Related papers: Task Force on Cosmic Microwave Background Research
The upcoming satellite missions MAP and Planck will measure the spectrum of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background with unprecedented accuracy. We discuss the prospect of using these observations to distinguish among proposed…
Rapid progress has been made in observations of the temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). These observations have enabled cosmologists to characterize the state of the universe at recombination, and…
Ongoing observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, such as the MAXIMA and BOOMERanG projects, are providing datasets of unprecedented quality and ever-increasing size. Exact analysis of the data they produce is a serious computational…
Several cosmological measurements have attained significant levels of maturity and accuracy over the last decade. Continuing this trend, future observations promise measurements of the statistics of the cosmic mass distribution at an…
I review the discovery of the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation. The underlying theory and the implications for cosmology are reviewed, and I describe the prospects for future progress.
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…
This Science White Paper, prepared in response to the ESA Voyage 2050 call for long-term mission planning, aims to describe the various science possibilities that can be realized with an L-class space observatory that is dedicated to the…
We develop and examine the principles governing the formation of distortions in the cosmic microwave background. Distortions in the frequency or spectral distribution of the background probe the thermal history of the universe whereas those…
It is well known that observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are highly sensitive to the spatial curvature of the Universe, k. Here we find that what is in fact being tightly constrained by small angle fluctuations is spatial…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB), the relic radiation from the early Universe, offers a unique window into both primordial conditions and the intervening large-scale structure (LSS) it traverses. Interactions between CMB photons and…
An enormous amount of observations on Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has been collected in the last decade, and much more data are expected in the near future from planned or operating satellite missions. These datasets are a…
The nature of dark matter is one of the major puzzles of fundamental physics, integral to the understanding of our universe across almost every epoch. The search for dark matter takes place at different energy scales, and use data ranging…
Age consistency for the Universe today has been an important cosmological test. Even more powerful consistency tests at times as early as 10^{-32} sec lie ahead in the precision era of cosmology. I outline tests based upon cosmic microwave…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature are being studied with ever increasing precision. Two competing types of theories might describe the origins of these fluctuations: ``inflation'' and ``defects''. Here we…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides us with our most direct observational window to the early universe. Observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB have played a critical role in defining the…
We summarize the physical mechanism by which the Cosmic Microwave Background acquires a small degree of polarization. We discuss the imprint left by gravitational waves and the use of polarization as a test of the inflationary paradigm. We…
Since the IAU XXIV meeting in 2000, the CMB anisotropy has matured from being one of a number of cosmological probes to forming the bedrock foundation for what is now the standard model of cosmology. The large advances over the past three…
The power spectrum of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) depends on most of the key cosmological parameters. Accurate future measurements of this power spectrum might therefore allow us to determine h, Omega, Omega_b,…
Future observations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarisation have the potential to answer some of the most fundamental questions of modern physics and cosmology. In this paper, we list the requirements for a future CMB polarisation…
We discuss the issue of how precisely we can measure the primordial power spectrum by using future observations of 21 cm fluctuations and cosmic microwave background (CMB). For this purpose, we investigate projected constraints on the…