Related papers: Boomerang returns unexpectedly
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 3-year data confirm the ellipticity of anisotropies of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps, found previously for Boomerang and WMAP 1-year high sensitivity maps. The low noise level of the WMAP…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a precious window on fundamental physics at very high energy scales, possibly including quantum gravity, GUTs and supersymmetry. The CMB has already enabled defect-based rivals to inflation to…
Over the last decade, cosmological observations have attained a level of precision which allows for very detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. We are beginning to learn the answers to some fundamental questions, using…
An oscillating universe cycles through a series of expansions and contractions. We propose a model in which ``phantom'' energy with a supernegative pressure ($p < - \rho$) grows rapidly and dominates the late-time expanding phase. The…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. It is spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos;…
We report the most complete analysis to date of observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) obtained during the 1998 flight of BOOMERANG. We use two quite different methods to determine the angular power spectrum of the CMB in 20…
BOOMERanG has recently resolved structures on the last scattering surface at redshift $\sim$ 1100 with high signal to noise ratio. We review the technical advances which made this possible, and we focus on the current results for maps and…
We investigate the point-parity and mirror-parity handedness of the large angle anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In particular we consider whether the observed low CMB quadrupole could more generally signal odd…
The recent measurements of the power spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies are consistent with the simplest inflationary scenario and big bang nucleosynthesis constraints. However, these results rely on the assumption of a…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of the Universe -- spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos; and…
Recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data confirm the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) quadrupole anomaly. We further elaborate our previous proposal that the quadrupole power can be naturally suppressed in axis-symmetric…
In this paper we study possible observational consequences of the bouncing cosmology. We consider a model where a phase of inflation is preceded by a cosmic bounce. While we consider in this paper only that the bounce is due to loop quantum…
In this paper we consider the question of observational signatures of a false vacuum decay event in the early universe followed by a period of inflation; in particular, motivated by the string landscape, we consider decays in which the…
We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction…
Recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies by BOOMERANG and MAXIMA collaborations have tightened the observational constraints on theories of structure formation. They disagree with the predictions of…
For two decades the hot big-bang model has been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not addressed by the standard cosmology and…
We present the constraints on isocurvature fluctuations for a flat universe implied by the Boomerang and Maxima-1 data on the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background. Because the new data defines the shape of the angular power…
Current measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropy power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) seem to indicate that the naive expectation for the slow-roll hierarchy within the most simple inflationary paradigm…
We argue that the anomalous power asymmetry observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) may have originated in a cosmic bounce preceding inflation. In loop quantum cosmology (LQC) the big bang singularity is generically replaced by a…
We consider an alternative scenario of inflation which can account for a spatially open universe. It is similar to the old inflation in which the bubble nucleation occurs in the sea of false vacuum, but differs from it in that the second…