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CMB foregrounds consist of all radiation between the surface of last scattering and the detectors, which can interfere with the cosmological interpretation of CMB data. Fortunately, in temperature (intensity), even though the foregrounds…
This white paper addresses key challenges for the design of next-decade Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments, and for assessing their capability to extract cosmological information from CMB polarization. We focus here on the…
Upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys will soon make the first detection of the polarized Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, the linear polarization generated by the scattering of CMB photons on the free electrons present in collapsed…
South Pole Station offers a unique combination of high, dry, stable conditions and well-developed support facilities. Over the past 20 years, a sequence of increasingly sophisticated CMB experiments at Pole have built on the experience of…
CMB polarization provides a unique window into cosmological inflation; the amplitude of the B-mode polarization from last scattering is uniquely sensitive to the energetics of inflation. However, numerous systematic effects arising from…
The increasing precision of cosmological datasets is opening up new opportunities to test predictions from cosmic inflation. Here we study the impact of high precision constraints on the primordial power spectrum and show how a new…
Searching for the signal of primordial gravitational waves in the B-modes (BB) power spectrum is one of the key scientific aims of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments. However, this could be easily contaminated by…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) contains perturbations that are close to Gaussian and isotropic. This means that its information content, in the sense of the ability to constrain cosmological models, is closely related to the number…
We discuss the contribution of gravitational wave to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) anisotropy and polarization. It is found that the large-scale polarization of CMBR is less than 1\% for a standard recombination universe.…
The BICEP3 and BICEP Array polarimeters are small-aperture refracting telescopes located at the South Pole designed to measure primordial gravitational wave signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization, predicted by…
A stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves could be detected soon in the polarization of the CMB and/or with laser interferometers. There are at least three GWB coming from inflation: those produced during inflation and…
These lectures introduce some of the basic theory of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization with the primary aim of developing the theory of CMB polarization from inflationary gravitational waves, as well as some of the related…
I consider the case of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from one single ordered perturbation source, or seed, existing well before decoupling between matter and radiation. Such structures could have been left by high…
The statistics of the temperature anisotropies in the primordial cosmic microwave background radiation field provide a wealth of information for cosmology and for estimating cosmological parameters. An even more acute inference should stem…
The BICEP2 collaboration reported recently a B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation inconsistent with the null hypothesis at a significance of > 5 {\sigma}. This result has been often interpreted as a…
The Thomson optical depth from reionization is a limiting factor in measuring the amplitude of primordial fluctuations, and hence in measuring physics that affects the low-redshift amplitude, such as the neutrino masses. Current constraints…
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…
The primordial anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are linearly polarized via Compton-scattering. The Faraday conversion process during the propagation of polarized CMB photons through regions of the large-scale structure…
[Abridged] Recent results from the BICEP, Keck Array and Planck Collaborations demonstrate that Galactic foregrounds are an unavoidable obstacle in the search for evidence of inflationary gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave…
Spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) offer the possibility of probing processes which occurred during the evolution of our Universe going back up to Z$\simeq 10^7$. Unfortunately all the attempts so far carried out…