Related papers: Microwave sky and the local Rees-Sciama effect
We investigate anomalies reported in the Cosmic Microwave Background maps from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite on very large angular scales and discuss possible interpretations. Three independent anomalies involve…
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…
We measure hot and cold spots on the microwave background associated with supercluster and supervoid structures identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Luminous Red Galaxy catalog. The structures give a compelling visual imprint, with a…
If the universe is finite and smaller than the distance to the surface of last scatter, then the signature of the topology of the universe is writ large on the microwave background sky. We show that the microwave background will be…
Clustering of cosmic-ray sources affects the flux observed beyond the cutoff imposed by the cosmic microwave background and may be important in interpreting the AGASA, Fly's Eye, and HiRes data. The standard deviation, sigma, in the…
We present a new method for constructing maps of the secondary temperature fluctuations imprinted on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation by photons propagating through the evolving cosmic gravitational potential. Large…
We investigate large-angle scale temperature anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data and model the large-angle anomalies as the effect of the CMB quadrupole anisotropies…
Using XMM-Newton observations, we investigate the scaling and structural properties of the ICM entropy in a sample of 10 nearby (z < 0.2) relaxed galaxy clusters in the temperature range 2-9 keV. We derive the local entropy-temperature…
We use high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of large-scale structure formation to study the imprints of the local superclusters onto the full-sky Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signals. Following (Mathis et al. 2002), the initial conditions…
The Cold Spot (CS) is a clear feature in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB); it could be of primordial origin, or caused by a intervening structure along the line of sight. We identified a large projected underdensity in the recently…
The Milky Way can act as a large-scale weak gravitational lens of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We study this effect using a photon ray-tracing code and a Galactic mass distribution with disk, bulge and halo components. For an…
Two-point correlation functions of cosmic microwave background polarization provide a physically independent probe of the surprising suppression of correlations in the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies at large angular…
We study the directional dependence of the angular two-point correlation function in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We propose two new statistics, one which measures the correlation of each point in the sky with a ring of…
A decrement in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has been observed by the Ryle Telescope towards a pair of, possibly lensed, quasars (PC1643+4631 A&B). Assuming that the decrement is due to the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (S-Z) effect, this is…
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…
We investigate the imprint of nonlinear matter condensations on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in $\Omega_{0}<1$ cold dark matter (CDM) model universes. We consider simulation domains ranging from $120h^{-1}$ Mpc to $360h^{-1}$ Mpc…
Using a sample of ten nearby (z< 0.15), relaxed galaxy clusters in the temperature range [2-9] keV, we have investigated the scaling relation between the mass at various density contrasts (delta=2500,1000,500,200) and the cluster…
We revisit the predictions for the expected Cosmic Microwave Background bispectrum signal from the primary-lensing-Rees-Sciama correlation; we point out that it can be a significant contaminant to the bispectrum signal from primordial…
We investigate the weak gravitational lensing effect due to the large-scale structure of the universe on two-point correlations of local maxima ({\em hotspots}) in the 2D sky map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy.…
Several anomalies appear to be present in the large-angle cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy maps of WMAP, including the alignment of large-scale multipoles. Models in which isotropy is spontaneously broken (e.g., by a scalar…