Lorentz-boosted circles-in-the-sky and cosmic topology
- Barnard College of Columbia University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 3009 Broadway, New York, New York 10027 (United States)
A topologically finite universe, smaller than the observable horizon, will have circles-in-the-sky: pairs of circles around which the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background are correlated. The circles occur along the intersection of copies of the spherical surface of last scattering. For any observer moving with respect to the microwave background, the circles will be deformed into ovals. The ovals will also be displaced relative to the direction they appear in a comoving frame. The displacement is the larger of the two effects, being proportional to the velocity. For the Earth's motion, the effect is on the order of 0.14 deg. at the very worst. This can affect all pattern-based searches for the topology of the universe. In particular, although the deviation is too small to impact the search for circles in the Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe (WMAP) data, higher-resolution searches for circle pairs will need to compensate for this effect.
- OSTI ID:
- 20705426
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 70, Issue 8; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.70.083001; (c) 2004 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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