Related papers: Angular correlations on causally-coherent inflatio…
In the standard framework of cosmology, primordial density fluctuations are assumed to have an isotropic Gaussian distribution. We search for deviations from this assumption in the WMAP data for the low $l$ modes of Cosmic Microwave…
For a certain type of modified dispersion relations, the vacuum quantum state for very short wavelength cosmological perturbations is scale-invariant and it has been suggested that this may be the source of the scale-invariance observed in…
Using an analytical model for the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies produced by textures, we compute the resulting collapsed three--point correlation function and the {\it rms} expected value due to the cosmic variance. We apply our…
The presence of a light vector field coupled to a scalar field during inflation makes a distinct prediction: the observed correlation functions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) become statistically anisotropic. We study the…
The standard cosmological model does not determine the spatial topology of the universe. This article revisits the signature of a non-trivial topology on the properties of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We show that the…
In addition to simple scale invariance, a universe dominated by dark energy naturally gives rise to correlation functions possessing full conformal invariance. This is due to the mathematical isomorphism between the conformal group of…
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…
This paper is concerned with small angular scale experiments for the observation of cosmic microwave background anisotropies. In the absence of beam, the effects of partial coverage and pixelisation are disentangled and analyzed (using…
In the first part of this work, I review the theoretical framework of cosmological perturbation theory necessary to understand the generation and evolution of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Using analytical and numerical…
We discuss selected large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Specfically, these include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with one another and with the geometry and…
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…
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…
We revisit an inflationary scenario in which primordial inhomogeneities arise from a quantum collapse, a stochastic mechanism described in the context of quantum collapse theories in its continuous version and within semiclassical gravity.…
The simplicity of the CMB data, so well described by single-field inflation, raises the question whether there might be an equally simple multi-field realization consistent with the observations. We explore the idea that an approximate…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
We propose an inflationary primordial feature model that can explain both the large and small-scale anomalies in the currently measured cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectra, revealing a clip of adventurous history of the…
We study constraints on the natural inflation model from the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). Inflaton \phi for the natural inflation has a potential of the form V=\Lambda^4[1-\cos(\phi/\sqrt{2}f_\phi)], which is parametrized…
In this thesis we investigate several aspects related to the theory of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We develop a new algorithm to calculate the angular power spectrum of the anisotropies which is two orders of magnitude…
The observed angular correlation function of the cosmic microwave background has previously been reported to be anomalous, particularly when measured in regions of the sky uncontaminated by Galactic emission. Recent work by Efstathiou et…
The standard model of cosmology assumes a homogeneous and isotropic universe that undergoes a period of exponential expansion very early on, named inflation. This stretches quantum fluctuations from the onset of inflation to cosmological…