631 research outputs found
Inflationary Cosmology: Theory and Phenomenology
This article gives a brief overview of some of the theory behind the
inflationary cosmology, and discusses prospects for constraining inflation
using observations. Particular care is given to the question of falsifiability
of inflation or of subsets of inflationary models.Comment: 11 pages LaTeX file (using iopart) with 4 figures included via EPSF.
Article based on a talk presented at ``The Early Universe and Cosmological
Observations: a Critical Review'', Cape Town, July 200
Interstellar dust in the BOOMERanG maps
Interstellar dust (ISD) emission is present in the mm-wave maps obtained by the BOOMERanG experiment at intermediate and high Galactic latitudes. We find that, while being sub-dominant at the lower frequencies (90,150, 240 GHz), thermal emission from ISD is dominant at 410 GHz, and is well correlated with the IRAS map at 100 ”m. We find also that the angular power spectrum of ISD fluctuations at 410 GHz is a power law, and its level is negligible with respect to the angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) at 90 and 150 GHz
The trispectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background on sub-degree angular scales: an analysis of the BOOMERanG data
The trispectrum of the cosmic microwave background can be used to assess the
level of non-Gaussianity on cosmological scales. It probes the fourth order
moment, as a function of angular scale, of the probability distribution
function of fluctuations and has been shown to be sensitive to primordial
non-gaussianity, secondary anisotropies (such as the Ostriker-Vishniac effect)
and systematic effects (such as astrophysical foregrounds). In this paper we
develop a formalism for estimating the trispectrum from high resolution sky
maps which incorporates the impact of finite sky coverage. This leads to a
series of operations applied to the data set to minimize the effects of
contamination due to the Gaussian component and correlations between estimates
at different scales. To illustrate the effect of the estimation process, we
apply our procedure to the BOOMERanG data set and show that it is consistent
with Gaussianity. This work presents the first estimation of the CMB
trispectrum on sub-degree scales.Comment: 14 pages, submitted to MNRA
Instrumental and Analytic Methods for Bolometric Polarimetry
We discuss instrumental and analytic methods that have been developed for the
first generation of bolometric cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeters.
The design, characterization, and analysis of data obtained using Polarization
Sensitive Bolometers (PSBs) are described in detail. This is followed by a
brief study of the effect of various polarization modulation techniques on the
recovery of sky polarization from scanning polarimeter data. Having been
successfully implemented on the sub-orbital Boomerang experiment, PSBs are
currently operational in two terrestrial CMB polarization experiments (QUaD and
the Robinson Telescope). We investigate two approaches to the analysis of data
from these experiments, using realistic simulations of time ordered data to
illustrate the impact of instrumental effects on the fidelity of the recovered
polarization signal. We find that the analysis of difference time streams takes
full advantage of the high degree of common mode rejection afforded by the PSB
design. In addition to the observational efforts currently underway, this
discussion is directly applicable to the PSBs that constitute the polarized
capability of the Planck HFI instrument.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures. for submission to A&
Mapping the CMB Sky: The BOOMERANG experiment
We describe the BOOMERanG experiment, a stratospheric balloon telescope
intended to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy at angular
scales between a few degrees and ten arcminutes. The experiment has been
optimized for a long duration (7 to 14 days) flight circumnavigating Antarctica
at the end of 1998. A test flight was performed on Aug.30, 1997 in Texas. The
level of performance achieved in the test flight was satisfactory and
compatible with the requirements for the long duration flight.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Foregrounds in the BOOMERANG-LDB data: a preliminary rms analysis
We present a preliminary analysis of the BOOMERanG LDB maps, focused on
foregrounds. BOOMERanG detects dust emission at moderately low galactic
latitudes () in bands centered at 90, 150, 240, 410 GHz. At higher
Galactic latitudes, we use the BOOMERanG data to set conservative upper limits
on the level of contamination at 90 and 150 GHz. We find that the mean square
signal correlated with the IRAS/DIRBE dust template is less than 3% of the mean
square signal due to CMB anisotropy
WMAP confirming the ellipticity in BOOMERanG and COBE CMB maps
The recent study of BOOMERanG 150 GHz Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
radiation maps have detected ellipticity of the temperature anisotropy spots
independent on the temperature threshold. The effect has been found for spots
up to several degrees in size, where the biases of the ellipticity estimator
and of the noise are small. To check the effect, now we have studied, with the
same algorithm and in the same sky region, the WMAP maps. We find ellipticity
of the same average value also in WMAP maps, despite of the different
sensitivity of the two experiments to low multipoles. Large spot elongations
had been detected also for the COBE-DMR maps. If this effect is due to geodesic
mixing and hence due to non precisely zero curvature of the hyperbolic
Universe, it can be linked to the origin of WMAP low multipoles anomaly.Comment: More explanations and two references adde
Late time cosmic acceleration from vacuum Brans-Dicke theory in 5D
We show that the scalar-vacuum Brans-Dicke equations in 5D are equivalent to
Brans-Dicke theory in 4D with a self interacting potential and an effective
matter field. The cosmological implication, in the context of FRW models, is
that the observed accelerated expansion of the universe comes naturally from
the condition that the scalar field is not a ghost, i.e., . We
find an effective matter-dominated 4D universe which shows accelerated
expansion if . We study the question of whether
accelerated expansion can be made compatible with large values of ,
within the framework of a 5D scalar-vacuum Brans-Dicke theory with variable,
instead of constant, parameter . In this framework, and based on a
general class of solutions of the field equations, we demonstrate that
accelerated expansion is incompatible with large values of .Comment: In V2 the summary section is expanded. To be published in Classical
and Quantum Gravity
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