Related papers: How Anisotropic is our Universe?
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…
We use a range of cosmological data to constrain phenomenological modifications to general relativity on cosmological scales, through modifications to the Poisson and lensing equations. We include cosmic microwave background anisotropy…
A recent study of the rotation of the plane of polarization of light from 160 cosmological sources claims to find significant evidence for cosmological anisotropy. We point out methodological weaknesses of that study, and reanalyze the same…
We summarise the current status of cosmic microwave background spectrum and anisotropy measurements, and their theoretical interpretation. This is the update of the mini-review for the 1997 web-version of the Review of Particle Properties.
I describe briefly the Cosmic Microwave Background (hereafter CMB) physics which explains why high accuracy observations of its spatial structure are a unique observational tool both for the determination of the global cosmological…
In universes with significant curvature or cosmological constant, cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies are created very recently via the Rees-Sciama or integrated Sachs-Wolfe effects. This causes the CMB anisotropies to become…
It has been argued that the large-angle cosmic microwave background anisotropy has anomalies at 3-sigma level. We review various proposed ideas to explain the origin of the anomalies and discuss how we can constrain the proposed models…
Recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data confirm the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) quadrupole anomaly. We further elaborate our previous proposal that the quadrupole power can be naturally suppressed in axis-symmetric…
The Cosmological Principle, the combined assumptions of cosmological isotropy and homogeneity, underpins the standard model of Big Bang cosmology with which we interpret astronomical observations. A new test of isotropy over the redshift…
It is often assumed that primordial perturbations are statistically isotropic, which implies, among other properties, that their power spectrum is invariant under rotations. In this article, we test this assumption by placing…
The origin of power asymmetry and other measures of statistical anisotropy on the largest scales of the universe, as manifested in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and large-scale structure data, is a long-standing open question in…
The recent COBE measurement of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the recent South Pole experiment of Gaier {\it et al.} offer an excellent opportunity to probe cosmological theories. We test a class of theories in which…
Two years of microwave background observations with the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) have been combined to give a sensitive, high resolution angular power spectrum over the range 400 < l < 3500. This power spectrum has been referenced to…
In many cosmological models, the large angular scale anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background is parameterized by a spectral index, $n$, and a quadrupolar amplitude, $Q$. For a Peebles-Harrison-Zel'dovich spectrum, $n=1$. Using data…
On the largest scales, the universe appears to be almost homogeneous and isotropic, adhering to the cosmological principle. In contrast, on smaller scales inhomogeneities and anisotropy become increasingly prominent, reflecting the origin,…
Within the next several years, pulsar-timing array programs will likely usher in the next era of gravitational-wave astronomy through the detection of a stochastic background of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves, originating from a…
The cosmological principle asserts that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large enough scales. However, alternative cosmological models can bring about anisotropies through local inhomogeneities, anisotropic evolution, or exotic…
Major advances in the observation and theory of cosmic microwave background anisotropies have opened up a new era in cosmology. This has encouraged the hope that the fundamental parameters of cosmology will be determined to high accuracy in…
The acoustic peak in the CMB power spectrum is sensitive to causal processes and cosmological parameters in the early universe up to the time of last scattering. We provide limits on correlated spatial variations of the peak height and peak…
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…