Related papers: Is the Universe odd?
The near-isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is considered to be the strongest indication for the homogeneity and isotropy of the universe, a cornerstone of most cosmological analysis. We derive new theorems which extend the…
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…
We search for an unusual alignment of the preferred axes of the quadrupole and octopole, the so-called axis of evil, in the CMB temperature and polarization data from WMAP. We use the part of the polarization map which is uncorrelated with…
A detailed search has been made for evidence of foreground contributions to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) WMAP, such foregrounds being related to our Galaxy. We find remarkable results. On the largest angular scales we find…
The acoustic peak in the CMB power spectrum is sensitive to causal processes and cosmological parameters in the early universe up to the time of last scattering. We provide limits on correlated spatial variations of the peak height and peak…
Among the biggest surprises revealed by COBE and confirmed by WMAP measurements of the temperature anisotropy of the CMB are the anomalous features in the 2-point angular correlation function on very large angular scales. In particular, the…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization, whose experimental detection must become the next natural step in the study of the CMB radiation, depends on the dynamics of hydrogen recombination in the Universe, on the relation between…
We examine all-sky cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps on large angular scales to compare their consistency with two scenarios: the standard inflationary quantum picture, and a distribution constrained to have a universal…
In a recent paper, Gurzadyan & Penrose claim to have found directions in the sky around which there are multiple concentric sets of annuli with anomalously low variance in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These features are presented…
Longstanding anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), including the low quadrupole moment and hemispherical power asymmetry, have recently been linked to an underlying parity asymmetry. We show here how this parity asymmetry…
We explore the large angular scale temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background due to expanding homogeneous local voids at redshift z~1. A compensated spherically symmetric homogeneous dust-filled void with radius \~3*10^2…
We examine previous claims for a preferred axis at $(b,l)\approx (60,-100)$ in the cosmic radiation anisotropy, by generalizing the concept of multipole planarity to any shape preference (a concept we define mathematically). Contrary to…
The detection of a time variation of the angle between two distant sources would reveal an anisotropic expansion of the Universe. We study this effect of "cosmic parallax" within the "ellipsoidal universe" model, namely a particular…
We apply spherical needlets to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5-year cosmic microwave background (CMB) dataset, to search for imprints of non-isotropic features in the CMB sky. We use the needlets localization properties to…
It has been argued that the large-angle cosmic microwave background anisotropy has anomalies at 3-sigma level. We review various proposed ideas to explain the origin of the anomalies and discuss how we can constrain the proposed models…
There is tentative evidence for a mismatch between the rest frames of matter and the cosmic microwave background, the "quasar dipole anomaly". We consider such a dipole in tilted anisotropic models, for a range of scenarios and sources:…
We examine the extent to which galactic and extragalactic foregrounds can hamper the detection of primordial Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. We limit our discussion to intermediate angular scales, $10^{\prime}\lsim \theta…
I propose a mechanism that would explain the near alignment of the low order multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This mechanism supposes a large-scale cosmic magnetic field that tends to align the cyclotron orbit axes of…
We revisit the alignments of the largest structures observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the seven and nine-year WMAP and first-year Planck data releases. The observed alignments -- the quadrupole with the octopole and…
The emergence of several unexpected large-scale features in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has pointed to possible new physics driving the origin of density fluctuations in the early Universe and their evolution into the large-scale…