Related papers: After MAP: Next Generation CMB

Nearby galaxy clusters can potentially induce sub-microkelvin polarization signals in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at characteristic scales of a few arcminutes. We explore four such polarization signals induced in a rich nearby…

CMB polarization provides a unique window into cosmological inflation; the amplitude of the B-mode polarization from last scattering is uniquely sensitive to the energetics of inflation. However, numerous systematic effects arising from…

One of the most promising ways of detecting primordial gravitational waves generated during inflation is to observe B-modes of polarization, generated by Thomson scattering after reionization, in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Large…

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…

Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a unique opportunity for a direct study of the primordial cosmic plasma at redshift z ~1000. The angular power spectra of temperature and polarisation fluctuations are…

Following the pioneering observations with COBE in the early 1990s, studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have focused on temperature and polarization anisotropies. CMB spectral distortions - tiny departures of the CMB energy…

Inflationary gravitational waves (GW) contribute to the curl component in the polarization of the CMB. Cosmic shear--gravitational lensing of the CMB-- converts a fraction of the dominant gradient polarization to the curl component.…

With polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) now detected, and confirmed by several independent experiments, the next goal is to characterise accurately its statistical properties. In these lecture notes we review the physical…

If inflation was preceded by a radiation era then at the time of inflation there will exist a decoupled thermal distribution of gravitons. Gravitational waves generated during inflation will be amplified by the process of stimulated…

The DASI discovery of CMB polarization, confirmed by WMAP, has opened a new chapter in cosmology. Most of the useful information about inflationary gravitational waves and reionization is on large angular scales where Galactic foreground…

A B-mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is widely regarded as smoking gun evidence for gravitational waves produced during inflation. Here, we demonstrate that tensor perturbations sourced during…

Large-scale magnetic fields affect the scalar modes of the geometry whose ultimate effect is to determine the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB in what follows). For the first time, a consistent numerical approach to the…

In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…

Future high-resolution measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will produce catalogs of tens of thousands of galaxy clusters through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. We forecast how well different configurations of…

Gravitational lensing, caused by matter perturbations along the line-of-sight to the last scattering surface, can modify the shape of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy power spectrum. We discuss the detectability of lensing…

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) contains perturbations that are close to Gaussian and isotropic. This means that its information content, in the sense of the ability to constrain cosmological models, is closely related to the number…

B-modes of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization can be created by a primordial gravitational wave background. If this background was created by Inflation, then the amplitude of the polarization signal is proportional the energy…

We calculate the detectability of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a function of the sky coverage, angular resolution, and instrumental sensitivity for a hypothetical experiment. We consider the gradient…

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy is our richest source of cosmological information; the standard cosmological model was largely established thanks to study of the temperature anisotropies. By the end of the decade, the Planck…

Clusters of galaxies are expected to gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and thereby generate a distinct signal in the CMB on arcminute scales. Measurements of this effect can be used to constrain the masses of galaxy…