Related papers: Can Planck-scale physics be seen in the cosmic mic…
A modification of the action of the general relativity produces a different pattern for the growth of the cosmic structures below a certain length-scale leaving an imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We re-examine…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
We discuss effects of cosmological moduli fields on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). If a modulus field \phi once dominates the universe, the CMB we observe today is from the decay of \phi and its anisotropy is affected by the…
We forecast the ability of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization datasets to constrain theories of eternal inflation using cosmic bubble collisions. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we determine both the overall…
Recent measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy have provided evidence for the presence of oscillations in the angular power spectrum. These oscillations are a wonderful confirmation of the standard cosmological scenario…
We study the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy in the scenario where the baryon asymmetry of the universe is generated from a condensation of a scalar field. In such a scenario, the scalar condensation may acquire fluctuation…
The recent high-quality measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies have presented cosmologists with the possibility of studying the large scale properties of our universe with unprecedented precision. Here I review the…
The linear anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation and its polarization provide a clean picture of fluctuations in the universe some 370 kyr after the big bang. Simple physics connects these…
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…
We study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies produced by cosine-type quintessence models. In our analysis, effects of the adiabatic and isocurvature fluctuations are both taken into account. For purely adiabatic fluctuations…
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…
Cosmic strings formed during inflation are expected to be either diluted over super-Hubble distances, i.e., invisible today, or to have crossed our past light cone very recently. We discuss the latter situation in which a few strings…
We have investigated the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy in closed multiply connected universes (flat and hyperbolic) with low matter density. We show that the COBE constraints on these low matter density models with…
We explore a model of the early universe in which the inflationary epoch is preceded by a cosmic bounce, and argue that this scenario provides a common origin to several of the anomalous features that have been observed at large angular…
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…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is gravitationally lensed by large-scale structure, which distorts observations of the primordial anisotropies in any given direction. Averaged over the sky, this important effect is routinely modelled…
The temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a window back to the physics of the early universe. They encode the nature of the initial fluctuations and so can reveal much about the…
The COBE detection of microwave anisotropies provides the best way of fixing the amplitude of cosmological fluctuations on the largest scales. We discuss the impact of this new, precise normalization and give fitting formulae for the…
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…
Several unexpected features have been observed in the microwave sky at large angular scales, both by WMAP an by Planck. Among those features is a lack of both variance and correlation on the largest angular scales, alignment of the lowest…