Related papers: Scalar statistics on the sphere: application to th…
It is possible to classify pixels of a smoothed cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuation map according to their local curvature in ``hill'', ``lake'' and ``saddle'' regions. In the Gaussian case, fractional areas occupied by pixels of…
We review Maxwell's multipole vectors, and elucidate some of their mathematical properties, with emphasis on the application of this tool to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In particular, for a completely random function on the…
We use Minkowski Functionals to explore the presence of non-Gaussian signatures in simulated cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. Precisely, we analyse the non-Gaussianities produced from the angular power spectra emerging from a class…
We briefly review certain aspects of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as generated in passive and active models of structure formation. We then focus on cosmic strings based models and discuss their status in the light of current…
We present a fast, arbitrarily accurate method to simulate the effect of gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies and polarization fields by large scale structures. We demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of…
Upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing measurements and tomographic galaxy surveys are expected to provide us with high-precision data sets in the coming years, thus paving the way for fruitful cross-correlation analyses. In…
The COBE satellite's maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy do not have the resolution to discriminate between theories of cosmic structure formation based on inflation, and those based on field ordering following a…
Accurate ($\lesssim 1\% $) predictions for the anisotropy of the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) are essential for using future high-resolution ($\lesssim 1^\circ$) CBR maps to test cosmological models. In many inflationary models the…
We develop the formalism necessary to study four-point functions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization fields. We determine the general form of CMB trispectra, with the constraints imposed by the assumption…
We generalize the concept of the ordinary skew-spectrum to probe the effect of non-Gaussianity on the morphology of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps in several domains: in real-space (where they are commonly known as…
Large data-sets defined on the sphere arise in many fields. In particular, recent and forthcoming observations of the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) made on the celestial sphere contain approximately three and fifty…
While large scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies involve a combination of the scalar and tensor fluctuations, the scalar amplitude can be independently determined through the CMB-galaxy cross-correlation. Using recently…
We investigate the possibility that a heavy scalar field, whose mass exceeds the Hubble scale during inflation, could leave non-negligible signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy power spectrum through the…
Recently a symmetry-based method to test for statistical isotropy of the cosmic microwave background was developed. We apply the method to template-cleaned 3-year and 5-year WMAP-$DA$ maps. We examine a wide range of angular multipoles from…
We describe an algorithm to generate temperature and polarization maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation containing non-Gaussianity of arbitrary local type. We apply an optimized quadrature scheme that allows us to predict and…
Bouncing models of cosmology, as they arise e.g. in loop quantum cosmology, can be followed by an inflationary phase and generate close-to-scale-invariant fluctuation spectra as observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). However,…
We give a brief review of the physics of acoustic oscillations in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. As an example of the impact of their detection in cosmology, we show how the present data on CMB angular power spectrum on…
The COBE satellite has provided the only comprehensive multi-frequency full-sky observations of the microwave sky available today. Assessment of the observations requires a detailed likelihood analysis to extract the maximum amount of…
The most general homogeneous and isotropic statistical ensemble of linear scalar perturbations which are regular at early times, in a universe with only photons, baryons, neutrinos, and a cold dark matter (CDM) component, is described by a…
We describe an algorithm for the extraction of the angular power spectrum of an intensity field, such as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), from interferometer data. This new method, based on the gridding of interferometer visibilities…