1,721,070 research outputs found
Testing the paradigm of adiabaticity
No full textWe introduce the concepts of adiabatic (curvature) and isocurvature (entropy) cosmological perturbations and present their relevance for parameter estimation from cosmic microwave background anisotropies data. We emphasize that, while present-day data are in excellent agreement with pure adiabaticity, subdominant isocurvature contributions cannot be ruled out. We discuss model independent constraints on the isocurvature contribution. Finally, we argue that the Planck satellite will be able to do precision cosmology even if the assumption of adiabaticity is relaxed
Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies with Mixed Isocurvature Perturbations
No full textIn the light of the recent high quality data of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, several estimations of cosmological parameters have been published. We study to what extent these estimations depend on assumptions about the initial conditions of the cosmological perturbations, which are usually supposed to be adiabatic. We show that, for more generic initial conditions, not only the best fit values are very different but the allowed parameter range enlarges dramatically. This raises the question which cosmological information (matter content of the Universe vs physics of inflation) can be reliably extracted from these data. © 2001 American Physical Society
Cosmological constant and general isocurvature initial conditions
Full text linkWe investigate in detail the question of whether a nonvanishing cosmological constant is required by the present-day cosmic microwave background and large scale structure data when general isocurvature initial conditions are taken into account. We also discuss the differences between the usual Bayesian and the frequentist approaches in data analysis. We show that the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)-normalized matter power spectrum is dominated by the adiabatic mode and therefore breaks the degeneracy between initial conditions which is present in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. We find that in a flat universe the Bayesian analysis requires ΩΛ≠0 to more than 3σ, while in the frequentist approach ΩΛ=0 is still within 3σ for a value of h<~0.48. Both conclusions hold regardless of the initial conditions
CMB-lensing beyond the Born approximation
Full text linkWe investigate the weak lensing corrections to the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies considering effects beyond the Born approximation. To this aim, we use the small deflection angle approximation, to connect the lensed and unlensed power spectra, via expressions for the deflection angles up to third order in the gravitational potential. While the small deflection angle approximation has the drawback to be reliable only for multipoles l 2500, it allows us to consistently take into account the non-Gaussian nature of cosmological perturbation theory beyond the linear level. The contribution to the lensed temperature power spectrum coming from the non-Gaussian nature of the deflection angle at higher order is a new effect which has not been taken into account in the literature so far. It turns out to be the leading contribution among the post-Born lensing corrections. On the other hand, the effect is smaller than corrections coming from non-linearities in the matter power spectrum, and its imprint on CMB lensing is too small to be seen in present experiments
Impact of Next-to-Leading Order Contributions to Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing
Full text linkIn this Letter we study the impact on cosmological parameter estimation, from present and future surveys, due to lensing corrections on cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization anisotropies beyond leading order. In particular, we show how post-Born corrections, large-scale structure effects, and the correction due to the change in the polarization direction between the emission at the source and the detection at the observer are non-negligible in the determination of the polarization spectra. They have to be taken into account for an accurate estimation of cosmological parameters sensitive to or even based on these spectra. We study in detail the impact of higher order lensing on the determination of the tensor-to-scalar ratio r and on the estimation of the effective number of relativistic species Neff. We find that neglecting higher order lensing terms can lead to misinterpreting these corrections as a primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio of about O(10-3). Furthermore, it leads to a shift of the parameter Neff by nearly 2σ considering the level of accuracy aimed by future S4 surveys
Seeds of large-scale anisotropy in string cosmology
No full textPre-big bang cosmology predicts tiny first-order dilaton and metric perturbations at very large scales. Here we discuss the possibility that other -- more copiously generated -- perturbations may act, at second order, as scalar seeds of large-scale structure and CMB anisotropies. We study, in particular, the cases of electromagnetic and axionic seeds. We compute the stochastic fluctuations of their energy-momentum tensor and determine the resulting contributions to the multipole expansion of the temperature anisotropy. In the axion case it is possible to obtain a flat or slightly tilted blue spectrum that fits present data consistently, both for massless and for massive (but very light) axions.Pre-big bang cosmology predicts tiny first-order dilaton and metric perturbations at very large scales. Here we discuss the possibility that other -- more copiously generated -- perturbations may act, at second order, as scalar seeds of large-scale structure and CMB anisotropies. We study, in particular, the cases of electromagnetic and axionic seeds. We compute the stochastic fluctuations of their energy-momentum tensor and determine the resulting contributions to the multipole expansion of the temperature anisotropy. In the axion case it is possible to obtain a flat or slightly tilted blue spectrum that fits present data consistently, both for massless and for massive (but very light) axions
Reproducing the observed Cosmic microwave background anisotropies with causal scaling seeds
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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