Authors:
- Presents and explains cutting edge research in the very active field of cosmic microwave background studies
- Quantifies the observational power of the CMB bispectrum to constrain the physics of the early Universe
- Provides information which will be relevant for the design of future space and ground-based cosmology experiments
- Winner of the Michael Penston Prize for 2014 given by the Royal Astronomical Society for the best doctoral thesis in Astronomy or Astrophysics
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Springer Theses (Springer Theses)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
Nominated as an outstanding thesis by Professor Robert Crittenden of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in Portsmouth, and winner of the Michael Penston Prize for 2014 given by the Royal Astronomical Society for the best doctoral thesis in Astronomy or Astrophysics, this work aims to shed light on one of the most important probes of the early Universe: the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background.
The CMB bispectrum is a potential window on exciting new physics, as it is sensitive to the non-Gaussian features in the primordial fluctuations, the same fluctuations that evolved into today’s planets, stars and galaxies. However, this invaluable information is potentially screened, as not all of the observed non-Gaussianity is of primordial origin. Indeed, a bispectrum arises even for perfectly Gaussian initial conditions due to non-linear dynamics, such as CMB photons scattering off free electrons and propagating in an inhomogeneous Universe. Dr. Pettinari introduces the reader to this intrinsic bispectrum in a pedagogic way, building up from the standard model of cosmology and from cosmological perturbation theory, the tool cosmologists use to unravel the history of the cosmos. In doing so, he introduces SONG, a new and efficient code for solving the second-order Einstein and Boltzmann equations. Next, he moves on to answer the crucial question: is the intrinsic bispectrum going to screen the primordial signal in the CMB? Using SONG, he computes the intrinsic bispectrum and shows how its contamination leads to a small bias in the estimates of primordial non-Gaussianity, a great news for the prospect of using CMB data to probe primordial non-Gaussianity.
Authors and Affiliations
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Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
Guido Walter Pettinari
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Intrinsic Bispectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Authors: Guido Walter Pettinari
Series Title: Springer Theses
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21882-3
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-21881-6Published: 08 September 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-37295-2Published: 23 August 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-21882-3Published: 27 August 2015
Series ISSN: 2190-5053
Series E-ISSN: 2190-5061
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIII, 263
Topics: Cosmology, Classical and Quantum Gravitation, Relativity Theory