Related papers: The Future of Microwave Background Physics
Canada has thriving communities in CMB (cosmic microwave background) studies, cosmology and submillimetre (submm) astronomy, with involvement in many facilities that featured prominently in previous Astronomy Long Range Plans. The standard…
If the present acceleration of the universe is due to a cosmological constant, \lambda, then the entropy of the microwave background is bounded. It cannot exceed \lambda^{-3/4} \sim 10^{91}, which is much less than the entropy of empty de…
In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the…
A recently proposed mechanism for large-scale structure in string cosmology --based on massless axionic seeds-- is further analyzed and extended to the acoustic-peak region. Existence, structure, and normalization of the peaks turn out to…
The COBE results, to be followed in the near future by other Cosmic Microwave Background measurements, are providing us with a new fundamental tool to probe the formation of large scale structure in the Universe, and in so doing to…
Since the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in 1965, characterization of the CMB anisotropy angular power spectrum has become somewhat of a holy grail for experimental cosmology. Because CMB anisotropy measurements are…
Despite the fact that the physics of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies is most naturally expressed in Fourier space, pixelised maps are almost always used in the analysis and simulation of microwave data. A complementary approach…
Modern cosmology has sharpened questions posed for millennia about the origin of our cosmic habitat. The age-old questions have been transformed into two pressing issues primed for attack in the coming decade: How did the Universe begin?…
The detection of point-sources in microwave maps is a critical step in the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. If not properly removed, these sources have adverse effects on the estimation of the power-spectrum and/or…
The anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provide our best laboratory for testing models of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure. The rich features in the cosmic microwave background anisotropy spectrum, in…
Over the past decades, advancements in observational cosmology have introduced us in an era of precision cosmology, dramatically enhancing our understanding of the Universe's history as well as bringing new tensions to light. Observations…
The recombination history of the Universe depends exponentially on the temperature, T_0, of the cosmic microwave background. Therefore tiny changes of T_0 are expected to lead to significant changes in the free electron fraction. Here we…
This is a short review, aimed at a general audience, of several current subjects of research in cosmology. The topics discussed include the cosmic microwave background (CMB), with particular emphasis on its relevance for testing inflation;…
Planck, SPT and ACT surveys have clearly demonstrated that Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments, while optimised for cosmological measurements, have made important contributions to the field of extragalactic astrophysics in the…
A new method is proposed for modelling spherically symmetric inhomogeneities in the Universe. The inhomogeneities have finite size and are compensated, so they do not exert any measurable gravitational force beyond their boundary. The…
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…
Large-scale cosmic microwave background anisotropies in homogeneous, globally anisotropic cosmologies are investigated. We perform a statistical analysis in which the four-year data from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite is searched…
We are now beginning to learn detailed information about cosmological parameters from the shapes of the matter and radiation power spectra, together with their relative normalization. As more high quality data are gathered from galaxy…
The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) is now firmly established as a fundamental and essential probe of the geometry, constituents, and birth of the Universe. The CMB is a potent observable because it can be measured with…
Most treatments of large scale anomalies in the microwave sky are a posteriori, with unquantified look-elsewhere effects. We contrast these with physical models of specific inhomogeneities in the early universe which then generate apparent…