Related papers: The Future of Microwave Background Physics
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which permeates the entire Universe, is the radiation left over from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. On very large scales, the CMB radiation field is smooth and isotropic, but the existence of…
An enormous amount of observations on Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has been collected in the last decade, and much more data are expected in the near future from planned or operating satellite missions. These datasets are a…
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…
The cosmic microwave background anisotropy is sensitive to the slope and amplitude of primordial energy density and gravitational wave fluctuations, the baryon density, the Hubble constant, the cosmological constant, the ionization history,…
We review the physical processes that are thought to produce anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background, focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on the effects of acoustic waves in the early Universe. We attempt throughout to supply an…
Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contain a wealth of information about the past history of the universe and the present values of cosmological parameters. I ouline some of the theoretical advances of the last few years.…
In this lecture, after a synthetic review of measurements of CMB temperature anisotropies and of their cosmological implications, the theoretical background of CMB polarization is summarized and the concepts of the main experiments that are…
Cosmological models where the standard big bang is replaced by a bounce have been studied for decades. The situation has, however, dramatically changed in the past years for two reasons: first, because new ways to probe the early Universe…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
The shortest distance around the Universe through us is unlikely to be much larger than the horizon diameter if microwave background anomalies are due to cosmic topology. We show that observational constraints from the lack of matched…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…
Temperature and polarization variations across the microwave sky include the fingerprints of quantum fluctuations in the early universe. They may soon reveal physics at unprecedented energy scales.
The physics of the origin and evolution of CMB anisotropies is described. I explain the idea and status of cosmic parameter estimation and follow it up with critical comments on its dependence on model assumptions and initial conditions.
Observations of microwave background fluctuations can yield information not only about the geometry of the universe, but potentially about the topology of the universe. If the universe is negatively curved, then the characteristic scale for…
We summarise the current status of cosmic microwave background spectrum and anisotropy measurements, and their theoretical interpretation. This is the update of the mini-review for the 1997 web-version of the Review of Particle Properties.
Whether we live in a spatially finite universe, and what its shape and size may be, are among the fundamental long-standing questions in cosmology. These questions of topological nature have become particularly topical, given the wealth of…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB), the relic radiation from the early Universe, offers a unique window into both primordial conditions and the intervening large-scale structure (LSS) it traverses. Interactions between CMB photons and…
Observations of the Cosmic Microwave background have provided many of the most powerful constraints we have on cosmology and events in the early universe. The spectrum and isotropy of CBR have long been a pillar of Big Bang models. The…
The study of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is progressing at a phenomenal rate, both experimentally and theoretically. These anisotropies can teach us an enormous amount about the way that fluctuations were…
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…