Related papers: Cosmology from Cosmic Microwave Background fluctua…
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope is a project to map the microwave background radiation at arcminute angular resolution and high sensitivity in three frequency bands over substantial sky areas. Cosmological signals driving such an experiment…
We forecast the main cosmological parameter constraints achievable with the CORE space mission which is dedicated to mapping the polarisation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). CORE was recently submitted in response to ESA's fifth…
Recent cosmic microwave background data in temperature and polarization have reached high precision in estimating all the parameters that describe the current so-called standard cosmological model. Recent results about the integrated…
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…
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…
One of the main challenges facing upcoming CMB experiments will be to distinguish the cosmological signal from foreground contamination. We present a comprehensive treatment of this problem and study how foregrounds degrade the accuracy…
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy observed by WMAP has an anomalous dip at l~20 and bump at l~40. One explanation for this structure is the presence of features in the primordial curvature…
Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are discussed, with particular emphasis on current ground-based experiments and on future satellite, balloon and interferometer experiments. Observational techniques and the effects of…
The standard inflationary model presents a simple scenario within which the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness of the universe appear as natural outcomes and, in addition, fluctuations in the energy density are originated during the…
Cosmic Microwave Background experiments must achieve very accurate calibration of their polarization reference frame to avoid biasing the cosmological parameters. In particular, a wrong or inaccurate calibration might mimic the presence of…
The Planck mission will provide full-sky maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background with unprecedented angular resolution (~ 10') and sensitivity (DT / T = 10^-6). This requires cryogenically cooled, high sensitivity detectors as well as an…
This paper discusses the Cosmic Background (CB) dipoles observations in the framework of the Planck mission. Dipoles observations can be used in three ways: (i) It gives a measurement of the peculiar velocity of our Galaxy which is an…
We explore the possible impact of galactic and extragalactic foregrounds on measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We find that, given our present understanding of the foregrounds, they are unlikely to qualitatively affect…
This paper provides an overview of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) programme within the ESA Planck mission. The LFI instrument has been developed to produce high precision maps of the microwave sky at frequencies in the range 27-77 GHz,…
We present a harmonic model for the data analysis of an all-sky cosmic microwave background survey, such as Planck, where the survey is obtained through ring-scans of the sky. In this model, resampling and pixelisation of the data are…
This paper presents a completely analytic treatment of cosmological fluctuations whose wavelength is small enough to come within the horizon well before the energy densities of matter and radiation become equal. This analysis yields a…
We intend to show how fundamental science is drawn from the patterns in the temperature and polarization fields of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and thus to motivate the field of CMB research. We discuss the field's…
The European Space Agency's Planck satellite was launched on 14 May 2009, and has been surveying the sky stably and continuously since 13 August 2009. Its performance is well in line with expectations, and it will continue to gather…
We propose a new method to measure the possible large-scale bulk flows in the Universe from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps from the upcoming missions, MAP and Planck. This can be done by studying the statistical properties of…
Full-sky maps of the cosmic microwave background temperature reveal a 7% asymmetry of fluctuation power between two halves of the sky. A common phenomenological model for this asymmetry is an overall dipole modulation of statistically…