Related papers: Task Force on Cosmic Microwave Background Research
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a unique opportunity for a direct study of the primordial cosmic plasma at redshift z ~1000. The angular power spectra of temperature and polarisation fluctuations are…
With polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) now detected, and confirmed by several independent experiments, the next goal is to characterise accurately its statistical properties. In these lecture notes we review the physical…
This work presents a detailed analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation intensity observations. The CMB is a relic of the Big Bang and its study greatly enhances our knowledge of cosmology. This work has led to new values for…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
The study of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization is still in a pioneering stage, but promises to bring a huge advancement in cosmology in the near future, just as high-accuracy observations of the anisotropies in the total…
In this thesis we investigate several aspects related to the theory of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We develop a new algorithm to calculate the angular power spectrum of the anisotropies which is two orders of magnitude…
The Universe is the grandest conceivable scale on which the human mind can strive to understand nature. The amazing aspect of cosmology, the branch of science that attempts to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe, is that it…
The data from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments are becoming more complex with each new experiment. A consistent way of analysing these data sets is required so that direct comparison is possible between the various experimental…
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…
The last years have been an exciting period for the field of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) research. With recent CMB balloon-borne and ground-based experiments we are entering a new era of 'precision' cosmology that enables us to…
Most of the cosmological information extracted from the CMB has been obtained through the power spectrum, however there is much more to be learnt from the statistical distribution of the temperature random field. We review some recent…
The frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a relatively untapped source of data which can allow us to peer beyond the surface of last scattering. Small deviations away from a perfect blackbody shape will encode…
The study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a rapidly maturing field. In remarkable advances in the past two years, experiments have begun to probe the detailed structure of the CMB angular spectrum thereby providing insight into…
I describe briefly the Cosmic Microwave Background (hereafter CMB) physics which explains why high accuracy observations of its spatial structure are a unique observational tool both for the determination of the global cosmological…
In this review, we give an overview of some of the major aspects of data reduction and analysis for the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Since its prediction and discovery in the last century, the CMB radiation has proven itself to be one…
Modern cosmology has sharpened questions posed for millennia about the origin of our cosmic habitat. The age-old questions have been transformed into two pressing issues primed for attack in the coming decade: How did the Universe begin?…
With WMAP putting the phenomenological standard model of cosmology on a strong footing, one can look forward to mining the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for fundamental physics with higher sensitivity and on smaller scales. Future CMB…
Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…
The fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are investigated for a small open universe, i.e., one which is periodically composed of a small fundamental cell. The evolution of initial metric perturbations is computed using the…
Quantum mechanical metric fluctuations during an early inflationary phase of the universe leave a characteristic imprint in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The amplitude of this signal depends on the energy scale…