Related papers: The Cosmic Background Radiation
We develop and examine the principles governing the formation of distortions in the cosmic microwave background. Distortions in the frequency or spectral distribution of the background probe the thermal history of the universe whereas those…
These lecture notes cover mainly three connected topics. In the first part we give a detailed treatment of cosmological perturbation theory. The second part is devoted to cosmological inflation and the generation of primordial fluctuations.…
We present a self-contained summary of the theory of linear cosmological perturbations. We emphasize the effect of the six parameters of the minimal cosmological model, first, on the spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background temperature…
In order to find the correct theory of quantum gravity, one has to look for observational effects in any candidate theory. Here, we focus on canonical quantum gravity and calculate the quantum-gravitational contributions to the anisotropy…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) traveled the cosmos long before it reached our telescopes today. Consequently, it is one of the best probes of fundamental processes in the early Universe that we could hope to observe. The cosmological…
New calculations of the Galactic contamination over microwave background radiation anisotropies are carried out. On one hand, when a frequency-dependent contrast of molecular clouds with respect to the Galactic background of the diffuse…
This is a new review article for The Review of Particle Physics 2004 (aka the Particle Data Book). It forms a compact review of knowledge of the cosmological parameters as at the end of 2003. Topics included are Parametrizing the Universe;…
We report on a current investigation of the anisotropy pattern induced by cosmic strings on the cosmic microwave background radiation (MBR). We have numerically evolved a network of cosmic strings from a redshift of $Z = 100$ to the present…
A theory of quantum-mechanical generation of cosmological perturbations is considered. The conclusion of this study is that if the large-angular-scale anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation is caused by the long-wavelength…
In the first part of this work, I review the theoretical framework of cosmological perturbation theory necessary to understand the generation and evolution of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. Using analytical and numerical…
We consider the anisotropy properties of a background radiation in the fractal cosmological model. The space of this model includes self-similar domains. The metric tensors of any two domains are connected by the discrete scaling…
Precision measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and of the clustering of large-scale structure have supposedly confirmed that the primordial density perturbation has a (nearly) scale-invariant spectrum. However…
The cosmic microwave background temperature is a cornerstone astrophysical observable. Its present value is tightly constrained, but its redshift dependence, which can now be determined until redshift $z\sim6.34$, is also an important probe…
The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73K Cosmic Microwave Background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the…
We expose the scenarios of primordial baryon-photon plasma evolution within the framework of the Milne-like universe models. Recently, such models find a second wind and promise an inflation-free solution of a lot of cosmological puzzles…
Scaling properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation are studied using satellite (COBE-DMR maps), balloon-borne and ground-based (combined QMASK map) data. Quantitative consistency is found between the multiscaling…
The existence of a cosmic neutrino background -- the analogue of the cosmic microwave background -- is a fundamental prediction of standard big bang cosmology. Up to now, the observational evidence for its existence is rather indirect and…
We describe the observable features of the recently proposed Extended Quintessence scenarios on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy spectra. In this class of models a scalar field $\phi$, assumed to provide most of the cosmic…
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…
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…