Related papers: The Cosmic Microwave Background
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
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…
Polarization of the cosmic microwave background, though not yet detected, provides a source of information about cosmological parameters complementary to temperature fluctuations. This paper provides a complete theoretical treatment of…
The properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation provide unique constraints on cosmological models, i.e. on the content, history, and evolution of the Universe. I discuss the latest measurements of the spectral and spatial…
We aim to present a tutorial on the detection, parameter estimation and statistical analysis of compact sources (far galaxies, galaxy clusters and Galactic dense emission regions) in cosmic microwave background observations. The topic is of…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies have and will continue to revolutionize our understanding of cosmology. The recent discovery of the previously predicted acoustic peaks in the power spectrum has established a…
We summarize the theoretical and observational status of the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. Its thermodynamic spectrum is a robust prediction of the Hot Big Bang cosmology and has been confirmed observationally. There…
An introductory account is given of the modern understanding of the physics of the early Universe. Particular emphasis is placed on the paradigm of cosmological inflation, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the…
We summarize the physical mechanism by which the Cosmic Microwave Background acquires a small degree of polarization. We discuss the imprint left by gravitational waves and the use of polarization as a test of the inflationary paradigm. We…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), especially of its frequency spectrum and its anisotropies, both in temperature and in polarization, have played a key role in the development of modern cosmology and our understanding…
Much recent work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has focussed on the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies and particularly on the recovery of cosmological parameters from acoustic peaks in the power spectrum. However,…
Cosmic microwave background anisotropies provide a vast amount of information on both structure formation in the universe and the background dynamics and geometry. The full physical content and detailed structure of anisotropies can be…
We review the theory of the temperature anisotropy and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and describe what we have learned from current CMB observations. In particular, we discuss how the CMB is being used to…
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…
An introduction to modern cosmology is given, focusing on theories for the origin of structure in the Universe. After a brief review of the theory of growth of cosmological perturbations and a summary of some important observational…
This review describes the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 and its impact on cosmology in the 50 years that followed. This discovery has established the Big Bang model of the Universe and the analysis of its…
I discuss the interplay between inflation and microwave background anisotropies, stressing in particular the accuracy with which inflation predictions need to be made, and the importance of inflation as an underlying paradigm for…
We intend to show how fundamental science is drawn from the patterns in the temperature and polarization fields of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and thus to motivate the field of CMB research. We discuss the field's…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature are being studied with ever increasing precision. Two competing types of theories might describe the origins of these fluctuations: ``inflation'' and ``defects''. Here we…
I present a briefly summary of the current status of inflationary models versus topological defects scenarios, as the mechanisms which could have induced the initial density perturbations, which left an imprint on the cosmic microwave…