Related papers: A small universe after all?
We show the existence of spatially homogeneous but anisotropic cosmological models whose cosmic microwave background temperature is exactly isotropic at one instant of time but whose rate of expansion is highly anisotropic. The existence of…
General relativity does not allow one to specify the topology of space, leaving the possibility that space is multiply rather than simply connected. We review the main mathematical properties of multiply connected spaces, and the different…
If the topology of the universe is compact we show how it significantly changes our assessment of the naturalness of the observed structure of the universe and the likelihood of its present state of high isotropy and near flatness arising…
The two-year COBE-DMR 53 and 90 GHz sky maps are used to determine the normalization of inflationary, cosmological constant dominated, cold dark matter models. Although the COBE-DMR data prefer a nearly critical value for the total density,…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a precious window on fundamental physics at very high energy scales, possibly including quantum gravity, GUTs and supersymmetry. The CMB has already enabled defect-based rivals to inflation to…
Probing the geometry of the universe is one of the most important endevours in cosmology. Current observational data from the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy (CMB), galaxy surveys and type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) strongly constrain…
Full suite of the present day Cosmic Microwave background (CMB) data, when combined with weak prior information on the Hubble constant and the age of the Universe, or the Large-Scale structure, provides strong indication for a non-zero…
Recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies by BOOMERANG and MAXIMA collaborations have tightened the observational constraints on theories of structure formation. They disagree with the predictions of…
We compute the covariance expected between the spherical harmonic coefficients $a_{\ell m}$ of the cosmic microwave temperature anisotropy if the universe had a compact topology. For fundamental cell size smaller than the distance to the…
Nature abhors an infinity. The limits of general relativity are often signaled by infinities: infinite curvature as in the center of a black hole, the infinite energy of the singular big bang. We might be inclined to add an infinite…
We review observational tests for the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales. Redshift and peculiar velocity surveys, radio sources, the X-Ray Background, the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest and the Cosmic Microwave Background are used to set…
The anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are computed for the half-turn space E_2 which represents a compact flat model of the Universe, i.e. one with finite volume. This model is inhomogeneous in the sense that the…
Fluctuations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have now been detected over a wide range of angular scales, and a consistent picture seems to be emerging. This article describes some of the implications for cosmology.…
If the universe is finite and smaller than the distance to the surface of last scatter, then the signature of the topology of the universe is writ large on the microwave background sky. We show that the microwave background will be…
Geometry constrains but does not dictate the topology of the 3--dimensional space. In a locally spatially homogeneous and isotropic universe, however, the topology of its spatial section dictates its geometry. We show that, besides…
The global geometry of the universe is in principle as observable an attribute as local curvature. Previous studies have established that if the universe is wrapped into a flat hypertorus, the simplest compact space, then the fundamental…
We study the effect of global topology of the spatial geometry on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for closed flat and closed hyperbolic models in which the spatial hypersurface is multiply connected. If the CMB temperature…
We constrain the basic comological parameters using the first observations by the Very Small Array (VSA) in its extended configuration, together with existing cosmic microwave background data and other cosmological observations. We estimate…
The fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are investigated for a hyperbolic universe with finite volume. Four-component models with radiation, matter, vacuum energy, and an extra spatially constant dark energy X-component…
The dimming of Type Ia supernovae could be the result of Hubble-scale inhomogeneity in the matter and spatial curvature, rather than signaling the presence of a dark energy component. A key challenge for such models is to fit the detailed…