Related papers: Cosmic topology. Part IIIa. Microwave background p…
Voyage 2050 White Paper highlighting the unique science opportunities using spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). CMB spectral distortions probe many processes throughout the history of the Universe. Precision…
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…
Non-canonical scaling of the form $\rho_{x} \propto \rho_{m} a^{\xi}$, where $\rho_{x}$ and $\rho_{m}$ are the energy densities of dark energy and dark matter, respectively, provides a natural way to address the coincidence problem -why the…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
A conventional explanation of the dipole anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is in terms of the Doppler effect: our galaxy is moving with respect to CMB frame with $ \sim 600 ~ km ~ s^{-1} $. However, as the deep…
We develop a formalism for calculating cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies in cosmological models with Brans-Dicke gravity. We then modify publicly available Boltzmann codes to calculate numerically…
Most of the cosmological information extracted from the CMB has been obtained through the power spectrum, however there is much more to be learnt from the statistical distribution of the temperature random field. We review some recent…
We consider cosmological parameters estimation in the presence of a non-zero isocurvature contribution in the primordial perturbations. A previous analysis showed that even a tiny amount of isocurvature perturbation, if not accounted for,…
The low quadrupole of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), measured by COBE and confirmed by WMAP, has generated much discussion recently. We point out that the well-known correlation between temperature and polarization anisotropies of…
We present a pedagogical and phenomenological introduction to the study of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization to build intuition about the prospects and challenges facing its detection. Thomson scattering of temperature…
Cosmic Microwave Background experiments must achieve very accurate calibration of their polarization reference frame to avoid biasing the cosmological parameters. In particular, a wrong or inaccurate calibration might mimic the presence of…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies measurements can provide many clues about the Universe. Although the common belief is that they will allow a very precise measurement of the cosmological parameters (that is, the current…
The significance to which the cosmic microwave background observations by the satellite COBE can be used to refute a specific observationally based hypothesis for the global topology (3-manifold) of the Universe is investigated, by a new…
Deviations from statistical isotropy can be modeled in various ways, for instance, anisotropic cosmological models (Bianchi models), compact topologies and presence of primordial magnetic field. Signature of anisotropy manifests itself in…
We review the present status of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy observations and discuss the main related astrophysical issues, instrumental effects and data analysis techniques. We summarise the balloon-borne and ground-based…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy constrains the geometry of the Universe because the positions of the acoustic peaks of the angular power spectrum depend strongly on the curvature of underlying three-dimensional space. In…
We investigate a statistical anisotropy on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) bispectrum, which can be generated from the primordial non-Gaussianity induced by quantum fluctuations of a vector field. We find new configurations in the…
The Einstein field equations of general relativity constrain the local curvature at every point in spacetime, but say nothing about the global topology of the Universe. Cosmic microwave background anisotropies have proven to be the most…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)is a powerful observational tool at hand for modern cosmology. It allows to break the degeneracy of fundamental cosmological parameters one cannot obtain using only anisotropy data…
The Cosmological Principle, which states that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic (when averaged on large scales), is the foundational assumption of Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmologies such as the current standard…