Related papers: Cosmology/COBE
Suggestions have been made that the microwave background observed by COBE and WMAP and dubbed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) may have an origin within our own Galaxy or Earth. To consider the signal that may be correlated with Earth, a…
We study the spectrum of the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) in energy range $\sim$5-100 keV. Early in 2006 the INTEGRAL observatory performed a series of four 30ksec observations with the Earth disk crossing the field of view of the…
We decompose the COBE/DIRBE observations of the near-IR sky brightness (minus zodiacal light) into Galactic stellar and interstellar medium (ISM) components and an extragalactic background. This empirical procedure allows us to estimate the…
The COBE satellite has discovered anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) consistent with a scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations. As reviewed in this lecture, topological defect models of structure formation…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a mysterious astrophysical phenomenon of bright pulses emitted at radio frequencies, and they are expected to be frequently detected in the future. The dispersion measures of FRBs are related to cosmological…
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…
We derive an expression for the non-Gaussian cosmic-microwave-background (CMB) statistic $I_l^3$ defined recently by Ferreira, Magueijo, and G\'orski in terms of the slow-roll-inflation parameters $\epsilon$ and $\eta$. This result shows…
We present the results of a detailed study of how isocurvature axion fluctuations are converted into adiabatic metric perturbations through axion decay, and discuss the constraints on the parameters of pre-big bang cosmology needed 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…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…
We compare the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation measured by the COBE experiment to the predictions of cosmic strings. We use an analytic model for the $\Delta T/T$ power spectrum that is based on our previous…
Polarization observations of the cosmic microwave background with the Cosmic Background Imager from September 2002 to May 2004 provide a significant detection of the E-mode polarization and reveal an angular power spectrum of polarized…
The CMB is a remarkably distortionless blackbody, and this strongly constrains the amount of energy that can have been injected at high redshift, thereby limiting the role that hydrodynamical amplification can have played in cosmic…
The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) was designed to search for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) radiation. Scattered light and thermal emission from the interplanetary dust (IPD) are major contributors to the diffuse…
The sky-RMS is the simplest model-independent characterization of a cosmological anisotropy signal. The RMS temperature fluctuations determined from the $COBE$-DMR four-year sky maps are frequency independent, consistent with the hypothesis…
After the detection of structure in the microwave sky, the characterization of the observed features may be a useful guide to current and future experiments. The first year COBE-DMR sky maps were analyzed in order to identify the most…
We present a simple inflationary scenario that can produce arbitrarily large spherical underdense or overdense regions embedded in a standard Lambda cold dark matter paradigm, which we refer to as bubbles. We analyze the effect such bubbles…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
The Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (\dasi) has measured the power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy over the range of spherical harmonic multipoles 100<l<900. We compare this data, in combination with the COBE-DMR…
The COBE satellite, and the DMR experiment in particular, was extraordinarily successful. However, the DMR results were announced about 7 years ago, during which time a great deal more has been learned about anisotropies in the Cosmic…