Modulations of the CMB
ORAL
Abstract
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies are Gaussian and isotropic at linear order. The presence of long wavelength modulating fields, however, can introduce non-Gaussianity and statistical anisotropy in the CMB. There are discrepancies between the observed CMB lensing signal and theoretical expectations. We explore the possibility that compensated isocurvature perturbations or spatial fluctuations in the fine-structure constant could solve this problem. The imprint of both these possibilities on CMB statistics is computed. Current data are used to probe these models, forecasts are made for the sensitivity of upcoming efforts like CMB Stage IV , and a variety of other theoretical considerations are explored.
*We thank the Provosts’ Offices of Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges for supporting this research. Part of this work was completed at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-1607611. The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1125915 at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at UC Santa Barbara. DG thanks KITP for its hospitality during the completion of this work.
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Presenters
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Daniel Grin
- Haverford College