Related papers: The Scientific Programme of Planck
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relic radiation of the Big Bang and as such it contains a wealth of cosmological information. Statistical analyses of the CMB, in conjunction with other cosmological observables, represent some of…
A persistent signal of power asymmetry on opposite hemispheres of CMB sky was seen in full-sky temperature measurements made so far. This asymmetry was seen in microwave sky from WMAP as well as PLANCK satellites, and calls for attention…
Although the Planck Surveyor mission is optimized to map the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, it will also provide extremely valuable information on astrophysical phenomena. We review our present understanding of Galactic and…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies have and will continue to revolutionize our understanding of cosmology. The recent discovery of the previously predicted acoustic peaks in the power spectrum has established a…
To reliably detect the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy is of great importance in understanding the birth and evolution of the Universe. One of the difficulties in CMB experiments is the domination of measured CMB anisotropy…
In this lecture, after a synthetic review of measurements of CMB temperature anisotropies and of their cosmological implications, the theoretical background of CMB polarization is summarized and the concepts of the main experiments that are…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments generally infer a temperature fluctuation from a measured intensity fluctuation through the first term in the Taylor expansion of the Planck function, the relation between the intensity in a…
The measurements of the temperature and polarisation anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by the ESA Planck mission have strongly supported the current concordance model of cosmology. However, the latest cosmological data…
In this article we focus on the astrophysical results and the related cosmological implications derived from recent microwave surveys, with emphasis to those coming from the Planck mission. We critically discuss the impact of systematics…
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 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…
Observations of cosmic microwave background polarisation, essential for probing a potential phase of inflation in the early universe, suffer from contamination by polarised emission from the Galactic interstellar medium. This work combines…
We simulate Planck observations by adopting a detailed model of the microwave sky including monopole, dipole, anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and galactic and extragalactic foregrounds. We estimate the impact of main…
The lack of power anomaly is an intriguing feature at the largest angular scales of the CMB anisotropy temperature pattern, whose statistical significance is not strong enough to claim any new physics beyond the standard cosmological model.…
The two fundamental assumptions of the standard cosmological model - that the initial fluctuations are statistically isotropic and Gaussian - are rigorously tested using maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy from 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 give an account, at non-expert and quantitative level, of physics behind the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization and their peculiar features. We discuss, in particular, how cosmological parameters are determined from the CMB…
We present for the first time a coherent model of the polarized Galactic synchrotron and thermal dust emissions which are the main diffuse foreground for the measurement of the polarized power spectra of the CMB fluctuations with the Planck…
The successful European Space Agency (ESA) Planck mission has mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy with unprecedented accuracy. However, Planck was not designed to detect the polarised components of the CMB…
We investigate the anisotropy in cosmic microwave background Planck maps due to the coupling between its beam asymmetry and uneven scanning strategy. Introducing a pixel space estimator based on the temperature gradients, we find a highly…