main assumption of the…
The Planck experiment will soon provide a very accurate measurement of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies. This will let cosmologists determine most of the cosmological parameters with unprecedented accuracy. Future experiments will…
We point out that polarization measurements as planned for the upcoming PLANCK mission can significantly enhance the accuracy of cosmic parameter estimation compared to the temperature anisotropy spectrum alone. In order to illustrate this,…
Since the IAU XXIV meeting in 2000, the CMB anisotropy has matured from being one of a number of cosmological probes to forming the bedrock foundation for what is now the standard model of cosmology. The large advances over the past three…
A milestone of modern cosmology was the prediction and serendipitous discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the radiation left over after decoupling from matter in the early evolutionary stages of the Universe. A prediction of…
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 Planck experiment has measured the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) angular spectrum with unprecedented accuracy, and these results are likely to remain the state-of-the art for a decade or more. Since these measurements are going to…
The study of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization is still in a pioneering stage, but promises to bring a huge advancement in cosmology in the near future, just as high-accuracy observations of the anisotropies in the total…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) encodes information about the content and evolution of the universe. The presence of light, weakly interacting particles impacts the expansion history of the early universe, which alters the temperature…
The Planck mission, designed for making measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation with unprecedented accuracy and angular resolution, is expected to release its first data set in the near future. For the first time in…
Since the temperature fluctuations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) on large-angular scales probe length scales that were super-horizon sized at photon decoupling and hence insensitive to microphysical processes, the low-multipole CMB…
We analyze the spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in the timescape cosmology: a potentially viable alternative to homogeneous isotropic cosmologies without dark energy. We exploit the fact that the timescape…
The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73K Cosmic Microwave Background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is encoded with exactly the same cosmic information as the CMB's temperature anistropy. However, polarization has the additional promise of accurately probing the reionization…
A large lepton asymmetry in the Universe is still a viable possibility and leads to many interesting phenomena such as gauge symmetry nonrestoration at high temperature. We show that a large lepton asymmetry changes the predicted cosmic…
We present the first results based on Planck measurements of the CMB temperature and lensing-potential power spectra. The Planck spectra at high multipoles are extremely well described by the standard spatially-flat six-parameter LCDM…