Large-Scale Anisotropy of the Cosmic Relic Radiation in Spatially Open Cosmological Models

Abstract

The observed microwave background radiation is a sensitive tool for studying the fundamental features of the universe. A puzzling constancy on the celestial sphere of the temperature, T, of the equilibrium relic radiation coming to us from causally nonrelated regions of space-time points to the global spatial homogeneity and isotropy of the cosmological expansion. On the other hand, a small anisotropy of the relic background can tell a lot about the physics of the beginning of the universal expansion, where primordial cosmological perturbations, which later affect the relic isotropy, formed (see, e.g., [1,2] and other reviews on the early universe). We would like to emphasize another factor that forms mainly the large-scale structure of relic anisotropy: the spatial curvature of the background Friedmann Universe. In the light of the discovery of the large-scale anisotropy of the cosmic radiation [3–5], this problem becomes very important.