Related papers: Nonlinear Effects in the Cosmic Microwave Backgrou…
The analysis of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has become an extremely valuable tool for cosmology. We even have hopes that planned CMB anisotropy experiments may revolutionize cosmology. Together with determinations…
We investigate the dependence of large angular scale cosmic microwave background anisotropies on various initial conditions, including both adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations and the initial power law index $n$, in a variety of…
We construct a class of single small field models of inflation that can predict, contrary to popular wisdom, an observable gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The spectral index, its running, the…
We investigate cosmologies where the accelerated expansion of the Universe is driven by a field with an anisotropic equation of state. We model such scenarios within the Bianchi I framework, introducing two skewness parameters to quantify…
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…
I review the current status of cosmology as emerging from recent observations of cosmic microwave background anisotropies as well as from other sources of cosmological information.
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.…
Observational cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in recent years. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation. The transition to precision cosmology…
The last years have been an exciting period for the field of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) research. With recent CMB balloon-borne and ground-based experiments we are entering a new era of 'precision' cosmology that enables us to…
We review in a pedagogical way the present status of the impact of non-Gaussianity (NG) on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. We first show how to set the initial conditions at second-order for the (gauge invariant) CMB…
Anomalies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) refer to features that have been observed, mostly at large angular scales, and which show some tension with the statistical predictions of the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. In this work, we…
We study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies produced by cosine-type quintessence models. In our analysis, effects of the adiabatic and isocurvature fluctuations are both taken into account. For purely adiabatic fluctuations…
Gravitational lensing, caused by matter perturbations along the line-of-sight to the last scattering surface, can modify the shape of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy power spectrum. We discuss the detectability of lensing…
We examine the constraints cosmological observations can place on any trans-Planckian corrections to the primordial spectrum of perturbations underlying the anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We focus on models of…
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…
The properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation provide unique constraints on cosmological models, i.e. on the content, history, and evolution of the Universe. I discuss the latest measurements of the spectral and spatial…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy is our richest source of cosmological information; the standard cosmological model was largely established thanks to study of the temperature anisotropies. By the end of the decade, the Planck…
Wide area cosmological surveys enable investigation of whether dark energy properties are the same in different directions on the sky. Cosmic microwave background observations strongly restrict any dynamical effects from anisotropy, in an…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…
In (Hansen et al. 2002) we presented a new approach for measuring non-Gaussianity of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy pattern, based on the multivariate empirical distribution function of the spherical harmonics a_lm of a…