Related papers: A Preferred-Direction Statistic for Sky Maps

We describe the calibration and data processing methods used to generate full-sky maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from the first year of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Detailed limits on residual…

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…

We use the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) 4-year sky maps to model Galactic microwave emission at high latitudes (|b| > 20 deg). Cross-correlation of the DMR maps with Galactic template maps detects fluctuations in the…

In order to extract cosmological information from observations of the millimeter and submillimeter sky, foreground components must first be removed to produce an estimate of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We developed a…

In a recent paper, Gurzadyan & Penrose claim to have found directions in the sky around which there are multiple concentric sets of annuli with anomalously low variance in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These features are presented…

The Milky Way can act as a large-scale weak gravitational lens of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We study this effect using a photon ray-tracing code and a Galactic mass distribution with disk, bulge and halo components. For an…

This paper discusses the science case for a sensitive spectro-polarimetric survey of the microwave sky. Such a survey would provide a tomographic and dynamic census of the three-dimensional distribution of hot gas, velocity flows, early…

The WMAP satellite has made available high quality maps of the sky in five frequency bands ranging from 22 to 94 GHz, with the main scientific objective of studying the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). These maps,…

Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are discussed, with particular emphasis on current ground-based experiments and on future satellite, balloon and interferometer experiments. Observational techniques and the effects of…

Large scale structure deflects cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. Since large angular scales in the large scale structure contribute significantly to the gravitational lensing effect, a realistic simulation of CMB lensing requires a…

We consider several factors concerning the design of observing strategies in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy experiments. First we consider the number of independent points on the sky one should observe given a fixed observing…

The foundation of modern cosmology relies on the so-called cosmological principle which states an homogeneous and isotropic distribution of matter in the universe on large scales. However, recent observations, such as the temperature…

Using analytical methods and Monte Carlo simulations, we analyze a new statistic designed to detect isolated step-like discontinuities which are coherent over large areas of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) pixel maps. Such coherent…

Maps of cosmic microwave background (CMB) are extracted from multi-frequency observations using a variety of cleaning procedures. However, in regions of strong microwave emission, particularly in the galactic plane from our own galaxy Milky…

Mechanisms have been proposed that might rotate the linear polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as it propagates from the surface of last scatter. In the simplest scenario, the rotation will be uniform across the sky, but…

We examine the degree to which observations of large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization can shed light on the puzzling large-scale power modulation in maps of CMB anisotropy. We consider a phenomenological model in which…

The distribution of the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the sky is determined by the hypothesis of random Gaussian distribution of the primordial density perturbations. This hypotheses is well motivated by the…

We present an alternative method to analyse cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps. We base our analysis on the study of the partition function. This function is used to examine the CMB maps making use of the different information embedded…

Forthcoming high-resolution observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation will generate datasets many orders of magnitude larger than have been obtained to date. The size and complexity of such datasets presents a very…

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an abundant source of cosmological information. However, this information is encoded in non-trivial ways in a signal that is difficult to observe. The resulting challenges in extracting this…