Related papers: Is the low-l microwave background cosmic?
This article describes the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies expected in a closed universe with the topology of a lens space L(p,q) and with density parameter Omega_0 close to 1. It provides the first simulated maps for such spaces…
WMAP and Planck may have uncovered several anomalies in the full CMB sky that could indicate possible new physics driving the growth of density fluctuations in the early Universe. These include an unusually low power at the largest scales…
The low quadrupole of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), measured by COBE and confirmed by WMAP, has generated much discussion recently. We point out that the well-known correlation between temperature and polarization anisotropies of…
A lack of correlations in the microwave background temperature between sky directions separated by angles larger than 60 degrees has recently been confirmed by data from the Planck satellite. This feature arises as a random occurrence…
We cross correlate the large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky measured by WMAP with two probes of large-scale structure at z ~ 1. The hard X-ray background, measured by the HEAO-1 satellite, is positively correlated with the WMAP…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) reaches homogeneity at relatively modest angular scales compared to the expectation of the standard $\Lambda$CDM model revealing an important challenge to the theoretical predictions. We analyze this…
We discuss how an extended foreground of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can account for the anomalies in the low multipoles of the CMB anisotropies. The distortion needed to account for the anomalies is consistent with a cold spot…
Recent Planck data confirm that the cosmic microwave background displays the quadru-pole power suppression together with large scale anomalies. Progressing from previous results, that focused on the quadrupole anomaly, we strengthen the…
A conventional explanation of the dipole anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is in terms of the Doppler effect: our galaxy is moving with respect to CMB frame with $ \sim 600 ~ km ~ s^{-1} $. However, as the deep…
While the standard, six-parameter, spatially flat $\Lambda$CDM model has been highly successful, certain anomalies in the cosmic microwave background bring out a tension between this model and observations. The statistical significance of…
Fluctuations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have now been detected over a wide range of angular scales, and a consistent picture seems to be emerging. This article describes some of the implications for cosmology.…
We study the effect of global topology of the spatial geometry on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for closed flat and closed hyperbolic models in which the spatial hypersurface is multiply connected. If the CMB temperature…
Recent analyses of the WMAP data have suggested that the low-order multipoles of the CMB anisotropy distribution show cosmologically interesting and unexpected morphologies and amplitudes. In this paper, we apply a power equalization (PE)…
We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction…
Recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data confirm the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) quadrupole anomaly. We further elaborate our previous proposal that the quadrupole power can be naturally suppressed in axis-symmetric…
I use the most recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements to constrain the leading cold dark matter models in the Omega_m - Omega_lambda plane. A narrow triangular region is preferred. This triangle is elongated in…
The large-angular-scale falloff in the autocorrelation function for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature has long intrigued cosmologists and fueled speculation about suppressed superhorizon power. Here we highlight an…
We repeat and extend the analysis of Eriksen et al 2004 and Hansen et al 2004 testing the isotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) fluctuations. We find that the hemispherical power asymmetry previously reported for the largest…
The lack of large-angle correlations in the observed microwave background temperature fluctuations persists in the final-year maps from WMAP and the first cosmological data release from Planck. We find a statistically robust and significant…
We reconsider analysis of data on the cosmic microwave background on the largest angular scales. Temperature multipoles of any order factor naturally into a direct product of axial quantities and cosets. Striking coincidences exist among…