scholarly journals Radial derivatives as a test of pre-big bang events on the Planck data

2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (1) ◽  
pp. 1300-1311
Author(s):  
R Fernández-Cobos ◽  
A Marcos-Caballero ◽  
E Martínez-González

ABSTRACT Although the search for azimuthal patterns in cosmological surveys is useful to characterize some effects depending exclusively on an angular distance within the standard model, they are considered as a key distinguishing feature of some exotic scenarios, such as bubble collisions or conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC). In particular, the CCC is a non-stardard framework that predicts circular patterns on the cosmic microwave background intensity fluctuations. Motivated by some previous works that explore the presence of radial gradients, we apply a methodology based on the radial derivatives to the latest release of Planck data. The new approach allows exhaustive studies to be performed at all-sky directions at a healpix resolution of Nside = 1024. Specifically, two different analyses are performed focusing on weight functions in both small (up to a 5-deg radius) and large scales. We present a comparison between our results and those shown by An, Meissner & Nurowski (2017) and An et al. (2018). In addition, a possible polarization counterpart of these circular patterns is also analysed for the most promising case. Taking into account the limitations to characterize the significance of the results, including the possibility of suffering a look-elsewhere effect, no strong evidence of the kind of circular patterns expected from CCC is found in the Planck data for either the small or the large scales.

2020 ◽  
Vol 495 (3) ◽  
pp. 3403-3408
Author(s):  
Daniel An ◽  
Krzysztof A Meissner ◽  
Paweł Nurowski ◽  
Roger Penrose

ABSTRACT This paper presents strong observational evidence of numerous previously unobserved anomalous circular spots, of significantly raised temperature, in the cosmic microwave background sky. The spots have angular radii between 0.03 and 0.04 rad (i.e. angular diameters between about 3° and 4°). There is a clear cut-off at that size, indicating that each anomalous spot would have originated from a highly energetic point-like source, located at the end of inflation – or else point-like at the conformally expanded Big Bang, if it is considered that there was no inflationary phase. The significant presence of these anomalous spots, was initially noticed in the Planck 70 GHz satellite data by comparison with 1000 standard simulations, and then confirmed by extending the comparison to 10 000 simulations. Such anomalous points were then found at precisely the same locations in the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) data, their significance was confirmed by comparison with 1000 WMAP simulations. Planck and WMAP have very different noise properties and it seems exceedingly unlikely that the observed presence of anomalous points in the same directions on both maps may come entirely from the noise. Subsequently, further confirmation was found in the Planck data by comparison with 1000 FFP8.1 MC simulations (with l ≤ 1500). The existence of such anomalous regions, resulting from point-like sources at the conformally stretched-out big bang, is a predicted consequence of conformal cyclic cosmology, these sources being the Hawking points of the theory, resulting from the Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in a cosmic aeon prior to our own.


1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Lerner

A plasma model of the origin of the light elements and the microwave background is presented. In contrast to the conventional Big Bang hypothesis, the model assumes that helium, deuterium and the microwave background were all generated by massive stars in the early stages of galaxy formation. The microwave background is scattered and isotropized by multi-GeV electrons trapped in the jets emitted by active galactic nuclei. The model produces reasonable amounts of heavy elements, accurately predicts the gamma-ray background intensity and spectrum, and explains the statistics of quasars, compact and extended radio sources.


1996 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
G.F. Smoot

Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation have put the standard model of cosmology, the Big Bang, on firm footing and provide tests of various ideas of large scale structure formation. CMB observations now let us test the role of gravity and General Relativity in cosmology including the geometry, topology, and dynamics of the Universe. Foreground galactic emissions, dust thermal emission and emission from energetic electrons, provide a serious limit to observations. Nevertheless, observations may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles.


1983 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 483-484
Author(s):  
Kenneth Brecher

The “standard” hot big bang model accounts for the expansion of the Universe, the existence of the microwave background radiation, and the mass fraction of the light elements up to 4He. It does not account for the high degree of isotropy and homogeneity of the Universe in the large, nor of the existence of structure (galaxies, clusters) on smaller scales. Other problems, such as the lepton to baryon ratio, the preponderance of matter over antimatter, and the “coincidences” of dimensionless ratios of several fundamental physical and cosmological “constants” also lie outside of the “standard” model at present.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (S306) ◽  
pp. 131-134
Author(s):  
Anna Mangilli ◽  

AbstractStudying the non-Gaussianity (NG) of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an extremely powerful tool to investigate the properties of the very early Universe. The Planck nominal mission CMB maps yielded unprecedented constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity providing with the highest precision test of the standard model of inflation. Planck's high sensitivity also allowed to find evidence for the first time of the late-time non-Gaussianity arising from the Lensing-Integrated Sachs Wolfe (ISW) cross correlation. In this talk I will give details on the Planck data analysis and I will discuss the theoretical implications of the results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Koustav Konar ◽  
Kingshuk Bose ◽  
R. K. Paul

AbstractBlackbody radiation inversion is a mathematical process for the determination of probability distribution of temperature from measured radiated power spectrum. In this paper a simple and stable blackbody radiation inversion is achieved by using an analytical function with three determinable parameters for temperature distribution. This inversion technique is used to invert the blackbody radiation field of the cosmic microwave background, the remnant radiation of the hot big bang, to infer the temperature distribution of the generating medium. The salient features of this distribution are investigated and analysis of this distribution predicts the presence of distortion in the cosmic microwave background spectrum.


Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 276
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zahid Mughal ◽  
Iftikhar Ahmad ◽  
Juan Luis García Guirao

In this review article, the study of the development of relativistic cosmology and the introduction of inflation in it as an exponentially expanding early phase of the universe is carried out. We study the properties of the standard cosmological model developed in the framework of relativistic cosmology and the geometric structure of spacetime connected coherently with it. The geometric properties of space and spacetime ingrained into the standard model of cosmology are investigated in addition. The big bang model of the beginning of the universe is based on the standard model which succumbed to failure in explaining the flatness and the large-scale homogeneity of the universe as demonstrated by observational evidence. These cosmological problems were resolved by introducing a brief acceleratedly expanding phase in the very early universe known as inflation. The cosmic inflation by setting the initial conditions of the standard big bang model resolves these problems of the theory. We discuss how the inflationary paradigm solves these problems by proposing the fast expansion period in the early universe. Further inflation and dark energy in fR modified gravity are also reviewed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (28n29) ◽  
pp. 1545005
Author(s):  
Qing-Guo Huang

Gravitational waves can escape from the big bang and can be taken as a probe to the physics, in particular the inflation, in the early universe. Planck scale is a fundamental scale for quantum theory of gravity. Requiring the excursion distance of inflaton in the field space during inflation yields an upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio. For example, [Formula: see text] for [Formula: see text]. In the typical inflationary scenario, we predict [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] which are consistent with Planck data released in 2015 quite well. Subtracting the contribution of thermal dust measured by Planck, BICEP2 data implies [Formula: see text] which is the tightest bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio from current experiments.


2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helge Kragh

The standard model of modern cosmology is known as the hot big bang, a name that refers to the initial state of the universe some fourteen billion years ago. The name Big Bang introduced by Fred Hoyle in 1949 is one of the most successful scientific neologisms ever. How did the name originate and how was it received by physicists and astronomers in the period leading up to the hot big bang consensus model in the late 1960s? How did it reflect the meanings of the origin of the universe, a concept that predates the name by nearly two decades? Contrary to what is often assumed, the name was not an instant success—it took more than twenty years before Big Bang became a household word in the scientific community. When it happened, it was used with different connotations, as is still the case. Moreover, it was used earlier and more frequently in popular than in scientific contexts, and not always relating to cosmology. It turns out that Hoyle’s celebrated name has a richer and more surprising history than commonly assumed and also that the literature on modern cosmology and its history includes many common mistakes and errors. An etymological approach centering on the name Big Bang provides supplementary insight to the historical understanding of the emergence of modern cosmology.


2019 ◽  
Vol 632 ◽  
pp. A91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikki Arendse ◽  
Adriano Agnello ◽  
Radosław J. Wojtak

Context. The matter sound horizon can be infered from the cosmic microwave background within the Standard Model. Independent direct measurements of the sound horizon are then a probe of possible deviations from the Standard Model. Aims. We aim at measuring the sound horizon rs from low-redshift indicators, which are completely independent of CMB inference. Methods. We used the measured product H(z)rs from baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) together with supernovae Ia to constrain H(z)/H0 and time-delay lenses analysed by the H0LiCOW collaboration to anchor cosmological distances (∝ H0−1). Additionally, we investigated the influence of adding a sample of quasars with higher redshift with standardisable UV-Xray luminosity distances. We adopted polynomial expansions in H(z) or in comoving distances so that our inference was completely independent of any cosmological model on which the expansion history might be based. Our measurements are independent of Cepheids and systematics from peculiar motions to within percent-level accuracy. Results. The inferred sound horizon rs varies between (133 ± 8) Mpc and (138 ± 5) Mpc across different models. The discrepancy with CMB measurements is robust against model choice. Statistical uncertainties are comparable to systematics. Conclusions. The combination of time-delay lenses, supernovae, and BAO yields a distance ladder that is independent of cosmology (and of Cepheid calibration) and a measurement of rs that is independent of the CMB. These cosmographic measurements are then a competitive test of the Standard Model, regardless of the hypotheses on which the cosmology is based.


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