Related papers: Non-Gaussian spectra and the search for cosmic str…
Recently it has been shown that string gas cosmology, an alternative model of the very early universe which does not involve a period of cosmological inflation, can give rise to an almost scale invariant spectrum of metric perturbations.…
Gaussian cosmic microwave background skies are fully specified by the power spectrum. The conventional method of characterizing non-Gaussian skies is to evaluate higher order moments, the n-point functions and their Fourier transforms. We…
In this paper we show how the prediction of CMBR angular power spectra $C_l$ in non-Gaussian theories is affected by a cosmic covariance problem, that is $(C_l,C_{l'})$ correlations impart features on any observed $C_l$ spectrum which are…
Searching for and charactering the non-Gaussianity (NG) of a given field has been a vital task in many fields of science, because we expect the consequences of different physical processes to carry different statistical properties. Here we…
We investigate the non-gaussian properties of cosmic-string-seeded linear density perturbations with cold and hot dark matter backgrounds, using high-resolution numerical simulations. We compute the one-point probability density function of…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
Skew-spectra allow us to extract non-Gaussian information by taking the square of a map and finding the power spectrum of this new map with the original map. This allows us to use much of the infrastructure of power spectra and avoid the…
We investigate the use of wavelet transforms in detecting and characterising non-Gaussian structure in maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We apply the method to simulated maps of the Kaiser-Stebbins effect due to cosmic strings…
Motivated by the fact that cosmological perturbations of inflationary quantum origin were born Gaussian, the search for non-Gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies is considered as the privileged probe of…
We briefly review certain aspects of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as generated in passive and active models of structure formation. We then focus on cosmic strings based models and discuss their status in the light of current…
Non-relativistic string theories promise to provide simpler theories of quantum gravity as well as tractable limits of the AdS/CFT correspondence. However, several apparently distinct non-relativistic string theories have been constructed.…
The presence of axion strings in the Universe after recombination can leave an imprint on the polarization pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation through the phenomenon of axion-string-induced birefringence via the hyperlight…
Gravitational clustering is an intrinsically non-linear process that generates significant non-Gaussian signatures in the density field. We consider how these affect power spectrum determinations from galaxy and weak-lensing surveys.…
We use simulated maps of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy to quantify the ability of different statistical tests to discriminate between Gaussian and non-Gaussian models. Despite the central limit theorem on large angular scales,…
In the context of the present and future Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments, going beyond the information provided by the power spectrum has become necessary in order to tightly constrain the cosmological model. The non-Gaussian…
We present projected constraints on the cosmic string tension, $G\mu/c^2$, that could be achieved by future gravitational wave detection experiments and express our results as semi-analytic relations of the form $G\mu(\Omega_{\rm…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
Analytic expressions for the statistics of peaks of random fields with weak non-Gaussianity are provided. Specifically, the abundance and spatial correlation of peaks are represented by formulas which can be evaluated only by virtually…
In this paper we propose a new statistic capable of detecting non-Gaussianity in the CMB. The statistic is defined in Fourier space, and therefore naturally separates angular scales. It consists of taking another Fourier transform, in…
We search the COSMOS survey for pairs of galaxies consistent with the gravitational lensing signature of a cosmic string. The COSMOS survey imaged 1.64 square degrees using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble Space…