Related papers: Task Force on Cosmic Microwave Background Research
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) encodes information on the origin and evolution of the universe, buried in a fractional anisotropy of one part in 100,000 on angular scales from arcminutes to tens of degrees. We await the coming…
Since the first detection by the DASI experiment in 2002, measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have grown into an important role in testing our understanding of conditions in the early universe and…
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…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is encoded with exactly the same cosmic information as the CMB's temperature anistropy. However, polarization has the additional promise of accurately probing the reionization…
We show how observations of temperature fluctuations in cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to extract information related to the large scale structure, including dark matter distribution, pressure and halo velocities involving…
Cosmology requires new physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles and fields. What is the fundamental physics behind dark matter and dark energy? What generated the initial fluctuations in the early Universe? Polarised light…
The analysis of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has become an extremely valuable tool for cosmology. We even have hopes that planned CMB anisotropy experiments may revolutionize cosmology. Together with determinations…
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe and Planck missions will provide low noise maps of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These maps will allow measurement of the power spectrum of the CMB with measurement noise below…
The ten's of micro-Kelvin variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation across the sky encode a wealth of information about the Universe. The full-sky, high-resolution maps of the CMB that will be made in…
This is a very exciting time for the CMB field. It is widely recognized that precision measurements of the CMB can provide a definitive test of cosmological models and determine their parameters accurately. At present observations give us…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), especially of its frequency spectrum and its anisotropies, both in temperature and in polarization, have played a key role in the development of modern cosmology and our understanding…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) offers a unique window into the early universe, providing insights into cosmological parameters like the Hubble constant. Recent precise measurements of the CMB by experiments like Planck seem to point…
Following the pioneering observations with COBE in the early 1990s, studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have focused on temperature and polarization anisotropies. CMB spectral distortions - tiny departures of the CMB energy…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation carries essential information on early stages of the Universe such as the cosmic inflation, forming cosmological structures through gravitational lensing, and the epoch of…
Achieving a precise understanding of galaxy formation in a cosmological context is one of the great challenges in theoretical astrophysics, due to the vast range of spatial scales involved in the relevant physical processes. Observations in…
The 2.725 K cosmic microwave background has played a key role in the development of modern cosmology by providing a solid observational foundation for constraining possible theories of what happened at very large redshifts and theoretical…
We summarize the utility of precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements as probes of the physics of inflation. We focus on the prospects for using CMB measurements to differentiate various inflationary mechanisms. In…
Recent announcements that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - the faint remnant of the Big Bang - is polarized have caused a stir among cosmologists. Such polarization has long been predicted but could not be detected, until the recent…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provides a remarkable window onto the early universe, revealing its composition and structure. In these lectures we review and discuss the physics underlying the main features of the CMB.