Related papers: Causality, randomness, and the microwave backgroun…
We extend our previous work on the cosmology of Coleman-de Luccia bubble collisions. Within a set of approximations we calculate the effects on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as seen from inside a bubble which has undergone such a…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies measurements can provide many clues about the Universe. Although the common belief is that they will allow a very precise measurement of the cosmological parameters (that is, the current…
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…
I discuss how parameters describing inflation in the very early universe may be related to primordial perturbation spectra. Precision observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) such as those provided by the WMAP…
We show that inflationary models with broken rotational invariance generate testable off-diagonal signatures in the correlation between the $\mu$-type distortion and temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background. More…
Inflation creates both scalar (density) and tensor (gravity wave) metric perturbations. We find that the tensor mode contribution to the CMB anisotropy on large-angular scales can only exceed that of the scalar mode in models where the…
We study the imprints of anisotropic inflation on the CMB temperature fluctuations and polarizations. The statistical anisotropy stems not only from the direction dependence of curvature and tensor perturbations, but also from the cross…
We use the analytical model recently introduced in Ref. \cite{lp92}, to investigate the statistics of temperature fluctuations on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), induced by topological defects. The cases of cosmic strings and…
Long-wavelength gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Distinguishing this from anisotropy induced by energy density fluctuations is critical for testing inflationary cosmology…
We propose a new source for the cosmological density perturbation which is passive fluctuations of the inflaton driven dynamically by a colored quantum noise as a result of its coupling to other massive quantum fields. The created…
We discuss the time dependence and future of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the context of the standard cosmological model, in which we are now entering a state of endless accelerated expansion. The mean temperature will simply…
We reanalyse Cosmic Microwave Background data from experiments probing both large and small scales. We assume that measured anisotropies are due not only to primary fluctuations but also, especially at small scales, to secondary effects…
Using an analytical model for the string network we show that the kurtosis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature gradient maps is a good statistic to distinguish between the cosmic string model and inflationary models of…
The anisotropy study cosmic microwave background (CMB) is one of the main observational tools for modern cosmology. However, alongside the study of the thermal fluctuations of the CMB are other equally important information, which is known…
To minimize instrumentally induced systematic errors, cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy experiments measure temperature differences across the sky using paires of horn antennas, temperature map is recovered from temperature…
One of the most powerful tools to probe the existence of cosmic defects in the early universe is through the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. It is well known that computations with causal sources are more involved than the…
Various issues concerning the impact of inflationary models on parameter estimation from the cosmic microwave background are reviewed, with particular focus on the range of possible outcomes of inflationary models and on the amount which…
Anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have been detected on a range of scales by several different experiments. These anisotropies reflect the primordial spectrum of metric perturbations in the early universe.…
We explore a model of the early universe in which the inflationary epoch is preceded by a cosmic bounce, and argue that this scenario provides a common origin to several of the anomalous features that have been observed at large angular…
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…